I had cried that night.

I was sure that if I kept my mind off of it, I could have not cried, but I wanted to. In breaking up with Cristen, out of spite and frustration and bitterness, I chose to give up. Whether it was because she couldn’t see my point, or because I was trying to remove the tetraskelion, I was exhausted, and just wanted to let it all go. To speed up the recovery time by releasing all my emotions in a successive bursts, leaving me shaken but not stirred. To curl up, only to want to stand up and stretch afterwards.

I had had the romantic notion of crying in the shower, the closest thing I could come to rain, removing the need to open my eyes or wipe away tears or even be seen or heard. I hadn’t intended to tell my mother about it when I went into the bedroom to get fresh clothes, but after a long pause and a concerned look from her, it just came out.

Saying it to her was even harder than saying it to Cristen, because it was no longer an attack, but a loss that I hadn’t fully thought through. But before I speak, I think. And so I thought, and I cried and I ran. I wish that there was someone there in that moment that I could have run into and grasped for dear life, like Cristen once did for me. A person, even uncaring or unattached, would have provided so much more comfort than the tile wall. The warmth helped.

To her credit, my mother let me talk it out with her afterwards, but I didn’t have any more steam to vent. I was just…gone. I had cut my ties, paid my dues, and was willing to try to move on.

But random luck and unintentional conversations succeeded for the second time at bringing us together. I’ve forgotten how the talk ebbed and flowed, but I do know that the small flicker of hope that I couldn’t quell was fed and had begun to flourish. It wasn’t tempered with regret, but instead the ecstasy of comprehension, the contentment of appreciation.

I’m glad that you realized that you wanted to be with me, Cristen, because I want to be with you too.

Nobody said it was easy,
It’s such a shame for us to part,
Nobody said it was easy,
No one ever said it would be this hard,
Oh take me back to the start.

I was just guessing,
At numbers and fingers,
Pulling the puzzles apart,
Questions of science,
Science and progress,
Did not speak as loud as my heart,
Tell me you love me,
Come back and haunt me,
I want to rush to the start,
Running in circles,
Chasing tails,
Coming back as we are.