1 last one for 2024

Something that came to me

Our first fight was about the meaning behind a book. I was desperate for someone to find me intelligent and took every disagreement as a slight against myself. He was smart, put together, and read complex classics about the human condition. I wrote bad short stories about men who couldn’t love themselves and convinced myself I was a genius who shouldn’t have to work so hard to get his point across. I craved his approval but quickly learned that if what you want most out of love is approval, it won’t last long.

He took me one night to a closed-down skate park where we sat in the half ramp and watched the little stars we could see, listening to Sister Cities and occasionally making out.

I thought the song was about the narrator witnessing a tragedy that informs her femininity or places her in sisterhood with other women. He thought it was about something else, though he wasn’t totally sure. I wondered what it would feel like to hold onto uncertainty, to be comfortable not always being right. But I was young and it was the winter when the nights seemed to stretch on indefinitely and every star seemed to twinkle with meaning yet to be divined.

We left that night, went back to his place, and slept till noon. I’d like to say I left him when I woke back up but I stayed long enough for heartbreak to take hold. After the heartbreak I kept waiting for my former feelings to evaporate, hoping that soon my desire for approval would manifest as some sort of boiling seething hatred. It never came.

Now I write sentences wondering what he’d think, anticipating a turned-up nose or a slight smirk of dissatisfaction. In my fantasies, it never comes, and I suppose in some ways that is unfair. My therapist thinks it’s obsessive thinking, a byproduct of my dad’s OCD tendencies leeching into my subconscious. I think it’s something else, but I’m working on being open to change.