Old letters

"Not only is your birthday a special day for you, it is also a special day for me. I'm so thankful you were born, because you have made my life such a happier place."

When the rain falls

And the night falls down
Yea, you've got me here
In this humdrum town

At almost twenty-nine, I finally grew out of casual sex, learned how to light a lighter, and wear eyeliner. I learned that bro-code pretty much doesn't exist, that it's kind of necessary to note you're in a relationship on Facebook, that having trouble saying no only makes situations harder, and that online dating is a waste of time. I learned to appreciate the humor in awkward moments when guy friends think you're down for hooking-up, and, in getting fired from your job boxing pizzas. It was the year when I started gauging everything against forever. It was the year when I let you go. I had waited my entire life for someone to love me in that way, to that degree, and when you came around, I learned the hardest lesson, sometimes love just isn't enough. I faced it with a certain disbelief. Sometimes true stories are the hardest to comprehend because they can shake the reality you always felt you knew.

At almost twenty-nine, I stopped feeling like a failure. That's how it had felt, gauging accomplishments against time, against that of others, against these ideas I had had on what life was supposed to be like at certain intervals.

At almost twenty-nine, you came around again, in a way I hadn't seen since we were far younger. And I played with the idea of you, in that way. Maybe a decade was all we needed. But in reality, the thought of being with you, makes me feel like that 16 year old girl who first fell for you, and I'm not her anymore.

And for the first time in maybe ever, I don't mind getting older.

The former years. 

That autumn

On the eve of my twenty-ninth birthday and our ten year high school reunion, we were coping with decisions we’d made that got us here.

She said she wasn’t going to go. Maybe if she got her shit together, then she’d go. But otherwise, she wasn’t going to, wasn’t going to have the questions asked, questions for which she didn’t have answers. I said, but what did it matter?

But I knew what she meant. There were moments when I avoided social gatherings with people who weren’t close, those you don’t see often because I didn’t have an answer for their questions. So what are you doing these days? 

My Facebook newsfeed made my life look like a string of vacations and forays into alcoholism. Whether that was a mirror of real life was left to be said, but perception is hard to change.

Something about milestones make us look back and reflect on how we got here. Some days, I would say, marriage was never going to happen, owning a home was never going to happen. But I'm inundated by these announcements on the daily, and some days, they make me feel like I'm failing.

But the latter was never an aspiration and the former was something out of my control.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about you, wondering if I’m a disappointment in your eyes, like how you were in mine for all those years. Are you still trying? Don’t get stuck there, you've been saying.

Sometimes I'll have these moments where I miss you, and then I'll go and look at the few memories I still have access to. I try not to do this for too long.