Love, Maybe

By

After my last boyfriend broke up with me I started playing a different character every time I saw him: the hurt little girl, the vindictive ex, the one that wants to be friends, the one that doesn’t give a fuck, the one that doesn’t stop asking questions, and of course, le bitch. With each character came a different script and I’m sure that after hearing everything I said to him, and feeling utterly confused, he probably hates me a little now. If there was a chance we could be friends after our breakup… Well, it’s pretty much gone.

Now it’s been over two months since we were lying on his bed and he decided to break things off. I think more clearly now and I noticed that among all those characters I played I forgot the most important: the honest one. I said what I said depending on how I wanted to make him feel. I was so into my act I forgot to take the time to decipher how I really felt. So I wrote this, two months later, over 3,500 miles away from him, as a reminder to always know how I feel, instead of drowning it in alcohol and drama.

This is what I should have said to him, this is what I needed to say but chose not to.

So now you know all I was trying to say when I held your hand and smiled to you the last time we saw each other.

I know it was mostly my fault. And though I blamed you (not too subtly) I was just mad because I knew it had been my fault. Because, you see, I do want that, what we had, but a part of me is not ready, it’s too afraid, and will sabotage every opportunity that comes ahead. Trust me, I’m not making this up, my psychologist said it. I am a messed up coward. This is not the first time I ruin something. It’s the first time I ruin a relationship, but not the first time I ruin something that could have turned into one.

So you may think I’m used to this. It was supposed to just be my return to the single life with a handful of good memories to tell my friends. But it wasn’t like that to me; I couldn’t just take it as a good story and leave, even though I really wanted that. I wanted to be ok with it and just move on like I had so many times before. Yet it was different this time, more painful, because I think, and this is just a theory, but there is a chance I may have fallen in love with you in those short two months. So the truth is it hurt like hell when I noticed you were not in the same page as I was.

And maybe your idea of love is bigger. Or maybe my idea of love is too small. I just think people use that word when the rest simply don’t seem powerful enough. Even if they don’t understand it yet and all they know is that they’ll be baring their souls with those three words. But I think there is a point where you just have to say it because it feels unnatural not to. And maybe you didn’t love me, and I’m not even sure if I did, but there were times when I really felt like saying it, but I was already vulnerable enough and I was too afraid, so instead I said “I love your eyes” or “I love your hair,” because I thought that if you heard it bit by bit you’d eventually figure I loved all of your pieces, and I loved you as a whole, and with that you’d have known that I loved you without me actually saying it. And then maybe, just maybe, you would have felt it too, we would have taken that step, and one day you would have looked into my eyes and said those three words no one has ever said to me before. Those three words that scare the life out of me, yet I so desperately need to hear.

You don’t know it, but you had me, all of me, and I didn’t even know how it happened. You became my first and last though of every day. Suddenly the love songs in my iPod didn’t seem so corny anymore. Was it love? I don’t know. But it was something. And I ruined it. And I’m sorry.