Odds at Ends.

Stories.

1.

Stories.

There are always three stories.

There is the one you tell, about how you tried to do what was best for him, even though it almost destroyed you. Then there is the one he tells, where you broke his heart and ruined love for him. The thing is, these two stories tend to be about a good guy and a bad guy. They’re about he said and she said. We become so caught up in these narratives that we forget about the individual scenes within them. Suddenly it seems hard to separate the good times from the bad. It is almost impossible to remember when you walked through Darling Harbor arm in arm, or kissed overlooking the ocean, without remembering the accusations and recriminations that tore you apart when everything came to an end.

 In the meantime, while you’re crying and mending, and trying to make sense of what has happened, everything changes. Perhaps in tiny ways. Perhaps in every way. The restaurant where you had your first date closes down. Your most trusted friends move away. You find a hole in the sleeve of your Black Flag shirt. And then one day, after all of these changes have slowly wiped away a little of the pain without you even realizing it, you start to tell the third story. The one about two people who hurt and broke each other, over a certain period of time, by trying to hold onto something that should have been worth so much more. And in that story, there isn’t a good guy, and there isn’t a bad guy. That story is the one that really breaks your heart.