I Love You Like The Autumn

i.1

Your best friend asked me out. We were seven and I laughed, too afraid of cooties to go to a Ranger's game with your best friend. I wished things had been that simple between you and me, just baseball games and cootie shots. But they weren't, things were much more complicated than we ever gave them credit for. 2

ii.3

I was so proud of my new haircut, my infamous crown of shiny, shimmering blonde hair had been reduced to a mess of static charged waves that I refused to brush; and that made me happy. No one understood why I did it, why I cut it all off. "It was so beautiful," they would cry, lamenting the loss of sixteen inches of sun streaked gold. You liked it though, you told me that I "looked more like a boy." And when a seven year old boy tells an eight year old girl that she "looks more like a boy," It's always a compliment. 4

iii.5

We were different people then. We were children, innocent and naive. I was just a little girl with scrapped knees and golden hair I refused to brush. But I think I loved you, not the way girls love boys in high school, but in that innocent seven-year-old way. I loved you like I loved fourth of July and eating watermelons and climbing trees to see the fireworks show. It was innocent, warm and sweet, childish and innocent and naive, and somehow completely magnificent. 6

iv.7

I never really saw you. To me you were always just a boy. Just a boy to play football with and beat in all the races, a boy who knew more multiplication tables than I did, but hadn't yet read the Chronicles of Narnia. You were just a boy, who played kickball with his smelly friends and pulled my hair and laughed at me when I tried to run away from aftercare, but you wanted to come with me. I know you did. I could see it in your pretty blue eyes, you wanted to stop playing four square and waiting for your mommy to pick you up. You wanted to follow me, because  I was the girl who tackled you during flag football, the one who adored Troy Aikmen, and always had her nose stcuk in a book. 8

v.9

I was perfect back then. I was golden, a perfect, tiny porcelin doll with golden hair, who could do a back handspring and play Beethoven's Fur Elise. You didn't notice that I was perfect, you didn't remember me as the little porcelin girl who spoke spanish as well as english. You remembered the girl who jumped off the slide to prove that girls could do anything boys could do. You remembered the girl with the permanently scrapped knees and the messy hair who tried to be everybody's best friend. And I loved you for that.10

vi. 11

But you didn't see me fall from grace. You didn't see the porcelin little girl break into a thousand pieces. You didn't know I was broken until years after the fact, you didn't find the pieces untill they were caked with the rotten dust of forgotten dreams and broken promises. But I loved you anyways, even though I told myself, and everyone else you weren't good enough for me.12

vii.13

After I broke I turned into ice, I was winter, cold and unfeeling, covered in the shimmering shine of glitter covered forearms and frosted lip glosses and peppermints and giggling ten-year-olds. I think I made you sad. But you didn't see me break, so I couldn't let you see the pieces, they weren't pretty, and I only wanted you to think I was pretty. 14

viii.15

So I pretended to be pretty and that made you sad, because you were the boy who said I "looked more like a boy," and meant it as a compliment. 16

ix. 17

I loved you like the winter back then. I was cold and frozen, unfeeling and desperate not to melt. I pushed you away and called you stupid because I didn't want you to melt me like I knew you would. I loved you like peppermint flavored lip gloss and shiny sparkling sweaters and too much body glitter. It was cold and bright and made your teeth hurt, but it was real. 18

x. 19

I wasn't pretty anymore. The beautiful broken pieces of that perfect porcelin girl were beginning to decay. The innocent golden sun beauty of my youth had faded and the hard, shiny, plastic glitter of the grown up little girl I had tried to be had washed away. I wasn't pretty anymore. And that made you smile a little. 20

xi.21

My best friend was insane, and he was a boy. You and I didn't talk. You played baseball and sung in the choir and I read books and tried to make the pretty, glittery, perfect girls see me. He saw me, my crazy best friend. He saw me and loved me, but I never saw him. All I could see was them, those pretty, perfect girls and YOU. 22

xii.23

I made him crazy. I tend to do that alot. I make people crazy and I don't mean to. They get attached to me and won't let go. I think it's because underneath the sarcasm and crazy girl antics I really do love people and I love the drowning ones best of all. I see them drowning and offer my hand, sometimes I have to scream and fight to make them take it, but they always do. And I fall in love with them as they lie there sopping wet and trying to breath. I hold their hands and listen to them, I become their best friend. And then they fall in love, with me, whose always loved them. But they don't know me, they love the idea of me, a girl who's free and wild, they love the girl they call beautiful. They can't see me through the glow sticks and hair dye and bitter, biting sarcasm. But you could. You saw me, for me, and you never took my hand. 24

xiii.25

You never took my hand because you weren't drowning in the frigid, turbulent waters, you were swimming. You offered me your hand and said, let's go swimming. I tried to laugh and remember the now ancient cooties, but I loved you and I loved your eyes. So I jumped right in, staining my ugly, oversized school uniform with salt water and mascara tears.26

ix.27

We used to fight, like cats and dogs, like brother and sister, like an old married couple. You were the only boy brave enough to take me on. I was formidable, full of facts and anger and a need to prove myself to those pretty, plastic girls who stole my porcelain childhood and my beautiful best friend. We would fight, screaming and yelling and laughing. You helped me realize that I wasn't that innocent golden child, and I wasn't that perfect porcelain girl, and I wasn't that girl with the shiny smile, and hard glinting eyes. And I helped you realize that I wasn't the girl you used to love. You didn't seem to care that I wasn't her.28

xv. 29

You left the boy I loved behind and became my friend, the boy who I could laugh with and talk with and throw glitter on. You made me smile. I pretended you made me angry, but you really made me smile. We settled the old score silently. Our childish cycle of love had played itself out, the timer had rang, and the cookies were done, we weren't two kids in love. We were just a girl and a boy who tried not to love each other, because it hurt way too much.30

xvi.31

We talked now, everyday. We sat in the kitchen making popcorn and singing songs and stealing snacks, because you wanted me to believe that I wasn’t fat anymore. I think you loved me even though you were dating the girl who thought she was my best friend. She didn’t understand what was between us, no one did. They thought you were an asshole and I was a whore, you told them I wasn’t, and threatened to beat up the girls who started the rumor, even though you could never hit a girl. 32

xvii. 33

It was your eyes that made me believe you still loved me. It was the way the ocean blue turned steely gray when someone hurt me, and the way they turned into pools of beautiful, turquoise Caribbean water when you made me smile and the way they always seemed to be laughing at one of our secret jokes and the way I found them watching me intently, unconsciously, steadily, with so much desperation and understanding. Your eyes knew me, and they loved me, even when you tried not to. 34

xviii. 35

They said I stole you from her; that I was a lying, cheating whore, who would never be pretty enough to love. I pretended not to care; I pretended it didn’t hurt. But I sat there crying, dripping burning saline tears onto your suit jacket that you gave me because I was shivering. They didn’t know that you never loved her, and that I had nothing to do with the break up, or that I never even got to be your girlfriend. All they saw was one of the class whores and the former golden boy.36

xix.37

You became one of us. To them you were just another regret, another outcast, but you didn’t care. You just listened to Chuck Barry and Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan and all those classical songs I pretended to hate. 38

xx.39

After that I loved you like spring. Everything was new and growing and fresh. I was allergic to it all, but you were my anti-histamine. I loved you like a little girl with a crush, except stronger and darker and deeper. I don’t think little girls could feel everything I felt then. There was a garden in my brain, growing and stretching, strangling all the old ideas, planting new seeds where they buried the old ones. There were butterflies in my stomach and bird songs in my head. I was happy and drowsy and full of warmth and flowers and smiles and jolly ranchers. It was Friday night and Monday morning and I was in love. I didn’t have to keep you my dirty little secret.40

xxi.41

I loved you and you loved me, but we never said a word. You loved the way my hair was a wild spiraling mess and the way my clothes never seemed to fit. You loved the way I acted so tough, but broke down in your arms at the holocaust museum. You loved how I laughed at perverted jokes and got in trouble for writing poems in math class. You loved the way I dyed my hair with house paint and sang ACDC while skipping down the halls. You loved the way I loved my best friend and the way her and I were almost the same person. You loved the way I forgot where she began and I ended. I think you loved her too, because she was a part of me. 42

xxii. 43

I loved the way your eyes told me everything about you and the way you were never afraid of me, or my scars. I loved the way you stood your ground and never gave in. I loved the way you told everyone else the usual lie, but told me the whole truth, even when it was ugly and decaying. I loved the way you laughed at me, and the way you stuck up for the father you hated. I loved the way you always tried to protect me and the way you pretended not to care about anything, but were in all actuality a bleeding heart liberal just like me. I loved the contradictions about you. I loved how huge your hands were in comparison to mine. And the way you held yourself; unassuming and confident and terrified all at once. You were everything to me, in so many ways. You made me feel whole when I was almost nothing. I had faded away and you colored me in with beautiful guitar riffs and piano chords and bits of torn up paper that I had thrown out when I believed I couldn’t write anymore.44

xxiii. 45

I loved you and you loved me and we tried so hard not to love each other, because we were afraid of what was there. There was so much beneath the surface; too much for a broken girl who was just a girl and the boy who loved her and forgot she was porcelain.46

xxiv. 47

We never did anything even though the entire world could see what we felt. We were young and afraid and old and jaded. We were too tired to work at it, too tired to make commitments. We loved each other momentarily and then we left, hoping to leave an imprint in the other’s soul. You left your mark loud and clear, it’s still there, beating beneath all the other heartbreaks. It beats to a slightly different rhythm, slightly off, but perfectly right. It’s there, with everything you gave me, the smiles, and looks, and warm afternoons. It’s buried with the storms and broken silver necklaces and all the tears I ever cried for you. It’s all there, inside my heart, mixing with the bits and pieces of every other person I’ve ever loved. 48

xxv. 49

I love you like the autumn now. I love you like the falling leaves and harvest moons. I love you with that permanent wistful feeling that rises up in my chest every fall. Autumn was always the beginning between you and I, it was our starting place, it was when we would figure whether we loved each other or loved each other not. I love you with all the love I give the shortening days and lengthening nights, with all the love I give the dropping temperatures and the howling rainstorms. I love you, but I love you like the autumn. I love the memories and I love the end, I love the closure and I love the looking to the future. I love you, but I know you and I are done, that we’ve finally fought all the rounds of this thing. I love you, but not like I used to love you, I’m not those girls and you aren’t those boys. I love you because you were the boy who told me that I “looked more like a boy,” and meant it like a compliment. I love you, but I love you like the autumn and that means we will never be that boy and that girl again, that means that this is good-bye. 50