You're a bed-time story, the one that keeps the curtains closed
And I hope you're waitin' for me, cause I can't make it on my own.
Earlier, I wrote a big long post about a picture given to me today, but MT ate it.
OK, ok, MT didn't eat it, I idiotically closed the window containing it.
All to decide if the fantasies I had should be described as having diffuse lighting or diffused lighting. I'm still not sure.
I hardly ever attempt to re-write things that get lost here.
They're never as good as the lost versions, because the lost versions have the benefit of being, well, lost.
But this seemed important. So I shall attempt to recapture:
I spent an inordinate amount of time tonight looking at a picture I was given today.
An 7 and a half year-old picture.
A picture given upon my request, after being shown with the accompanying question "how could you stop loving the girl in that picture?"
Said in jest.
But I think said in less jest than she wanted me to believe.
I sat, looking at this picture, thinking how looking at her face now, I could see differences, differences that hadn't occured to me before.
Babyfat has been replaced with something more angular.
Cuteness with beauty.
And there is an innocence, a hope, a boundless love for everything that has been replaced with wisdom and experience.
This is not to say she is no longer cute. Or that she is tarnished, hopeless, or hateful. These are merely subtle transitions all go through. She is still the most hopeful and loving person I know.
It is the difference between 19 and 26.
And yet, I cannot help but feel personally responsible for some of this change.
How could I stop loving that girl?
I'm not sure.
But the fact remains that I broke her heart.
That I (and I'm probably egotistically overstating the severity of this) caused her pain. I took a little bit of that boundless love, that innocence, that hope, and dashed it.
This makes me feel horrible.
I did think of her often. More often than she knows, more often than she will believe.
I would imagine I hadn't gone to Edinburgh, I had finished my film major, and I lived with her, in a small apartment near the ocean.
The scene was always very specific. Diffuse white light, a small bedroom with white sheets, a white duvet, and me, much trimmer than I actually am/have been (this is a fantasy, so what of it?), wearing blue pyjama pants, her, with a bit more of the babyfat and innocence than she has now, wearing the shirt to the pyjamas, so big it comes down almost to her kneecaps.
We read the Sunday New York Times. In bed. For hours. (Sorry to disappoint those of you hoping for a steamy love scene)
This image came to me for years, even when I didn't want it to.
But it wasn't what happened.
None of you will probably understand this, least of all her, but having thought about this most of the night, while looking at this amazing, sweet, girl who was completely in love with a big dumb idiot me, I can honestly say that I would change nothing.
I would still break her heart.
I couldn't even tell you why I did it. Something about long distance relationships not working. Which is why I tried so desperately to make every long distance relationship after that one work. It was a stupid reason. So I didn't want to make that mistake again.
What I failed to see is that it wasn't trying to make long distance relationships work that would make the difference, it was the girl that would make the difference, and that girl was always her.
But, I would still break her heart because of this:
I know right now that I love her so much that I want to melt into her, leave my body behind, inhabit her. Even if I were to start making up words, I could not create one that expresses the depth of my emotion for her.
The me that came from this path feels this way about the her that came from this path.
I know that no matter how bad things were in the interim for either of us, I have someone who makes me feel more whole than I ever have in my life.
I have no guarantee that had one single thing been done differently we would be this way now.
So I wouldn't change a thing.
Because I love her so much.
I love and loved the cute, innocent girl in the picture. And I'm sorry I hurt her.
But I love the beautiful, wise woman I have now even more.
And yes, part of me will always wish that I could have had those intervening 7 and a half years to spend with you. But I wouldn't bet what we have now against anything.
You're the night, darling