Tether. (Part One)
Riding my bike down the long slope-y road, I tilted my head to the sun and closed my eyes for just a minute. I know I should wear a helmet, but sometimes I just need to feel the wind blow through my hair, rush past my ears. I haven’t felt this in a long time, I found myself thinking. There’s a particular sense of lack, a type of longing…I’ve written about it before, but the best way I can describe it is that it’s a warm breeze out of nowhere. For just a moment, the clouds will break and the sun will shine, and I’ll close my eyes and remember everything good about it, about him. And then it’s gone again, like it was never there at all.
We had a summer and I ruined it. That is what I would catch myself thinking, sometimes. We had a summer and I ruined it. And I know I wasn’t ready, that he probably wasn’t either, and I know it wasn’t just all me (if you would have asked me in September, I probably would have told you that it wasn’t me at all) but. Sometimes I really wanted to try again. I wanted it back, I wanted to see if it could be different. And then…I didn’t want to try at all. I’ve read all the books that Greg Behrendt has written…no matter what we might have said before, I’m old enough to know now, and by heart, that a break is really a break-up. And that you can’t actually break up if you weren’t actually ever officially together. We weren’t on hold, and I didn’t want to be, when we talked about it. I wanted to take my year and write, learn how to love myself more, take care of my own goddamn heart. I wanted him to take his year and finish school, do whatever it was that he felt he needed to do.
But as the season drew near, I found myself wondering about it. Another summer. If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that there’s never any point in waiting for a new one with an old flame. But then I would think about it, and I would think about him, and even just telling myself that…it made me feel a little like crying. Let down. Like standing ready at the door for your prom date, only to have your mom finally break it to you that they weren’t coming.
We had a summer and I ruined it. That is what I would catch myself thinking, sometimes. We had a summer and I ruined it. And I know I wasn’t ready, that he probably wasn’t either, and I know it wasn’t just all me (if you would have asked me in September, I probably would have told you that it wasn’t me at all) but. Sometimes I really wanted to try again. I wanted it back, I wanted to see if it could be different. And then…I didn’t want to try at all. I’ve read all the books that Greg Behrendt has written…no matter what we might have said before, I’m old enough to know now, and by heart, that a break is really a break-up. And that you can’t actually break up if you weren’t actually ever officially together. We weren’t on hold, and I didn’t want to be, when we talked about it. I wanted to take my year and write, learn how to love myself more, take care of my own goddamn heart. I wanted him to take his year and finish school, do whatever it was that he felt he needed to do.
But as the season drew near, I found myself wondering about it. Another summer. If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that there’s never any point in waiting for a new one with an old flame. But then I would think about it, and I would think about him, and even just telling myself that…it made me feel a little like crying. Let down. Like standing ready at the door for your prom date, only to have your mom finally break it to you that they weren’t coming.
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