#thinkwritten

my favorite writing website

(Rather than doing something new for this prompt, I’m using a piece I started writing this summer for a little collection of unsent love letters I plan on putting together one day. I’ve been looking for an excuse to post it and this seems like the perfect opportunity. Now suffer my drama and unedited work.)

I don't even know where to start with you.

Love stories always have an air of fantasy, even the sad ones. I’ve always thought heartbreak was either beautifully tragic or fueled with indignant rage. No inbetweens - the lover is a jerk or the one that got away. But you were my gray area. You were real, and that's what makes it difficult. 

I can't think of you as a friend, I can't think of you as a lover. I don't think of the nights we spent wrapped up in each other or the nights we spent just sitting in comfortable silence. Every time I try to write about the beginning, all I can think of is the middle and the end. The way you looked at me at that party and leaned in just a little too close, the way you rested your head on my shoulder after a long day. All I can remember is that messy in between. How the muted warmth of mutual affection was accompanied by the impossible to escape reality that was missing each other in time in space. Wrong place, wrong time. No cure for that. Might as well grin and bear it.

 And I think we were pretty good at that.

Besides, I was always far more affectionate towards you. I don't know exactly why. Maybe it's because I'm an old romantic at heart, and you’re such a genuinely good person that I held on to the sweet small taste I got of getting to be yours. Or maybe it's because I have a vein for the dramatic and tragic. Most likely, it was a little of both, combined with the fact that even it hurt what we had was a welcome distraction from the static in my mind. 

Of course, you probably know all of this. You’ve always been as honest as you could be with me, and I appreciate that. I do. In fact, I got over the first time you said you couldn't be with me. It hurt like hell, but in a kind way. You weren't being cruel, you were looking after yourself and in some part of it, after me. I was glad to have you as a friend, and I admired you for doing what was best for yourself. (For the record, I still am, and still do.)  You seemed so strong, so mature. I looked up to you. 

But the second time was a betrayal. You were drunk enough to kiss me, drunk enough to convince me that your affection hadn't truly waned, and drunk enough to take me home. You were also drunk enough to forget any of this happened. I guess waking up next to me was a surprise. Not that it stopped you from coming on to me again. Didn’t matter that you couldn’t remember how I got there, or what you said to get me there. Hey, as long as I’m there, right? Might as well make use of me before you break my heart again. And oh lord, did you! You told me that drunk you was doing what sober you really wanted to do, but what he was sensible enough not to. Sober you was smart. Sober you didn’t get involved with me. 

I liked you too much to upset you with my pain. I shrugged it off. No, really, it's fine. It's really fine. I can't remember the last time somebody I cared about so much had hurt me so badly, all while trying to shrug it off as a wacky drunken escapade instead of a case of you lying to get me into bed with you again - whether you meant to lie to me or not, I don’t think I’ll ever know. I don’t want to know. I give you the benefit of the doubt. 

But the unkindest thing was admitting that a part of you really, truly liked me. That was the point of no return. You planted seeds of terrible hope. They still grow, the dark leaves blocking out the sun and the sharp vines creeping up my throat and choking me. It's hard to forgive you for that. You created a hopeless fool.  And then you kicked me out of your house so you could drink with your friends.

But that what you did. You get drunk and you don’t have a care in the world. So I followed in your footsteps, and my families footsteps, and my old lovers' footsteps, and I drank and smoked until my stream of consciousness was no longer clear. They weren't my words, they were my feelings, pouring out as a messy mistake that I really don't regret. 

Because it was with those open gates that you found me in the crowd that night. Entirely drunk and entirely happy, you were having the time of your life. Bragging about how much you had drank. That drove the dagger in deeper. You were ecstatic with your sins and I was rotting because of them. I felt slighted and stupid and unimportant and furious. The seeds of hope were a lie and yet they grew nonetheless. I spoke without thinking:

"You stop drinking, before you break another girl's heart."

You were stunned. God, how are you so smart and yet so stupid? Your response only made it worse: Guilt. How could you only feel guilty now, after everything? How could this be the first you knew? It swept over your face and only then did an ounce of the pain you gave me return to you. You spoke softly, incredulous and defeated:

"Did I really break your heart?"

Did you really? I didn't have an answer. All I could do was avoid your eyes.

"You opened up some old wounds".

You move closer towards me, or maybe you were just pushed in by the crowd. You lean in but don't touch me. I can feel you struggling to find words. You give a sad half-laugh, still shocked that someone would have liked you enough for you to hurt them.

"I'm... really sorry. You don't deserve that. You deserve better than me."

Somewhere between the truth of that statement and my intoxication, I find my tears and like my words I'm unable to control them.  

"Yeah, I do". I say it and it feels like a lie.

This is the first time I've been really, truly honest with you. And my god, it burns. You walk away to continue your party, awkward and confused. I find my tears impossible to stop and leave with the hopes you hadn't seen. You didn't notice last time, how could this be different? I make it home and I don't tell anyone.

Crying over you at this point felt like a reflex. It was hardly something I wanted to do. It seemed to happen without my permission. I come back to my senses slowly. I think of what my mother would say if she knew I was crying like this over a boy, and I remember the 14-year-old girl who looked up to me to be an example of taking care of yourself first, and I remember Daniel, so sweet and so gentle, checking up on me the first time you broke my heart like I didn't know what he was doing and I just can't disappoint a nice Catholic boy from Alabama, I just can't, so I chalk the night up as a loss and go to bed. I wake up foggy and exhausted. But it’s sunny out. So I get out of bed. It's a hollow victory. But a victory nonetheless.

You don't mention it in the morning. No dreaded "Can we talk?" text where I can feel the pity through the screen. I tell myself you were too drunk to remember me, again. But that feels like a lie too.

You trickle back into my life in the days after that. You're warmer and softer and make an effort to see me. And I know you remember. But we don't talk about it. You must have assumed that I forgot, too. Unfortunately, we're not all blessed with your ability to black out the harm we do to others. It was the only time it felt like you were sorry. Sober me convinced herself that you had noticed the pain you caused, not that it had taken my drunk self breaking down in the middle of a parade to make you actually see me. I'd like to think our friendship has actually recovered from that. I think we have something nice, though it's strained by something sad. Those seeds you planted haven't grown in the while. I've learned to prune the choking plants that grew but I can't really get rid of them. They get smaller every day I don't talk to you, and return to size once you come back. I hold you dearly as a friend, and bitterly as a lover. There's the us that was something more than nothing and the us that never dated. It's like living in two dimensions at once: One where it all went wrong and one where we never let it live. And here we are, in the gray area.

So know this, please. You were the best guy I've had and you're also the one who's hurt me the most. And even though I'm enjoying my loneliness, on the cusp of truly becoming who I want to be, I can't get you out of my head as my star-crossed one who got away, though trust me, I know- that's giving you far too much credit.

I really do still value you as a friend. You’re a great person, and I don’t regret anything that happened. Nobody’s perfect, right? And you tried. You really did.  But that's one of the many beautiful things about you- you love to look on the bright side, and to approach every situation with the kind of hope and love that I aspire to. You can't see the pain. To move on, I really need you to know how deep that cut went, and how deep that pain runs. You know all the fun stuff. I needed you to see what I was holding back so we could have the fun stuff. 

You’ve been gone for quite some time now. You talk to me here and there, about the places you want to go and the places you can’t go - New Orleans, Oregon, New York. Maybe you’ll come back, maybe you won’t, nothing is clear. Maybe I’ll stay, maybe I won’t. I guess that’s the fun thing about our friendship - who knows what’s going to happen next! All kidding aside, I get the feeling that you’ll always be in my life in some way or another. If there’s anything I’ve learned from you, it’s flexibility. You can’t be in control of what happens, but you can be in control of how you react. The band plays on.

It’s cold. A bitter, paralyzing, cold. The kind that freezes the whites of your eyes and stiffens your joints, sinking its icy teeth into you and refusing to let go. The kind of cold you never really get warm from. The bright sun adds a surreal layer to the pain, reflecting off the snow and blinding you without offering any warmth in return. It’s miserable. And it’s cold. 

It’s hard to believe that this frozen hellscape is the same one that I looked forward to every year when I was a kid. Could I not feel the wind biting into me? Did I not care? I have to have cared. I guess I just don’t remember.

But I can’t believe it’s all bad. I can’t, not while I’m watching my dog sit peacefully nestled in the snow like she was built for it, gazing up at the lazy snowfall above her. 

9. Animals: Choose an animal. Write about it!  -Source

I’m writing about the dog that was part of my household since I got here, Finn, who left this morning to his actual owner’s family in California, after being with us for a year. 

6. Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

Note: This will be edited sometime after I wrote it, seeing as this isn’t my best work. It’s not going on Ao3 until I’m happy with the quality, but I’m extremely tired today, and while I like the premise, I’m too tired to make it sound horribly good. I’ll reblog it from myself with it’s edited.

Theon never stared at the white and black speckled tiles as he walked the halls of Winterfell High School. He was too busy looking elsewhere; the bouncing breasts of busty ninth grade girls, talking and laughing with their friends from middle school as they walked. He began to pick them out in his mind; which ones were going to be an easy score, and which ones were going to need some coaxing. His girlfriend, Ros (or, as it would be, just a clingy beneficial friend), clung to his arm.

ik ben op het station en ik denk aan de nacht

maar van jou hou ik overdag

de zon mist je als je wegkruipt

‘s nachts ben ik thuis

we staan we voor de spiegel en ik laat je alle sterren in jouw ogen zien

When I felt it would swell up in me I took the seed out  and planted it under a soft mound of Earth near the ravine where our minds and bodies used to meet Because I knew it would grow and I didn’t want the love for you flourishing in me So I gave our love to mother nature hoping she would nurture it, send it back to you and in due season you would grow to love me But you never did And now my love grows by the riverside as a dogwood tree