Excerpt from "Unrequited Love"

I wrote this listening to 'I'm still into you'. I love love the songggg. 

I always knew I was over the heartache. I knew a second look at Joe would disgust me more than melting me to a stupid squishy ball. It had been 4 months after all. I took my letter writing shit seriously in as much as we lived together. I found it necessary to drop a letter once in a while but the best part of it all, he replied to every single part. Most times he'd slide them under my pillow or stick them around the house wall on sticky notes. Cute right?

Joe was not my first love, he was not my second, not my third but I definitely thought he'd be my last. He was everything I'd write down on a list of the things I want in a person. But people come in black and white and red and yellow and all colours, but for him, he was stuck on a weird gray color. He was kind, cool, cute but too loud when he should have been silent but most of all he was my retribution.

See here is the thing about unrequited love. I awfully gave and gave and I was not anything anymore. I let him see the nakedness of my soul, the darkest of my desires and the deepest of my fears and now he had everything to hold me against his love. On his side, atleast I knew his three names, I knew his favourite colour, his best time of the day and a whole list of the bare minimum. I barely knew what made him weak, what hurt him, his focal point as a child and sometimes I'd stare at his face from across our sitting room that was filled with his art and just see a stranger with a familiar face.

Everytime I was alone I got caught in my thoughts,

"How did we get here?"

"Where am I on the walls of this house?"

"Where do I stand in his heart?"

But some love stories were like mine. I read them in books and watched them in movies and the tragic ending never resonated with me. 

"She ends up alone?!"

I would never be that girl. But the ending was just as fast approaching as our last goodbye.

Joe killed my heart 

He killed the parts of my head that ever believed.

He fixed my art on the darkest corridors of our house.

He read my poetry half way and gave me a half assed smirk.

On the other hand I called him best friend. I learned him and unlearned myself. I chose him over and over. I worshipped his mouth, his fingers, his hands, his mind, everything in him that brought things to life but I never considered that those parts killed everything as well. 

Little hearts formed over my head when I heard him laugh or when I heard someone say his name. I loved him and I loved him until I wouldn't forge another letter and hoped he'd read it to the last word. I loved him until I would no longer love myself as much and so I left, with the heaviest of hearts. 

4 months later my mail man shows up at my door on a Friday morning with his usual bunch of mails and I notice a cutely bow-tied letter with a beautiful shade of pink. 

"Who's getting married on the coldest month of my whole existence." My mind goes.

I sit at my table and the best and worst laughs I've made escape my mouth so effortlessly. 4 months later Joe is getting married and he invites me to his wedding?! I had a reservation and one day to think about it.

I wouldn't miss a chance to see the girl he fell in love with in 4 months while he couldn't love me right if he was given 400 years. I walked to my seat that was set beside the aisle and I saw him at the front and my heart made one of the leaps that makes you want to puke. I mean I was expecting either disgust or butterflies but this feeling...

I knew coming here would have me choke on my tears for the rest of my life on my bathroom floor at 3 a.m. After all this time, after all these feelings, after all the hurt, I was still into him. All the sounds went silent, my mind went blank as I watched him smile hard, (I had never made him smile like that). Wedding bells went and I looked back to see the most beautiful bride I had ever seen walk carefully with a flower crown on her head instead of a veil. Her belly was huge and it lifted her gown gracefully. She was definitely heavily pregnant. 4 months?... Joe's favourite song was playing in acoustic and when the bride walked past me a familiar conversation replayed in my head...

"Kids are not my thing..."

"Even later?"

"Never in this lifetime !" 

So much of the wedding, the venue, the flowers, the ambience, spoke Joe and so many things didn't and I felt the balance...

I guess some type of hurt you go with it to the grave.