Used to Know

Driving down the road on an unseasonably warm winter day I hear snippets and melodies of what we used to be I feel chilled and pull on a coat of sadness and the scarf of shame thinking on how things have failed between us
I light a cigarette of anger and flick the violent ash of revenge and remorse out the window wondering what you are doing now

I feel I couldn't even begin to guess right
Because you're just someone I used to know

Telling light hearted stories I hear myself adjusting the tense of us from current to former
I play the tears of sorrow off as uncontrolled glee at the remembrance of our silliness, because it's been too long to still acceptably be so damn sorrowful over missing you

Churning like the snow that hasn't fallen this winter my heart flips back and forth between desperately wishing to have you back and feeling relief that the miles separating us match the miles apart our hearts have grown

I watch people passing me by in stores and find myself wondering what would happen should we meet again. I fear that you will simply treat me as a stranger. Measuring the kindness doled out to me against that you would give anyone else and pretending we were never more to each other than ships passing in the night

My heart still burns wishing I could return to that afternoon in the fading light. So scared and confused wondering how this person I loved so fiercely transformed into someone I used to know

Paying

It never casually passes my lips. Even if it appears that way, it's never casual to me.
Each time feels like a small death in my heart.

I didn't know it would be our last conversation.
I didn't know it would be the last time I heard your voice.
Because I never imagined it could change. I never imagined it would end like it did in a dull pop and a ceasing of everything.

But it did.


Now I pay. When I say your name, when something happens that reminds me of you and a story we lived through side by side. When something funny happens and my heart leaps to tell you but I remember that you are gone.
Just gone.
Just like that.
Just as low key as you entered, you left.

Things change, I know this. But I didn't think that we would. Without my noticing, without realizing what was happening it was changed.
Part me, part you, part all the things unspoken and misunderstood.

Now I'm changed. Both less than and more without you. Finding my way one small death at a time to the other side, wondering what I could have changed had I known it would be our last conversation.

You Give Love....A Bad Name

Back when I was young and had no idea what it meant to be in love my "first love" and I broke up.
I.Was.Devastated

I didn't know what to do. So I packed up my Sony mini boom box and my Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet tape and headed off to my grandparents house for the weekend.
Several crazy things happened that weekend.

1) My Grandfather had recently purchased a little motorized cart to get around on the farm. It had a basket on the back, I presume to keep his guns. I popped some D batteries in the boom box and decided to ride it around the farm lanes while I cried out to God "WHY!? WHY ME! WHY!?!" I was apparently in the sad and on the brink of death stage of grief. Right before I left the house I ran into my Grandmother. This woman rarely had a kind word to say to me and I'm not certain this counts as kind. But as I staggered sniffling towards the stairs in my red Camp Wanake sweatshirt (which will clarify which boyfriend this was for Nicole) and lugging my boom box loaded with the sweet soothing styling of Bon Jovi she stopped me at the top of the stairs. She rested her hand on my shoulder and said, "I know this seems like the end of the world now. But, Bethany, boys are like tissues. You pull one out, blow them, throw them away and then another one pops up!"
I'm fairly certain she was going for a "There's always more fish in the sea" kind of thing, but even at that age I knew what blow them meant and couldn't believe that conversation just happened.

2) I finally make it onto the motorized cart and I proceeded to drive around the farm for (literally) FOUR HOURS playing and rewinding Never Say Good-Bye until I was all cried out. Then, as I transitioned into the anger portion of my break up weekend I switched it to You Give Love A Bad Name and sang it while sobbing quite dramatically at the top of my lungs. The rainbow trout were quite startled when I drove around the pond that day.

3) When Mom came to pick me up she brought Nicole, who has been around for every break up dramatic or otherwise. Nicole brought me a balloon, I can't remember what it said because I let it go outside and well....as it so happens when you do that to something filled with helium it flies away. As Mom chatted with the grown ups I strapped back on that Wanake sweatshirt and we decided to go on our own dual spin on the motorized cart. With me balanced precariously in the basket and Nicole gunning it for all it was worth we set off. As we were driving down the back lane and chattering away about what a jerk ex boyfriend was and how I was soooooo better off without him she got a little distracted and drove into a deep ditch. I mean DEEP. I mean we couldn't get the cart out of the ditch.
Finally one of had the BRILLIANT idea to put the cart in reverse and gun it while also pushing it up the hill. There was no way that plan could fail. So we did, and we each (at different points) almost ran over ourselves. Scraped and at least one of us (ME) bleeding we finally made it up the side of the ditch and carefully rode the cart back to the house. I walked in with my red sweatpants (yes, I was wearing red sweatpants with a red sweatshirt. Isn't it clear now how my milkshakes brought all the boys to the yard?) torn and Betty had shown up. She sneered, "What did you do?!". I just shrugged and said, they were like this when I put them on this morning and quickly moved into the next room to tell mom I was ready to go.

But the good news is, after all of those adventures, I was almost completely over my heartbreak.

Took My Love

I keep you like pictures on a shelf and petals in a scrapbook, pressed between the pages of my memories.

A little petal dust here, some old fashioned photo negatives there and you swirl around mixing in with what remains.

I'm taking you down. My love, I'm taking you down and turning around leaving you in the cast aside.

My reflection so vivid to me recently reveals that it is time, time to let go of the ocean tides and seasons that have passed and passed and passed me by.

Because time is marching on and I am remaining like a child staring longingly through a glass darkly. Wondering what it is that is being held from me, wondering what it is I cannot see.

It, having just now occurred to me that what is being obscured has been obscured by someone far more knowing than I.

I'm getting bolder as I get older, Stevie says this and I am finding that it is true. I'm finding that I care less what you say and think and do. It's hard, this caring less. This wondering if I'm being selfish and aloof, bratty and unkind. It's the landslide of finding the unkindness is not in taking my love down and allowing it to blow like petal dust across my floors, the unkindness is remaining still as a child peering up through a glass darkly at you perched so loftily above all else in my heart.

So I'm taking this love of mine and I'm taking it down. Climbing to the top of the mountain and throwing it off into the wind so I cannot see where it scatters. Time has made me bolder, because even children have to get older.

Took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes bolder, children get older
I'm getting older too, well

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes bolder, children get older
I'm getting older too, well, I'm getting older too

So take this love and take it down
Yeah, and if you climb a mountain and you turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide brought down

And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe, well maybe, well maybe
The landslide will bring you down

Fleetwood Mac -Landslide

I Am Telling

The thing is, I didn't mean to.
I was just passing through and there it was. The edge of the rabbit hole.

[gives blank look] That was like taking a bullet.

(name that movie)
I don't mean to do it, I know the risks. I've worked hard to recognize the dips leading up to the edge and avoid them, but this time I tripped and plunged head first.
Wrapped up in fog and memories I light the match and hold it closer to my skin than I have in months. I imagine the possibilities, I ponder the fantastical obsessions that begin to cave in on my heart.

I'm asking for help; for this and so many other things. I'm being brave; and to a specific, appropriate person I'm going to tell everything. Because I just can't do it anymore. .

I, without the assistance of anyone currently, am eviscerating my own heart.
I, who can't let it go, who dwells on it, who picks picks picks away at scabs that should have healed years ago.....I am telling.

Addicted

Speaking of boyfriends...
I had this boyfriend in jr. high. Lot's of strange things happened with him & I but he was especially concerned about my Tylenol addiction.
You see, apparently I took to much Tylenol. He was so concerned that he called my house and told my parents that he was concerned I was going to OD on it.
Now I could totally see that as a plausible call to make if I was taking you know crack or something. But I wasn't, I was taking TYLENOL. I think this was even before there was the big hullabaloo about it being hard on your stomach.

So I did what any 8th grade girl would do when her boyfriend was concerned about her well being. I went to the farm market (that also sold bulk candy) I sometimes worked at one afternoon and bought a crap ton of Good N Plenty's. The purple and white kind.
Then I came home and emptied a bottle of Tylenol that we had in the medicine cabinet and filled it up with only the white Good N Plenty's.

I went to school and waited for the right moment. Finally it arrived. I complained sporadically throughout the day of a headache and finally when boyfriend was near me I complained again and said I needed some Tylenol.
So I pull out the Tylenol bottle filled with white Good N Plenty's and I popped the cap off. Looking right at boyfriend I lifted the bottle to my mouth and poured every single last Good N Plenty into my mouth and chewed them up like the addict I was.

We broke up shortly after that...I can't say that it was related (no really) it had more to do with me moving on to 9th grade (High School!) and him staying behind in jr. high. Yep, I went for younger boys most of the time, at least back then.

The Hat

I was pretty boy crazy when I was young. It all started in 4th grade when I got to wear Roger's hat. Wearing boys hat was a big deal.
But it didn't work out. In a fit of breakup rage I threw his hat away in the classroom garbage can. My teacher, Mr. Branstrator found it and held it up in front of the whole class. He said, "Who threw away this perfectly good hat?" No one said anything, certainly not me. I was just hoping he would let it go and we could play 'What's Up 7-Up'
But he didn't. He flipped it over and over in his hands trying to figure out why someone would throw away this perfectly good hat. (Obviously Mr. Branstrator had never been dumped).
Then he saw it....the letters I had written in sharpie marker inside the hat. BL+RG. Except he read them as BLTRG. So he started asking the whole class what BLTRG meant. I swear this went on for hours and hours.
It was probably only like 5 minutes though.
No one admitted it and he set it on his desk and moved on to long division (I HATED long division). I burned with humiliation. Roger had been looking at me the whole time. So I tried to glare back at him, but I just ended up crying.

It was awful. A few weeks later the progress reports were sent home to parents. Mine said that I was finally starting to come out of my shell (I used to be really really shy...I know! I'll wait for you to stop laughing) it also said that I was dotting my i's and j's with hearts. He asked my parents to tell me to stop being so cutesy and just write normal.
I knew. I KNEW that it was code for, "I know it was you that threw that hat away."

The next year we went on to middle school, another building and the bottom of the totem pole. We had to change classes and we had our own lockers for the first time ever. I had new friends since my elementary school best friend had moved to the next town over. But Roger was still there. I found out that his sisters name was Barbie and tried to mock him by asking how his brother Ken was; turns out his brothers name was actually Ken...whoops.
The last interaction I remember having with Roger is later that year in 5th grade. I was kneeling in front of my locker getting my history book out of the bottom when I heard him coming down the hall and he was making fun of me. I didn't look up, I refused to look up. So I didn't see it coming when he slammed my head into my locker and tried to close the door on it. I just froze, thinking if I stayed still it would all be fine.
It was, the bell rang and he ran along. I went to class and then went home and told my mom what happened.
She got pretty mad and the next day I was walking to gym when I thought I heard her voice. I paused in the hall and listened. Coming from the principals office was the unmistakable voice of my mom in her angry mode. Roger didn't so much as talk to me after that. I think he graduated with us years later but heck if I know.

But breaking up is really hard to do.