Thursday, February 6, 2014

A Letter: Dear Tarzan

Well, shit... This is gonna be a little awkward.

But let me start off by saying that I still love you. It's different, though. No longer am I at that "in love with you" love you part of love with you. And I really shouldn't be, we've been broken up...about five months now. It's more of a "Namaste" type of love; a love that says, I recognize the good in you and the good in you recognizes the good in me. But sometimes I do still catch myself, listening to music we used to love, driving by places we used to visit, reading old blog posts and diary entries and thinking "what if?" What if you were different? What if I were different? What if time worked in reverse and what we knew now we knew then? What ifs do me no good, and I don't indulge them often, but when I do, my brain always circles back to you. Why?

Because you were the first. You were the guy to get through the ice of me and melt my heart. You showed me so many things about myself I couldn't have fathomed were real, and were plausible. For instance, I worked like a dog trying to get to you. Literally, fainted on the job one day, because I was there all the time, working 12 and 14 hour shifts, 6 days a week, saving money to be where you were. I never knew I could be that determined, especially that day, because usually, if I get a little nauseated, I say "Fuck this job," but that day? I got up, took a 15 minute break and got right back to it. That's crazy, isn't it?

Loving you, or trying to get you to love me, drove me a little crazy. Looking back, I can totally tell that now. I was very, very insecure and you were very, very patient. I never told you how much I appreciated that, but I did. I could hear that desperate "love me, love me" vibe sink into my words and tone, and you'd just shrug or sigh, reaffirm me, and keep it moving. Thanks for that. Not a lot of guys have patience to deal with a another person's insecurities on top of their own, but you did.

Now, we're not finished, you and I. We're partaking on the truly scary, winding path of friendship after a relationship. If we're being honest, in the beginning, I was doing it to prove to myself I could, that I was a good enough person to, in the face of a personal disaster, look the other way and smile. I was still broken up about everything and I wanted so much to believe that I could be strong enough to face you, strong enough to face the rubble of the dreams we built together and say "I'm fine." And...well, I wasn't fine. But I am now.

Seeing you grow, and do better and build your ideals about life make me so proud of you. Just think, before we met, were just these two aimless kids, not knowing how to relate to people and now...well, we're still these two aimless kids, not knowing how to relate to people. But, we have lived a little. We've traveled. We've fought. We've loved. We've had so much stuff I was waiting for happen, happen that it seems like, even now, this was the trajectory of our relationship. This is where we were meant to be.

We were always meant to be friends. I think we may have skipped that part, due to loneliness and lust and wanting to feel close to another person. But this, this new thing, this scary thing of friendship seems more right to me. There's no pressure to be perfect. There's no expectations of sexiness. I can be my full, true self with you now, and when we were together, that seemed impossible. That's been the only thing to really change, I think. Well, that and the whole "no sex between friends" thing. We still speak musically. We still bug each other occasionally. It's kind of really great, right?

So here's to us. Not the "us" that we were, but the "us" that we are now. Here's to a friendship, hopefully one for a lifetime. And here's to letting go, and starting fresh.