One Million Tiny Things

Goodbye

Dear Zachary,
There is a kind of beauty in a goodbye, isn't there? Maybe that's where the good part of it stems from. The memories, the recollections, the dreams, the hopes all crushed into one ball of farewell.

All those years, all the best times, the laughs, the parties, the tears, the drinks, the mornings, the nights. It's all being stuffed behind a door that you're desperately trying to close.

And in all those fights, everything we yelled and everything we did, it all seems silly because when it's all gone and you realize you're hanging around in a graveyard of memories that are impossible to relive.

Somehow, everything becomes clearer.

The reel plays on and on. The tape sings on and on. You pause and you replay every step, every fall, every rise and clarity finally sinks in.

What's not meant to be, will never be.

But the beauty of it is that we had our few stolen moments in the sun, before it disappeared over the horizon.

You can't force love; if that was how the world worked, I'd have you forever. But unfortunately, you aren't going to come in through my front door ever again.

Maybe it's all for the best. To let it all go and start afresh. To forget all the things you said to me and erase all the words that slipped out of me. To bury the screaming, the crying, the hurt that we created.

I know that forgetting is the best path.

But, I never expected it to be this hard.

That night, over the kitchen island, I yelled that I wished I'd never met you. I thought then that I had wasted eight years of my life on you. I wanted it back. I wanted back the life I had before you. I wanted to be the old me. The one that had never known you.

However, with you officially out of my life, it's clear that I was wrong. I don't know the person I was eight years ago. She's a complete stranger. The me, that I know and love, is the me I was with you.

That's when it sunk in, I couldn't forget you, because I didn't want to. I know, trust me, I know that the best thing to do is cut you out of my mind. Countless people have told me that forgetting will bring on forgiveness.

But, that's the thing, I've already forgiven you.

Because when it comes down to it, there really isn't anything to forgive. You gave me the best you could and I trusted you beyond anyone I knew. We were, stupidly, ignorantly, idiotically, in love. And, I guess, it wasn't too hard to believe that this is what it all came down to.

After all, what makes an epic romance is that it ends...

Maybe Shakespeare had the right idea with Romeo and Juliet. It was easier for those teens to preserve their love in death than it would have been if they'd lived.

Everyone talks about falling in love but they manage to overlook that falling out of it is part of the near future. Every fall gives way to a rise. And that's what happened.

We fell together and then we fell apart.

Your eyes turned cold, my words turned vile, we hit icebergs and there weren't any lifeboats.

It wasn't a surprise when we became shipwrecked.

Everyone has a love that they've given everything to and which eventually dissolves away. It's the kind of relationship where pointing fingers leads you nowhere. Nobody is to blame and nobody could have solved it. It was the way things had to happen and what's happened can't be erased. You can never pull back words you said, things you did, hearts you crushed. 

We both held so much anger, so much depression, so much toxicity towards that inevitable end. We were hanging on with our fingernails on a relationship that band-aids couldn't heal.

But, its been three months since I've last seen you. All that harboured anger gave way to unbridled regret.

Margie told me you were dating some witty brunette. I didn't reply, what was I to say?

You weren't anything to me. I wasn't supposed to care.

But I did.

I remembered when you asked me out. Your flailing, my giggling. Your nervousness, my anticipation. And the happiness we gave and created. People loved us. A young couple that had never been more in love.

Is that you now? With somebody else?

I remember, Zach, and that's what's keeping me awake at three am. I wake up and I expect you to be there. I dream of squabbling over car keys, spilling coffee, laughing, kissing, sleeping late and running to get to work on time. I dream, not of the future, but of the past.

It's sad when things that have already happened hold more interest than things to come.

It's pathetic.

It's miserable.

It's tragic.

I'm happy we ended it when we did. I don't think we would have lasted any longer. We tried our best and it just wasn't meant to be. But, while I understand that, there will be a part of me that'll hold onto the hope of forever with you.

Romance novels are haunting me right now. People have become my worst nightmare. Songs on the radio drive me nuts.

It all tells me to move on. Find some attractive guy to take me out and spin me around on the dance floor. Whether it's the words spinning on the pages between my tears, the phonecalls I abruptly cut to avoid talking about you or the songs that make me park my car on the side of the road and cry with my head on the steering wheel.

All it causes is a never ending kaleidoscope of memories.

It tells me to move on someday.

And I will, I promise.

At least once I finish passing my fingers over our snapshots and just staring at swings at the park we used to sneak into.

There are a million people to tell you to move on, but nobody's told me to just hang onto the shreds I've still got until I can think about you without feeling water on my cheeks.

I know that someday, when we meet again, I might have forgotten you.

I might be able to say something about Zachary Jorden without wincing.

I might not stalk your newest girlfriend's feed for gossip

I will have moved on.

But, right now, lost and scared, someday seems far away.

I know what a wonderful person you are and I know that nobody ever tells you that its the most perfect people who hurt you sometimes.

But, it happened to us.

Zach, I'm just going to say that, I love you. Old habits die hard and I guess, I always will.

But, I'm willing to let go and try to forget...

Goodbye Zach,
Oli.