WeWillMakeIt

Someday these will just be stories that we’ll tell our kids. How we got through the three years of you being in the service while I was struggling with being madly in love with you. How we got through two and a half years of me going to Florida State while you were back at home. How we spent the summer before I left together, and we fell in love. Well, at least you did. I had already fallen. I have the bruises to show it. How we went to Virginia for Winter Break because you listen to me. We fell even more in love, and we started the year how we wanted to spend the rest of it: together.

We’ll tell our kids that for the best things to truly work out and be the best things, you have to give them time and you have to work through them. Elbow grease is something you should become familiar with. We’ll let them know that we talked on the phone every single night while we were away from each other, and how we drove up or down every chance that we got. We’ll exchange stories on summers that we spent together and explored our relationship.

We’ll tell them how we were so in love that we argued quite a bit. About whether our kids would go to Ivy League schools, or who was going to be in our wedding party. We argued about not arguing, and about boys and/or girls that got in the way of our destiny.

You will tell them about the wonderful times you spent back home from the military. All of your escapades with their Uncle John, and how great of a rager their Dad could throw.

I will tell them about how wonderful college is, and how I learned so much about myself that I never would have discovered if I hadn’t left. I’ll make them understand that if you don’t know yourself, you can never really know someone else. 

But, most of all, we’ll agree on the fact that this separation sucks. 

We’ll agree that, though worth it, it was miserable at least half of the time.

We survived it, but we didn’t enjoy being away from each other. Not for a single second. 

She lays in the fetal position,

Using her knees as a shield, 

From all the things that could ever harm her. 

From those that chased her in her dreams,

Who were as tall as ogres and as terrible as beasts.

Or even those that chased her in reality,

The ont hat bred deception, and the one that believed it.

She cringes ever so slightly,

As if she was running from something,

Something that she couldn’t escape.

Perhaps a father whose hand had descended upon her face, 

Leaving the red handprint of his rage.

I laid my hand across the delicate flesh of her arm,

Providing a comfort

For both her and myself.

Letting her know that mommy would always be there

To protect her from dragons, 

As well as bad boyfriends,

And even from a man who would never gain her love.

The light from the window

Descends upon her face.

It allows the highlights in her hair,

To shimmer gently in the early morning light.

The curve of her neck seems even more fragile,

When I think back on the bruises that have only just healed.

I pull her close and she sighs softly.

Perhaps she knows that I’m here,

Or perhaps I have entered her dreams.

In my daughters eyes, I am the woman

Who let her husband beat her child.

Perhaps there will come a day when she sees me,

Not for who I am, but for who I’m trying to be. 

Despite the part of my childhood where I was convinced I would someday inherit magical powers, I am not a mind reader. I can’t always figure out what’s going to make you ridiculously happy, or ridiculously miserable. It’s all trial and error. Ups and downs. This ways and that ways. I want to make you happy. I put forth a great deal of effort to make you happy and appease you. To make sure everything is okay. After all, it’s the thought that counts.

But if that’s true, I can’t seem to figure out what the hell you’re thinking. Not lately. I go left, you swerve right. I jump up, you crawl down. I smile, you frown. I’m not sure where else to go. What else to do. How do you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? Someone who won’t even help themselves?

Sometimes I’ll just sit at my desk and I’ll listen. I’ll listen to the clacking of the keys as my roommate strives hard for a good grade on her paper. I’ll hear the running water of my other roommate washing the dishes, hoping to clean up the room a little bit. I’ll hear the soft humming of my final roommate as she listens to her music and watches her show, probably procrastinating on homework. But, more than anything, I’ll hear the silence.

The silence of you not being there. Not being there when I turn around because you’re breathing down my neck. Not being there when I breathe in the scent of your skin, musky and familiar. Not being there when I open my eyes at three in the morning, just to make sure that you’re still there..still breathing. I mention breath quite a bit, but it’s important. It’s what keeps you alive. And after all, without you, I’m not sure what I would do. 

Lately we’ve been glad for any three seconds we get together. Because I’m here and you’re there and there doesn’t know how lucky it is. Trucky and Scuba, they don’t know how lucky they are. To see your face every single day of the week. To be able to support you and be there for you in a literal sense. 

I know that we’re working towards the same end, the ultimate end, our end. The end that means a beginning. The end that proves we were really meant to be. The end that means you were worth waiting for. The end that  ends in happily ever afters. Our happily ever after. I’m still waiting to just be with you. No interruptions. No obstacles. No problems. But isn’t that what everyone hopes for? Life is an interruption, an obstacle, a problem. It’s the ultimate problem. When you can overcome life, and still find a way to love each other more than it seems possible, you know that it is truly meant to be. Because if it wasn’t meant to be, it wouldn’t be.

                                                    ∞

More than anything, I wish you would just let me in. Tell me how you’re feeling. What it’s like. If everything is okay. I don’t want to have to guess if you’re alright. I don’t want to feel so unsure as to the answer. It breaks my heart that I can’t be there for you.

I’ve told you that you can always talk to me, regardless of what it’s about. But you choose to deal with all of this in solitude. To deal with this by not dealing with it. If I could tell you anything right now, it would be that I love you more than anything and I’m always here for you. To make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or to discuss the facts of life. Anything and everything. That’s how we work. That will always be how we work. 

I wish I could say that I knew who you are, but I don’t. Not anymore. I don’t recognize the person that I’m talking to, or the face that I’m gazing into. I don’t understand how you could be so cold, so distant. I haven’t done anything to cause you to turn away from me. I simply want to understand why you’ve turned into this person. Why you’ve just become someone that I used to know. 

The world has beaten you down. It’s shoved dirt over your abandoned corpse, without a care as to whether you were still alive. You were one of the good ones, someone that could have changed things. But now you’re just too sad and too tired to continue being a ‘good one’? 

I’m calling bullshit. The world has changed you. It has sculpted and molded you into who you are today. If you truly want payback, then you should change the world right back. Sculpt it and mold it into somewhere that’s worth living. 

Use your smile to change the world, don’t let the world change your smile. I don’t think that just because the world has knocked you down to your knees, that it gives you any reason to be a hard, cold person. If anything, you should be as welcoming and generous as before. Show the world what you’re made of. Show yourself. 

It comes and goes, and we should learn to expect that. We shouldn’t anticipate that this one thing, this one event will make us happy. Happiness, true happiness, is a way of life, a feeling that drifts in and out of our lives. 

We all find a certain amount of strength when someone else hugs us. The firmer the hug, the more strength we possess. With a hug, it feels like someone can hold you together, even if you’re falling apart at the seams. They love you enough to hold all the pieces together until you’re ready to start looking for the glue.

I want to tell you that I miss you. I wish you’d tell me that you’ll stay. I want to tell you how my heart aches every time we argue. I wish you’d apologize and take all of my pain away. 

We were supposed to be best friends. It was supposed to be us against the world. Having movie nights when everyone else was out drinking. Laying there, looking at each other, and not needing a single word to be spoken to be having such a wonderful conversation. You claimed to love all of my stupid little quirks, so why is it that you wish that they would all disappear. 

I am who I am and I have never apologized for that. Why does it feel like you want me to?