Posted by Anonymous on 2014/09/28 under Uncategorized 4 years. 4 years, three months and some odd number of days I was with her. I met her in the 9th grade, in the cafeteria. Introduced by a mutual friend. She wasn’t a spectacular sight; curly brown hair in a frizz, braces and a subtle twinge in her eyes that said “I have to try everyday to crack a smile.” Immediately, after talking to her the next few days, I was hooked. Sure, I was a lonely, goofy gangly looking 9th grader who desperately wanted a girlfriend (or any sort of female companionship for that matter) but I recognized a good catch when I saw one. She was fascinating, like a drug or some sort of book you can’t put down. We talked late into the night. Soon enough, our conversations turned towards marriage, family, kids, careers. What 15 year old boy talks about these things with a girl he just met? But no, we were dead set on it. We had fixated ourselves on that eternal goal, hoping one day to realize that as the pinnacle of our existence. “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The last line of her favorite book, I remember it well. We grew up together, fought together and loved together. I became a man in her eyes, and every day I saw a more mature, more beautiful woman sprouting from her old skin. We changed, but we changed together. That’s the thing a lot of people don’t understand; people do change. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. If love didn’t change, what would mechanisms would we have to test its boundaries? That’s what I always thought, anyway. I’d spent more Sunday afternoons laying on her bed talking about God and love and our children (Arabella and John) than I care to remember. Every second, the hundreds of thousands of seconds I had spent by her side, in her presence, none of them I regret. The only thing I can say I regret is not showing her how deeply I cared for her. Especially these last few months. I don’t know what I was thinking (if I even thought at all.) I can’t even remember the last time I gazed into her beautiful auburn eyes and whispered those words, the four I’d said countless times before: “I love you Anna.” I sit and I wallow in my misery now, left alone by my own doing, wondering what exactly she’s doing at this very minute. She has “a guest” visiting her, a man we both know. A year younger, he’s been her friend since I don’t even know when. Last weekend they kissed, passionately, exactly as I wish I could do this very moment. My heart physically aches at the thought of any other lips than mine touching hers. She is an angel, a Godsend, I swear it. I can’t bear the thought. And now, he’s back again, and God knows what they’re doing. She won’t answer my texts anymore. I’ve lost my way and it is entirely my fault, as was nearly every other part of this train wreck I called a relationship. I’d do anything and everything to have a second chance and push the restart button on my life entirely; become a different person entirely and become someone we could both love, her and myself. I don’t know what to do anymore. The currents of life keep on moving, and I’m perpetually stuck in the riptide. I’ve lost my way, and I’m at a loss for words anymore. I’m a loss for everything. Thank you.