We spoke last night about how we met.
I was living on my brother’s couch, starving and probably dying of mold infections and having to see my mother on a daily basis. There wasn’t much going for me at all. I’d lost my car in a wreck, I lost my job because of that wreck, I lost my income, I lost my tax returns, I lost my home. I was deteriorating.
You brought me into a chat room to troll me. I’d been floating around in meaningless relationships, fixing people, making people feel special when I didn’t give a damn about them, hoping I’d feel something important. They never did. You sparked my interest within the first hour when you told me your favorite animal was jellyfish. You were so strange but you were familiar. You were substantial and distracting me from the fact that, in every aspect, I was dying.
For the first time in a long while I had something to look forward to. I even arranged my sleep schedule as best I could with insomnia so that when I woke up would be around the time you’d log in. We were both holding so much static in between us because we both knew if there were no space, we’d fall into each other and we’d never get out. That scared me.
You were married. You went on a trip to the mountains with him and your parents, for a week. I couldn’t focus on anything but you. I missed you so much it hurt, but I was grateful that I was at least able to feel something at all. I’d gone so long without it that I thought perhaps I was broken. Your friend and I spoke, she was in school sending me pictures of seafoam green shorts she wore to “remind her of you”. I hated her for it. I hated that someone so frivolous was so close to you, wasting your time and treating you like a novelty item and I was jealous. Oh boy was I ever fucking jealous. I talked to her about you.
She said, “If you’re dreaming about him, it must mean you love him.”
I denied it up and down. What in the hell was I supposed to do with that? I was with another girl at the time, a girl with blue hair, someone I was supposed to be loving but I’d forgotten about her entirely in the light of meeting you. I felt horrible. You were so precious, but married, and I was with someone else.
But I knew something was wrong. You told me your husband didn’t mind your open relationships.
Your friend said, “You don’t care that he’s married?”
I said No. The truth is, I did care.
I wanted you all to myself. Someone beat me to the vows and was treating you so inhumanely on top of that. I cared heavily.
You’ve been mine for almost four years, living in a different country. I could never want anything or anyone else, not as strongly as I do you. I don’t regret a single decision I made. I don’t regret taking that space between us away. Falling into you was decidedly the best thing I’d ever done for myself, even if I told you it was against my better judgement. Those feelings I had for you, that I was worried would fade into nothing like it always has done for me in the past, moved in and made a forever home right next to my heart and has never left.
One day you’ll have my ring on your pretty thin finger, my last name signed into your checkbooks, and a cat we’ll call our baby until we get a human one. You’ve always been mine. I knew it when I saw you at the airport in September, I knew it when I found your shed hair stuck in my shirt, I knew it when I woke up with you the next morning.
You will always be my purpose, my love, and my reason. You’ll always be perfect and handsome, smart and well-spoken, extraordinarily talented and strong-willed, whimsical and darling just as you always have been. We’ll make better memories to replace the ones that hurt you, we’ll make our own holidays, our own home with our own rules. You art will cover the walls, your paint will stain the floors, and I couldn’t imagine anything more suitable.
You’ll always be my little alien.
