in this life i'd let you drink all my beer

i put our son on timeout that day. and he has been in timeout ever since. one day after another. 

i knew very early on that i could not love someone whom i was also able to hate. why would i throw up my guts behind your back and then swallow all the conflict-induced bile the moment you turned around? i'm certain you felt the same way. no number of conversations concerning cinema could erase the eventual disrespect and disagreements that eventually came around. quote me directly... and ask me to find the next way out. these were problems bigger than all the steps our shaky, two left feet could take.

take the child, you told me through crackled, choppy audio. keep the monkey because he is a symbol of the love you would not be able to give me anymore. he knew our initials inscribed in a heart beneath his tail became meaningless long before you even said a word.......and you do not know the night i saw red, wondering why love had to make me feel like a charity case, begging for the tiniest bits of what "more" could be. hot tears flowing down my cheeks and dripping down my chest. screaming until all my lungs knew was YellYELLyellyellYELL and ringing your phone just to beg for an answer. squeezing your "symbol of love" with my fists until i could feel the plush disintegrate from inside because up until that point love had meant compromise (and not being in disbelief thinking i'm insane).

he sits in the corner now. along with that pillow of your face i lost in the sea of trinkets and furniture inside my room. i used to wake up to reminders of you in bed and now i cannot even function properly if i am reminded with the most fleeting memory of who you once were to me.

i thought i would be able to relearn to love you. i thought lying in your embrace in the grass would be like a careful, memorized dance we would still know the steps to. and i quickly realized it wasn't when i could not bring myself to kiss you, your face inches away from mine. i always used to.

he is still in timeout. and i can't stare at the corner of my room for too long or else monkey will make me remember how you told me i'm helping you break the curse of groundhog day by loving you unconditionally. now we have to relive the motions of every single day pretending we never existed to each other. seeing the same sights and hearing the same sounds. again and again. over and over. except you're snipped out of the picture this time.

i try and try to hate you, i try to remember the disrespect and the disregard. but i know that my heart is full, and it does not deny the fact that i once loved you. and i will always keep that love stored and preserved, even if i will not be able to experience it firsthand anymore. your flowers are still decaying on the table. your letter is still on my shelf. the book you gave me still stands alongside the other books i've never read. i can't bring myself to throw away my bracelet with your name on it. i still have our pictures, but i've hardly looked through them.

i once loved you. and wishful thinking permits me to believe that fate will let me relearn how to love you again, allow me to retrace our steps and figure out where it all went wrong. because even if i once loved you like a devotee, how i feel for you is not transient. i still love you, as a lesson, because i will never be able to love you like i once did.

i wish we stayed friends. i wish we kept it that way.