I Will Always Long For You, But We’re Not Good For Each Other
By Hannah Cruz
When I finally saw you, I thought it would be different. I had come up with so many scenarios in my head. I yelled. I chewed your head off. In others I smiled, in attempt to show you how well I was doing. Because I was doing well. I was fitter, healthier, saner… happier. Hundreds of conversations couldn’t have prepared me for what actually did happen.
When I finally saw you, I panicked. I thought it would be months from now, I wasn’t prepared for this. The thick black rings under my eyes, sloppily covered with classes, betrayed the all-nighter I pulled. My hair was pulled into a greasy ponytail and I wore an oversized, paint-stained hoodie in the middle of the summer. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
When I finally saw you, I froze. So this is what a deer feels like? Roaming around innocently, when it casually decides to look up from its endeavors, only to find a blinding light and a monstrous vehicle that could be fatal. What do I do? Do I keep on my path, walk by, and smile but not say anything? Do I pretend like the two years we spent together, learning every nick and cranny of each other’s lives, personalities, bodies, thoughts, emotions, didn’t happen?
When I finally saw you, I didn’t know whether I should say something. Attempt to make civil small talk like normal exes would? How have you been? Great! How have you been? SO good!…. Do I pretend to not know some of the most intimate details in your life? Do I pretend not to know that you like when my fingernails gently run back and forth across your lower back? Do I pretend not to know that you’re one of the only other people on this planet that love grape fruit as much as I do? Do I pretend to not know about your dreams of proving yourself to the world?
When I finally saw you, I was crushed. Everything I had built up, all the progress I had made – disappeared instantly. Before this day, I was so much better. So much happier. I didn’t have the stress of our constant, exhausting, never-ending circle of fights. I finally dated other people, with qualities that I had always secretly wanted you to have. I was truly GOOD, for the first time in months. I was even better than I had been in the last few months of our relationship.
When I finally saw you, I ran away. I turned around and hoped that you didn’t see me. It would have just been too hard. My heart had already been shattered, torn, beaten down, and then kicked a little while it was already down. Though I’ve healed from my wounds, the gushing blood flow has slowed to a minor inconvenience – turned into a scab that will occasionally scratch open let out a few droplets of crimson shame- but just because it’s healed doesn’t mean it can survive that again. So I turned, and briskly walked in the opposite direction; hoping that the trembling in my fingertips would stop soon.
It didn’t.
But when I finally saw you, it dawned on me that I’ll never find what we had again. Sometimes, when I’m walking and in my zone, thinking deep thoughts and such, I think, my life has so little fulfillment. What is this all for? Why do I do this dreary cycle of work, school, gym, sleep, work, school, gym, sleep. Why? But I keep on truckin’, because, why not?
When I finally saw you, I realized that I will never have that again. That fulfillment and warmth in my chest. I will never be as close to another human being as I was to you. I will never again truly devote myself wholly and completely to another soul. And maybe that’s a good thing. I’ve gained back my independence. I’ve learned how to “be” on my own, and I’m once again my own person, instead of half a person. And I know, for a fact, that I will always ache for you. Just thinking about it makes my heart constrict and I feel and empty pit in my stomach-a feeling that won’t go away and keeps me from eating for days on end. But I know that no matter how much I ache, I do not want it back. I would never want you back the way we were before. And maybe that’s a good thing, we were like fire and gasoline, I’m no good for you and you’re no good for me.