Love or Let Die

I didn’t want to write today.

I didn’t want to sit down at my computer and will my fingers to type because I knew that all they wanted to do was dance across the keyboard and tell the story of a character that I’m not sure I want to bring to life again.

Despite my efforts, my heart wants to purge everything I feel for the boy who thought it was easier to leave than to love me.

I want to silence the part of me that always thinks of that Tuesday night nearly eighteen months ago when we were laying side by side drunk on laughter over nothing we could even put a finger on. Because that’s the moment I thought of when I realized that it wasn’t the love I had for him that made it hurt so damn bad when he left. It was the love I had for the woman I was when I was loving him, and how when he decided it was time to go a part of her crawled out the door in his shadow.

I want to cast away the regret that plagues me every time I remember the night he found me in my tattered old pajamas, hair mused with sleep, and groggy from T3’s. How he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead before whispering to me that I was beautiful. I knew I loved him right there and then and I wish I had said it. Because maybe if I did, he would have left a little sooner and would have saved me the heartache of a drawn out goodbye.

Maybe if I had said it, we wouldn’t have had the chance to let the flames build so high and would have fizzled out without consequence instead.

I want to be indifferent. I want to be angry about the trust he shattered and the hole he left that I had to fill with whiskey and men that never made me smile the way he did. But that which flowed did its job and acted as the anesthesia I needed it to be.

Because now when his name lights up my phone I think first of how fucking happy I was all of those mornings sitting across from him at breakfast. How comfortable I became falling asleep to his heartbeat and waking up to his elbow in my face. How soothed I became by his voice on the end of the line as even my hardest days drew to a close.

I want to no longer feel defeated because I want is to be loyal to the girl that grew from the ashes of our fallout but I don’t know how. Because despite everything we learned, we still think of him as the bridge in our favourite country love songs.

I want to end the war between the half of me that wants to start over and the other that doesn’t want to lose the title of the one that got away. Because maybe losing me will be the lesson he needed to ensure he never lets another girl cry herself to sleep over his broken promises.

Of everything I want, the last thing on my list was to write today.