If I Think About Erasing The Past 14 Hours

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I’ve been in a Lana Del Rey induced trance for the past 14 hours. My mind is numbly spinning Dark Paradise on a continuous loop and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

I kept thinking that maybe the next sleep would erase the previous 14 hours, but I was awoken throughout the night with an ache in my heart. An ache that doesn’t seem to be healing anytime soon.

I sat up in bed and replayed your words in my head, “I just want us to be friends, and I hope you understand that.” Words spoken with such finality. But, for whatever reason, ‘friends’ was too hard to comprehend. You knew my deepest darkest secrets, you knew me better than I knew myself and could handle my attitude in a way no one else could.

Every time I thought I could wrap my aching heart around the idea of a solid friendship images of our stolen kisses would run through my mind on a reel. The biting, scratching, moaning, the teasing games we risked playing in public, the nicknames, the handprints, the markings you left on my body for me to remember you by when you weren’t around.

The first “I love you” came from you, in the form of “You’re my best friend.” A few days later it sputtered off your lips in “I’ve been in love with you sense the day I saw you.” All these stolen moments and secret cherished memories were racing through my mind in a speed that I couldn’t stop if I’d wanted to.

When I’d get caught up in a memory for far too long, your words pierced my mind like nails on a chalkboard, “I want us to just be friends, and I hope you understand that.” The truth is, I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to pretend like talking about being married or what we’d tell our kids in a certain moment of time was just supposed to be erased from my memory and replaced with ‘friendship’. How was I supposed to look at a ‘friend’ and talk about the weather when all my mind could think of was the name I’d picked out for our daughter?

“A penny for your thoughts.” They’d say to me when I was deep in my trance. I smirked. Not at the dull joke, but because my thoughts were worth more than a penny, and so was the wallpaper I was picturing us putting up in Penny’s room a decade from now. ‘Oh the irony’ I would think, which would always cause my lips to curl up into a smile.

I told you. I typed. There’s more to me than you’ll ever know.