When We Were

by Diana Elliot Graham

The novel has been one I go back to time and time again, so much so that the pages themselves are tired from how often I’ve turned them, but my fingertips know the weight of the paper and the imprints of pen marks and ink upon it more intimately than anything or anyone else.

I always thought it would be a slower progression. The way the word indicates it happens. Fall. Like a slow collapse from one season to another. But I guess when you’re more focused on the exciting moments of your life, it’s easy to miss even the most obvious of things, like the world changing around you.

Finding that sweet spot of being ‘enough’ but not too much is exactly the kind of high I spent most of my life chasing. Looking to be the perfect bowl of porridge. Not too hot, not too cold. But if you have to be one or the other, always be more not less.

Unable to escape into sleep the way normal people do, books have been a comfort, the security blanket, therapy I refused to go to. They ask questions but don’t require answers. They make me think but expect nothing in return. And when I wake up in the middle of the night, they are companions that never complain, either keeping me company as I lay awake or lulling me back into a temporary state of rest.

These are our best boob years, and we should get full use of them.”

“I won’t need to keep score to know if I’ve won, because if I walk away from this table knowing you more than I do now, it won’t matter how many points I have.”

There must be something so liberating just existing as your honest self. I am by no means a liar, not dishonest in the slightest, but I adapted to those around me. In exchange, it protected the parts of myself I didn’t want people to see, as they were too distracted by seeing the mirrored traits they so enjoyed in themselves. But that meant that when I slipped out, as just myself, I felt uneasy. Knowing the judgements being made weren’t against the projections of themselves, but of me, truthfully. The quirks of mine, the complexities. They could overwhelm people. They overwhelmed me sometimes.

We’ve been collecting all these moments. Dropping them into a piggy bank, accumulating the coins to amount to something. But where I was interested in more of him, it looks like he made the decision to smash it open and cash out.

S-T-A-Y – A-B I – W-I-L-L – B-R-B

stop omg the way he uses scrabble to communicate i love him <3

“But I bet you’ll make a better boyfriend.”

*spoiler alert* stop omg i'm so proud of her growth they're literally perfect together <3

I want to say more, but I’m out of words. You would think, for all the reading we’ve done. We would be able to borrow some words from the greats before us. But I’m at a loss, and she said everything she needed to.

I said it, and as much as I wanted to mean it, my heart broke a little more at that moment. Knowing that it wasn’t my friendship he valued, but the idea of me. As something he could have. As something he could collect. He was right, how could I be so stupid.

this feels like a good moment to say i've always fucking hated josh

“It’s not about us being together now, but I’m here because I needed you to understand, without a shadow of a doubt, how I felt about you when we were. I need you to understand how I felt. How I still feel, in many ways. So, Arden, while there might never be closure for us, finally, there can be understanding.”

“I’ve missed you. You were the love of my life, and I will always care about you more than circumstance allows.”

you can miss me now, the way I miss you. The way I think I’ll always miss you. But I learned a long time ago that you can miss something without wanting it back. Knowing that what you miss is just the memory. The version we preserve to protect the imprint of something, or someone, important.”

“But memories aren’t always honest, ours clearly weren’t. They are filtered and viewed through whatever lens we need them to be. And you don’t make decisions on that. You can’t build a life on the blueprints of memories alone.”

You can love a memory without loving the person. And as I look at him, I know that the love we have for each other in this moment is that.

We both know we have embers left in the ashes. We can either stoke them, feed them the oxygen they need to grow into flames again, knowing that that fire would burn down the lives we’ve made, or we could suffocate them. Instead, taking the deep breaths we need to fill our own lungs with air and allow ourselves to breathe. There isn’t enough oxygen for both.

“I used to think that maybe you were just the right person but at the wrong time. You know? Like maybe there would be a time for us. That there would be other chapters, but you would eventually be my epilogue. But I was wrong. I think you were the right person, at the right time, and we can blame the miscommunication trope all we want, but like you said, none of it was enough.

You loved someone else, someone I used to be, and maybe I’m still her, and maybe in some ways you’re still him, but it was never going to be enough, and we won’t be them again, at least not together.”

Names are changed, details changed, and the ending, well that is obviously most different, but this book, this is our love story. Our love lost, story. Our alternate ending.

And it’s not in mourning, but acknowledgement that some houses, no matter how beautiful, only have blueprints.