Maybe if I write about it, I will be less afraid of it. I spend a lot of my empty thought time trying to figure out what went wrong for us. I have these perplexing, Homer Simpson style, "doh!" moments, literally smacking my forehead in disbelief. We've been friends for so long, family friends, friends of friends, "beneficial" friends-as the story goes. When I am with you I feel at ease, when I think about you I get a stomach ache. Yet I have broken your heart and truthfully you have been one of the many to put a dent in mine. Though years have passed. Sometimes I sit at my desk, look at my computer screen and wonder why the hell I don't jump the next train to DC. Sometimes the only thing stopping me is Charley (my puppy). Then I get lost in my life and forget about it all, lost in my circle of friends who mean nothing to me, lost in my doubts that our life together would be 100% perfect. Not that anything is ever 100% perfect.
I want to let you know that when we tried last time to put our selves together I freaked out. I just did. It felt manipulated, it felt fake. It was not that I did not feel for you, I just felt like we were trying too hard. I am afraid to be loved like that. I am afraid to let someone be nice to me. I am also afraid to try and start our relationship from scratch, because it's not scratch, it is 20 years long. Childhood into adult childhood.
My first image of you is your boxer short clad figure, dancing across your sisters room singing the Lion Kings version of "In the Jungle." You mooned me when I was in the sixth grade, cornered me in your parents bedroom while your sister begged you to stop. I blushed and I still do as I retell. I remember high school, your long hair, how beautiful you thought your high school female best friend was, how much you liked her, but you never got her, how jealous it made me, even then. Our trips out west with our parents and siblings, to Israel. The trip our families took to Africa, the last trip where our friendship maintained innocence and allure, the last time I could look at you, love you from afar, keep it close to me and to nobody else, flirt with you, watch you, wonder about you.
The next summer you took me, we took each other, right in our parents houses, a house to house escapade that lasted quite a while. One of the hottest, most exciting, most dangerous things I had done, I was 19 and you were 22, over ten years into our journey. And it sealed it for me. I wanted you. But you lived in California, you were young and you had your dreams at arms reach, you were busy and you were far away. I did not think you saw me like that, maybe you did and maybe you did not, but it seemed unrealistic, so we went about our lives. You visited often and a lot of the time you stayed with me. Our friends, our siblings, they knew, it made them uncomfortable, it made one of them envious and I got drunk enough to sleep with him too, hoping to make you jealous. It didn't work. We persisted, started and stopped and started again. You would catch me when I fell, every time, without fail. You gave me the strength to leave my first serious relationship, then you moved to NY and fell into one of your own. I dated your friend instead. And tug of war continued. You filled up my mind, I think I filled up yours.
Then I found Adam and Kyle and eventually Dean. And I loved these men and forgot about you. Or buried you. After Kyle you came around, you thought it made sense, so we should try it and it felt unnatural to me and I walked away without an explanation. Even explaining it to you felt too vulnerable. It has never been the same. Not since then. So many moments through the tumult that was Dean I looked at you and wondered why I did not fall your way. I still wonder.
I think I am scared that we have a future. That it could be real, that it could be ridden with happiness and sadness alike, that we are able to spend real time together, that life might get hard and ruin us. Our life's passions have ignited and burned out, they have singed us each and we don't know where we are headed, professionally, but we'd have each other. It scares me to be with someone who does not seem happy in their pursuits, it scares me because it reflects me. I am afraid to sleep with you again, I am afraid it will be bad and more afraid it will be great. I am uncomfortable with the comfort. Pain is simpler then ease for me. It has been for a long time.
And this consumes me. Every day, the wonder. But I have no one to talk to about it, its been talked about. Our families, our friends have all been witness and if we were to do it all again, it would have to be just us in it this time. Alone together. And that scares me too. It will have to come from me this time, I know that for sure, you have given up, but I can see it when you look at me and feel it when you touch me. And I fear I am racing against time.
And I hate losing.
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