I’m the one who said mean things to Luke. Me, in full possession of my faculties. I love him so much I want to hold him tight and squeeze him, but I also want to scream and yell and cry because things aren’t going so well right now and instead of beating myself up over that, I thought it was a good idea to beat up on Luke instead.
Metaphorically. There is no excuse for violence. There may not be an excuse for deliberately hurting each other with words either, but it was something that happened when the petty, self-destructive side of a person came out.
I could, and would, sit here lamenting everything. Whining and crying and cursing the world. But all of that was so reactionary. I had to stop just dealing with what came up in our relationship. I could take action. Make things right.
Let’s jump from one unfun thought to another. My grandparents on my mom’s side are still alive, but I don’t see them very much. We all love each other and we always say we’re going to get together more and we really want to… but never do. I guess tragedy can bring you closer together sometimes but it can also pull you apart. That’s what happened with us. Seeing each other was painful. We were all reminded of what we lost.
And we probably could have gotten over that. But we never put in the work to make that happen. So. I guess the lesson there is to put the work in. I could do that with Luke. The reason I mentioned it is because they always send me a lot of cash for birthdays and holidays. It’s not so much a buying my love thing as a guilt thing, I think. I would send them piles of cash too if I could.
I usually didn’t spend the money; it felt sacred. Like, if I was going to spend the money on something, it had to be important and nothing ever was important enough, which was okay. It would help me pay for college and that was certainly important.
Now, I finally had something else in my life that was important too. I couldn’t just let it go. Not just because of fear and hurt and a moment of stupidity.
I bought a plane ticket and flew back to Lake Forest for the weekend just so that I could be with Luke. We were going to fix things, leap into each other’s arms and whisper apologies and sweet nothings. I was going to see Luke.
Except the place he was supposed to be and the place he was turned out to be two different locations.
