relationships becoming other things

upon hearing about the breakup, one of my best friends said "at least you'll have something to blog about now." he's so real for that

I miss the way he’d text me “here” and I’d open the front door to find him bounding down the steps with the unlitigated joy of a toddler, or a large yellow dog. I miss the way he’d slink back up those steps into the jasmine-scented night after I’d kick him out at ten pm. I sleep better alone, I told him. Loneliness isn’t so bad when you’re well-rested, after all. I would make a different trade now, if I could.

I would have lingered in that last hug. I would not have let my mind bubblewrap itself from that last kiss. It is so rare to be able to savor something for the last time while knowing it is the last time. Instead my mind ran wild with worries about what would come. But it was gonna come regardless.

What comes now are only memories. The past is just a list of all the things I’ve lost.

I miss the way he’d knock on my asscheeks like they were drumheads and chant “bongo bongo bongo,” grinning like a little kid. I miss how he would pack up a whole grocery store into his SUV and come over to make macaroni for an entire staff. I miss all the of the small things that make up a relationship. They were all more than remarkable, but none were quite right. I can’t say why.

I don’t have any answers. Certain experiences offer only themselves. They are stingy with their teachings.

I try to learn what I can and move on. But what can I learn from the dazzling, once-in-a-lifetime specifics of any relationship? I can’t see anything real about their general nature. I don’t think I ever could. All I can see is what’s here, right now. And like this moment, all I know is always changing. 

Two breakups ago, I bought a couple of Crate and Barrel wineglasses. Their bowls are the size of my stomach. I treasure them. Their glass stems contains the inevitability of glass shards. Newborn bodies contain their eventual illness, injury, and death. Each exuberant star in the sky contains its eventual blinking out. I just learned that all stars fade into neutrons, black holes or black dwarfs. Each relationship contains its end. But we knew it could never last forever, didn’t we?

A relationship ends. But love, like glass, never does. The parts merely become other things. The wineglass becomes glass shards; the way I loved his tiny maroon running shorts becomes a small healed room; my heart becomes a million pieces on a hardwood floor. Where did I find the courage to break my own heart? 

I miss it all. I still have it all. It all just looks a little different, from where I’m now standing.