Day 79 A History, Abridged

2006

Darren pops up at my breakfast table and drops four Hershey’s Kisses in front of me. He smirks and says, 

“Here, one for each foot of your height.”

The gesture is so touching for someone who’s as emotional as a blanket that I go “Aww”…until I realize he’s suggested that I’m four feet tall and try to kick him. But I know something’s changing between us. We’d already tried dating before and it didn’t work out, but we try it again anyway on February 27, 2006. On March 16 of the same year, he breaks up with me on the patio outside the Art room. I take it in as calmly as I can and walk back to where my friends and I always sit. Andy is there and I ask him to walk with me. He does so without question and, within minutes, awkwardly holds onto my much-smaller frame while I sob over a relationship I didn’t even realize I gave much of a damn about. Darren and I would end up going to college together for 4 years and exchanging about as many words each time we met each other. One of those four Hershey’s Kisses still sits in the House of Blues shotglass I bought the night we shared Ghirardelli chocolate in Downtown Disney.

2007

 Johnny lives off campus so I board the number 20 bus at night. I’m always afraid of traveling at night by myself but I’m so in love with the kid that I don’t care. I wear white because he likes monochrome and he hands me a bouquet of roses over dinner that he made himself. I think it’s the most romantic thing on the planet, even more so because we’re both broke college kids like the ones every other stupid love song starts out with.

He breaks up with me at some point afterwards, and I get back together with him anyway, knowing that I was doing so for the sole purpose of breaking up with him in the future. I do so after being home for the summer holiday. He gets hysterical on the phone and I take some pleasure in it, since I’ve found out what a phony asshole he was months ago. Neil calls drunk while I’m on the phone and I leave Johnny hanging on the other line. Neil doesn’t remember the conversation, but I remember the satisfaction of hearing Johnny cry like a little bitch.

2008

I don’t remember this Valentine’s Day. Neil got me a teddy bear from Walmart or CVS; it was one of those cheap, mass-production stuffed animals that my own roommate got that same year. I remember thinking it was so unoriginal, and not much else.

2009

I’m still talking to Neil even though we’re not together. I tell him I’m going out with someone, an older man, with a mustache and a receding hairline. He laughs, thinking I’ve taken a huge step down from him, until I tell him my date is with my father. My sister and I go out with my dad. We go to dinner and follow up with a movie where dad promptly falls asleep (as usual of course). It’s a quiet night and I wish I could spend it with Neil instead.

2010

It takes 2 hours to get to Neil’s city, a little longer for him to come pick me up from the bus stop. I spend the weekend with him, waking up to a purple monkey stuffed animal, much like the teddy bear he got me two years ago; cheap and mass-produced. But the animal is holding flowers and I laugh because it’s the first thing I see in the morning and I think it’s the sweetest thing on the planet. Neil tries to make us pancakes and eggs and I point out that the last eggs he made for me were runnier than a first-grade class during flu season. We laugh about it because it happened when we first started going out, when he was at his old apartment and the drama hadn’t clouded how much I liked him. Later on, we jump on his trampoline, him helping me get higher air and me being super worried that I’m going to end up falling over the edge like every other video on America’s Funniest Home Videos, Afterwards, he grabs a blanket, I get my laptop and we lay on the shady side of the trampoline watching videos on Hulu. We start something that we end up finishing on his bed a few hours later and I’ll end up wishing I didn’t ever have to leave him.

A few months later, I’ll tell Neil that I have a crush on Michael, partly because I want to be honest and largely because I want him to tell me I mean everything to him. He doesn’t. I’ll say “pleasepleaseplease” on the phone maybe a few hundred times over the course of an hour and then some just to keep Neil on the phone because I have this horrible, crushing feeling in my chest that I’m about to lose him forever if he hangs up on me at this moment. I lose him anyway, not because he hangs up, but because he didn’t love me enough to ask me to stay. Looking back, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay, but I would’ve if he asked. Some days, I wish he still would.

2011

I forget it’s Valentine’s Day until people start calling it out on the unit after 12 am. I think of Teddy, smile because his memory makes me happy, and remember that I need to get my baby’s milk before I remember to be sad that he’s not here anymore.

Rae is likely in town and Ricky’s distraught over the idea that he won’t be seeing her on his self-imposed non-Rae-diet.

“It’s just another day,” I tell him.

I can tell he doesn’t believe it. But it’s okay. Because it’s not the end of the world, so we have the rest of our lives to love the people we love, even if they’re not with us anymore.