i only really wanted to be wanted by you

There is a nagging, lingering memory in the back of my head that I can’t shake. It stops me ice-cold in my tracks every time I recall it. The details of the affair curl out of my mouth with half-assed explanation. None of it made any sense.

(I never know where to start with these stories. I never know how far back I have to go in order to tell the whole thing. I never know what is worth telling and what is worth saving for myself. this might be too hard to read)

This time last August, I ran away. I had been restlessly pacing the floors of my childhood home all night. It’s funny how crazy I was then. I was so anxious. I couldn’t stop biting my nails. I would dully drum my knuckles against the steering wheel all day.

I wrote short sonnets of love,

I scribbled songs for the birds.

I fantasized about what the next school year had in store and the new people I would meet. My overall, mellow patience was at its breaking point. I wanted so badly to be in Minneapolis.

See, at the time, I was afraid of losing everyone. I was convinced that the people I had met during my first semester back to college would somehow disappear out of my life, or worse, that they would have forgotten about me. That the summer would have hypnotized them in a state so ecstatic and sudden that my face was now just a blur.

(To be blunt, I was a touch-and-go friend. I was really only dedicated to one person anyway.)

This was one of the main reasons why I chose the roommates I would eventually live with. I didn’t want to lose anyone. You must realize how afraid I was then. Ironically, (or maybe it was not so ironic, I can never tell if something happens because it should happen or because it was the opposite of what should happen.) my biggest fear happened anyway. I rarely speak to those people anymore.

But fuck it. Those WERE the people in my life, and they meant the world to me, even if they don’t show it appropriately, even if they were never really my friends in the first place. They were something. They were all I had. For crying out loud, they were all I had.

Unfortunately, last august didn’t have the foresight to know what the fall had coming, couldn’t comprehend that the winter would be one long season of sleep, and that the

blossoming spring would

define its namesake,

it was just a false alarm.

But back to the last august. I was texting a ‘friend’ who had just broken up with their long time girlfriend. I had met these two in the spring. I had heard some really bizarre stories about the production of their relationship but I never really could follow the gossip trail. This was before my time. Either that or I was too uninterested to care. I know that there had been infidelity and lying from the start.

And if I can say one thing about a healthy relationship it’s this: if a relationship starts in dishonesty, it will end in dishonesty.

My friend didn’t seem to be to upset about the break up. She was looking for a rebound.

So was I.

[Technically speaking, I was single. It wasn’t really an affair in light of the fucked up shit I did AFTER what happens here. This wasn’t as nearly as bad as how pathetically I tried to cover up the fact afterward that we even fucked. I was embarrassed that I had succumbed to such a cliché. I lied. My lies became my truth. (This is a different story/poem and it is too messy/raw to publish)]

It was unceremonious and incredibly un-sexy. Her five cats would watch us from the staircase as we undressed awkwardly on the futon in her then, semi-abandoned St. Paul house.

I stayed until the morning.

I came back a week later.

I had been oddly proud of the fact that I broke her single-digit fuck acquaintances. I had laughed when she said that I was the least dramatic person she’s slept with.

I reminded her that I was a number,

‘we are nothing more’

I also swore her to secrecy.

Already knowing that my validity would be tarnished if word got out that we had a short tryst. It would have added more garbage to the already-circulating shit-storm that was our ‘group of friends’. But I should have known, as well as anyone, that secrets that large rarely can be kept quiet.

And then it ended as quickly as it had started. There were no hard feelings because there were no feelings to begin with. We aren’t/weren’t really friends. We had nothing in common except that we were both gay and senseless.

Throughout the year, the people I surrounded myself started branching off. Some of them on a good accord, realizing our schedules didn’t work together, that we were too busy and too hung-over to get coffee, that we belonged to different social circles, etc.

However, some of them were ugly breaks. I made bold statements about people who wronged me. I said nasty things and I enabled destructive behavior. I lived with people I hated. I turned 21 and was inebriated as often I could be. I have made enemies.

I know I won’t make the same mistake twice. I know that I’m not going to fuck it up again. I will fight like hell to keep people that I like. I know that for sure.

So when I say I ‘ran away’ what I mean to say is that I was doing what I had to do. I was supposed to go through this experience (including the tailspin afterward) in order to be where I am now. It was part of my journey. This affair is part of my story whether I care to admit it or not. That’s life and you shouldn’t blame yourself for the things you did when you felt that way.