The last time

24: Him

I told Nat that writing all of this down would be harder than she thought. I've always hated when she would bring her psychology stuff into our relationship. I was proud of how hard she worked to get a job that was genuinely just about helping people, especially when put up against me always saying I just want to be famous. Natalie has selfless dreams. That was one of the reasons I fell in love with her in the first place.
I guess I'll take a break from the heavy stuff. It hasn't really been on my mind lately anyway. At least not as much as some of the good things. Even when a relationship turns bad, it's hard to stop thinking about the times when it was Magic. Laying in my bed awake Thursday night, I couldn't stop thinking about the day we went to the park. We'd picked up bubble tea and gyros and that was the day I learned what falafel was. Dating a vegetarian was never hard for me, it just meant I got to try all of Nat's weird fake meat foods. We drove out to Smith Park, somewhere we'd been before and set everything up on a blanket in a big clear spot. Mostly we just laid out in the sun together, taking in the weather. Mostly, we just smiled. This had been back before we could count on the sun being out everyday and that made the day feel special.
This was one of the few days we took pictures together. I even took a couple videos of Nat, pretending I was just setting my phone down so I could record myself kissing the girl I loved and making her laugh. For a while, those pictures were some of my favorites. If I'm being honest, I still pull them up on my phone if I get really anxious at night. She used to make me so happy. I don't know why I keep thinking about that day. Maybe because it's hard not to think about the good parts when I'm alone at night, but that's not even the full truth, because when I'm alone at night, I think of all of the bad things too. I guess what I really think about is her, and us, and how broken we became. Mostly, late at night, I cry. I cry for what we had, what we did, what we lost. I cry because it seems like the situation gets worse every day. Something new happens every day.