A.E. Janes

I was at the doctor's office, waiting to be examined and told again that I am certainly sick in some way that costs too much money, and found myself watching a couple who sat on the opposite side of the room from me. The husband's enthusiasm as he held his child so carefully, allowing her to comb his lack of hair with the purple brush she waved around in the air reminded me of something you might do one day. The wife came back and sat stiffly next to her husband, I thought she might not love him very much. The closer I looked at the two with their new child and one on the way, the less I could see you and the more I could see Him, and the more I looked at the woman the less I saw the ideal I have for myself and the more I saw someone who does not belong in me anymore. He and I were never meant to be together; we were meant to meet and that was about it. 

When I first met you, a very new and exciting idea to be honest, I couldn't help but wonder what I would do when the time came to tell you about Him. There's a sense of things being incomplete if He is not known by you, even though He and I only met and nothing ever happened because nothing ever could; truthfully, because neither of us were inclined to it. But I see Him in almost everything and everyone because that is all I have allowed myself to know. This is not fortunate, I do not like it, but that is the case. I do not like that when something is wrong I want to reach out to Him rather than you, I want to go back, because for whatever reason I trust Him despite the numerous reasons not to. He doesn't exist any more, He is somebody I didn't have anything in common with who never wanted to have anything in common with me. Unlike you. 

It all makes little sense.

I want to go slowly, taking my time, but this feels like a race because there was always a need for my sense of urgency with Him. I was in competition with an addiction, other women, other men; it was never just me, there was always something else or someone to beat. It was a rush to get His phone number only to be laughed at for asking. It was a rush to accomplish everything, when nothing should have been that way. With you I have this same sense of desperation that I've held onto for seven years. I am still racing against an independently set clock; there is a race to a finish line I don't know that I want to reach. Nothing is easy when you're scared, and I am. I am afraid of you because nothing is like it would have been with Him seven years ago. It's the fact that I would be asked to get drinks rather than go to the park after school, it's the fact that there's bigger things to consider than whether you drive and know how to read. There's things to ask like do you have a good job or aspirations that seem unattainable but mean the world, what you believe is God or what you think is politically right. I feel strange for projecting a juvenile image of what a relationship is and Him onto you, who is new and adult. I don't quite know how to feel about you because I cannot figure out if you feel the same sense of urgency which will only lead to boredom six months in. 

You have started to irritate me in the same ways that He once did. I don't see you often enough, you don't operate on my timetable, and I don't know how to take things in stride, but I don't want to blame Him for my flaws because all of this habitual desperation is really on me. With you I find myself once again trying to execute the same deliberate and well-laid-out plan that I have run through my head hundreds of times and refined over the years, taking note of what went right and wrong, all put into place to combat a lack of control. The plan developed itself, turning into something spotless and attractive, all to make me seem available and like I've got all the right characteristics. I laid in bed the other night with my plan, trying to fall asleep without doing much thinking on you or the looming subject of Him. As I fell asleep my mind somehow wandered to the feeling I used to get when he'd kiss me or nonchalantly whisper love-coated tar lies. My stomach suddenly dropped and I could not easily get rid of the discomfort which woke me up to a body that was startled and shaking. I might sound stupid, but you come with a warmth that washes through me when I think about simply being in the same room as you. But I know that I'll get scared when you become real because I'll realize you are not the old, and that when I'm up at night trying to remember your face, I'll start to see His features slowly replacing yours until all I can remember are the color of your eyes that've been abnormally plastered onto His face. 

He laughs at me without a trace of pity, but you know what I mean when I simply say, "I'm alright". He begs to be a friend when really He just wants someone to use, but you take my notes and nervous speech to meet me halfway every time. He dropped my hand in disgust upon realizing He'd mindlessly taken it up, but you hold my hand and make me feel the same way I do when I run my hands under warm water from the faucet. You scare me because you do not demand the same oversharing that was always necessary to keep His attention. You come with a sense of deceptively meaningless weight. I feel as though you could never love me the way I wanted Him to love me. It makes no sense that I do not need to make myself more interesting or even feminine like I had to do with Him; that's the way things were, I was never enough. 

I just wonder sometimes if it is selfish to want to love you so I can feel something other than misplaced pain? To find inspiration in your laugh and bright smile? To gain a new subject to write on other than Him, who does not deserve so much as these set-apart pronouns, recycled over and over again?