When We Were

by Diana Elliot Graham

To anyone who thinks they need closure, it’s not found anywhere outside of yourself. To anyone who thinks they need control, I promise you already have it.

Unable to escape into sleep the way normal people do, books have been a comfort, the security blanket, therapy I refused to go to.

“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.”

I like him

I see the scrabble tiles laid out adjacent to where my bag had been strategically placed. S-T-A-Y – A-B I – W-I-L-L – B-R-B

There’s no closure for us, for this. There wasn’t then, and there isn’t now. We can only choose to accept it. Everything that happened between us, after us. All the time that’s passed, I didn’t know what I was missing. It was you. It was all of this.

“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.”

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.”

We won’t be who we were. But we will both be who we should.

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.

“So it doesn’t matter how we choose to remember what happened between us. I know two things...” He looks deep in my eyes, preparing himself for something that seems difficult to admit. “One.” He holds up a finger, and lets the soft smile pull on his lips. “I loved you.” “Two.” He extends a second finger, and the smile falls flat. “Not enough.”

“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.