I battle my mind while my finger hovers over the enter key. Worst-case scenario? The first pic will be of him with his arm wrapped around a new boyfriend. It makes my stomach churn. But I miss him. A lot.
My mind interjects, “There’s no way this ends well. Even if there’s no boyfriend, you’re still looking at someone you loved who doesn’t want you in his life. It equals sadness. Your hope that his looks have faded? It won’t matter. You’ll see him with friends. It’s a word he won’t apply to you. That equals tears. What is there to gain?”
I guess to tempt fate. I want it to make the decision and push me in one direction or another since I lack the strength to let go.
I’m so weak.
I hit enter.
While the page loads my heart spasms and my breath starts.
No boyfriend.
The first pics are just nights out. And yeah, with friends, and it does make me sad. But in a way I hadn’t expected.
Looking at the images, his friendship feels distant and foreign. I can’t quite grasp why he made me so sad.
“It was bad though,” my mind reminds me.
I know. Bursting off the 6 train in rush hour traffic after missing my stop to let out the tears leapfrogging their way up my throat is hard to forget. But I didn’t care, blubbering against that wall. It felt good to let them out.
The next pic is a gut punch. It’s just him standing in front of graffiti, looking artificially spontaneous. Having been that photographer more times than I can count, I can tell he’s working out a quippy caption and my mind races with options. With a grin, I improv one, knowing how much they make him laugh, then realize there’s no ear to hear the words because the moment isn’t for me. It’s for someone else.
The silence throws me and I tear through my memory house, searching for memories I fear will soon be jettisoned from the boxes where I’d locked them away.
But where are they? The storage closets of nights out and the posters of drunken mornings? The smells of him falling asleep and the screams from our blowouts? The rooms are all empty…except one.
In this last space just a few pages of our history remain.
Kneeling down, I carefully inspect them. One is a text after I’d walked away the first time and he said he’d always be there whenever I decided to come back. The other is a blank sheet with the faintest words I can’t read.
I start to fold it and put in my pocket, determined not to lose everything, when my mind asks, “Why?”
“Because everything else here was taken without my permission!” I yell. “I want to hold onto him until ‘I’ decide it’s time!”
He replies in the gentlest tone, “Open it again.”
Taking it from my pocket, I unfold it. It’s clearer now. They aren’t words. They’re shapes. They’re tears. They are my pain.
My body sinks. I look around the empty room and imagine his room for me and hope desperately it’s full of boxes that make him laugh and smile and he keeps them alive.
I stare at the page, unable to unlock my fingers.
“There are other pages for you…but they cannot find you in this place.”
The lump in my throat grows as I look around and see the remaining pages are gone.
Though my body fights me and trembles to hold this final memory, I find the strength to gently let it slide from my hand to the floor.
It feels as if a part of me is missing. A part I can’t point to or describe but which is so much of who I am. It’s there on the floor behind me as I reach the door.
One step from leaving, my hand clutches the doorframe. There’s something unfinished. I close my eyes and send the words through the page to whatever room he keeps me in, hoping they make their way through his screen and to his ears.
“I love you.”
Taking a step out, I hear the page ruffle behind me and resettle. I turn to it and as the final page disappears I watch the faintest words fade up across its face.
“I love you, too”