Echo

I took the long way home tonight, past Spring and Bowery after a late shift and turned to a route not so embedded in my brain.  Most nights, the city isn’t so dreary. It sparks and it draws you in from a distance, like in those movies. I walked for miles, letting my feet take me to places I’m not entirely sure would fall under places-to-wander-at-this-time. But I didn’t care. I was too caught up in my own solitude, my own remembering, and my own thoughts to make sense of where I was. Time is an odd, senseless thing.  It drags, recollects, and thinks it could make up for the absence and lack. Mocking in a way that it carries on despite your constant begging for a rewind. I wanted to get away from this place, to find new things in areas that used to be my solace. I wanted an escape from the neon lights that had his name written all over it, and so I walked and walked until my feet ached.

“You look beautiful tonight.”

His words hang heavy in the air. From the corner of my eye, there’s a drunk man holding a bag of booze on one hand, and failing to keep his life stable in the other. He stutters in broken words and tells me how much he’d go through his youth all over again just to have a girl like me around.

“Do you want to know what love feels like baby?”

I choke. Drunk men have a way of saying the most ridiculous things, but never one without a hint of truth. Funny thing is, they’re harmless when they’re staggering to keep their balance. Like this one. If he does anything, I can just kick him in the nuts and call it even, but I move on and walk a little faster away. Even though I’ve rid of him, his words still echo in my head. Words I’ve grown too familiar with but never wanting to recall.

I remember when I found myself slowly making my way out the house and tiptoeing towards him. Maneuvering through withered grass and what remains of spring, he took me by the hand and held me in an embrace. I remember him saying “you’re beautiful” in muffled breaths, and me saying “Shh, I don’t want to wake them.”

“Do you know what love is?” he says in a whisper. “It is being held in somebody’s arms for 40 minutes straight and they don’t pull away. They don’t look at your face. They don’t try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness to it.” A line he got from Grey’s Anatomy, I was sure. But we were young and it made perfect sense.  My heart raced.

I remember the summer before my eighteenth birthday, I argued with him about the way he likes to grow out his facial hair, and wear unironed clothes. How he chooses to pick movie night at home ordering take out than trying something new. I remember the late night phone calls. And then there was silence. It’s like you don’t even try anymore. I remember the tears. I remember an apology.

“It makes me cringe,” he begins to say. “It’s frustrating and pointless. All the insecurities, all the stupid motion to drive me into ridiculous rage, sometimes I just want to rip my ear out from the constant nagging. It’s running barefoot in the middle of the night half-dressed because you have a tendency to suspect. It is madness, this love. But still… It’s worth all of it” He paused for a brief second and let out a short guilty laugh... “You’re still worth it.” He looks up and stares straight into my eyes, like daggers piercing through my soul. “And I let you be.”

I remember going home drunk on the way it feels to miss him.

I sought to have him understand that beyond all of the holes punctured, he was someone I cared for against all odds and misconceptions of teenage love. I wanted him to figure me out, to be held under a microscope and squint at my squeaky joints and broken pieces. And then I wanted him to believe in me, to believe that I would be able to fix myself while he stood by my side with encouragement and support. But he took me away, instead.  He took me far apart from the pieces I was ready to glue back together, and I became too dependent. Too attached to us as a whole together that I began to lose grasp of who I was. And only in the quiet and hushed corners of the living room, while everyone else was in the dining room still chatting away in the leftover holiday air, I would tell my lover we were over.

The fight was what broke me. One doesn’t leave a battlefield unscathed, though some scars are worth the reminder. One doesn’t build a home out of people with shaky foundations, and beg for it not to shatter. Last night, I stood on his welcome mat and knocked with tired wrists. His father answered the door and quickly said, “Oh hey baby, what are you doing here—”

I’m.. I was wondering if I could talk to you.

Last night, after nearly two years of silence and polite greetings, I reached out to his kin. I wasn’t looking for anything out of it, I actually don’t know what I was looking for at all. I think I was looking for a little bit of him in the areas that have been gray. I stepped into the doorway, without him, hoping to have his father tell me something, anything, to ease my heart.

"Baby, I don’t really know what to say about him anymore, I just know how I raised him." I nodded in advance. "But.. I know that whatever it is.. don’t let it happen."

Let what happen?

"Pain."

And it was like he already knew that I wanted to explain the amount of hurt we’ve both bestowed on each other. "I don’t know how you and him worked and I’m not telling you that it’s easy, you know, coping, his mother and I used to fight all the time." And I let out a smile and the most sincere smirk because your father almost winked at the end of the sentence and his gestures allowed me to understand when the words don’t seem to fit. "I’m growing old," he half chuckled, “you’ll come to a point someday when you won’t think half as much as you worry yourself away. And when you get to my age, you’ll understand.”

I wanted to tell him that I think I could understand if I tried hard enough. I’m an old soul, I wanted to joke but we had been joking periodically throughout the night and the old grandfather clock sung 11pm.

Do you miss him? I half-whisper before walking out the door, not realizing tears have begun to collect and slide its way down the bottom of my chin.

“Honey… It wasn’t your fault.”

This is the part where you tell yourself that it isn’t weakness to give in, but it is so unconditionally intrinsic. When loving someone becomes so visceral that it’s haunting, like the ghosts of themselves haunt you just to keep you awake and safe from falling. And love requires you to jump and not fall, to float and not drop, to hold your breath and believe as hard as you can that it will simply guide you. But just as all things are imperfect and skewed, love will make mistakes, too. This is the part where you remember that the person you love has become a part of you, it isn’t so fundamental but when they’re hurt, it feels like an integral part of yourself is hurt, too. And what follows in pursuit is forgiveness.

Last night, I tried to find a little bit of him— pieces I never understood, parts that I always ran away from. Parts I wanted back.

But instead, I found only the comfort in the silence of 1am walking in the middle of the street where he used to be.