June 9

Title: Cuts

Today you asked me if i was doing alright, and I kind of suspected you knew why I might not have been. As you may recall, Kennedy and I were dating for a while, but as of one month and one day ago, we're not. Which has sucked. I still can't see exactly why she broke up with me, but ever since the week of prom, she'd been acting different. You've probably heard or deduced that shes gone through some stuff similar to Abby or Alison, so I figured whatever was troubling her would just blow over and she'd be back to her normal self soon enough. Wrong. Let me first explain normal her and non normal her. Normal her was the one I first fell for, the one who loved to cuddle and talk one on one and be alone with me. Non normal her wanted none of that. In the last three weeks of our relationship, she didn't want to hug, or kiss, or hold hands, or cuddle or anything. So we didn't, which of course was difficult for me, as I've found my self to be a big fan of such activities, but i preserved onward nonetheless. So then one Thursday, about an hour before we played vs catholic central, she texts me and asks if she and Ellie bratt (a good friend if hers at the time who days earlier broke up with her boyfriend of many months) could come over after the game. She had been acting pretty distant before that, so I knew if she wanted to come over with backup it wasn't going to be good. I called her bluff as I sat there with the team watching jv, and she told me she was going to. Cut #1. I asked where this was coming from, and she told me shed been thinking about it for a while, which I figured might have been the case, but wishfully thought otherwise. Cut #2. After begging and begging for her to change her mind or at least let me talk to her in person, she just told me we were done. No coming to my house, no phone call. Nothing. Just her sitting at home and me sitting on the bleachers bewildered. Cut #3. I kind of figured it might have gotten to that point at some point, but to have her say that right before a game where all my focus needed to be on the field wasn't good planning for her. I ended  up playing alright, but my mind was absent the entire time. I was so in shock and tired that night that I didn't know what to feel, so I unintentionally felt nothing. The next night, however, it really hit me. I remember sitting on a chair in my living room, and the song Gracious by Ben Howard came on. The chorus of the song goes something like 'Gracious goes the ghost of you, and I will never forget the plans and the silhouettes we drew here' then goes on to say 'You said ours were the lighthouse towers, the sun upon that place. Darling I'll grow weary, happy still, with just the memory of your face.' The first of those two lines really made Cut #4 because in all honesty, I was still in love with her. It hadn't really sunk in yet that she didn't want to be mine anymore, which aligned the 'gracious goes the ghost of you' part. Hearing that summed up what I felt better than I could even begin to explain, and Cut #4 began to bleed right then because I just started bawling. It was during tulip time that she split us up, and having days off and nice weather felt like summer. She was talking about all the things she wanted to do with me this summer, so hearing the part about never forgetting the plans hit hard, and the vivid personification of a silhouette made it feel like he was my subconscious talking. The line about you said ours were the light house towers also fit because of her adoration for the beach and our coincidental lighthouse here in town. Darling I'll grow weary happy still with just the memory of your face was the epitome of how I felt in the weeks leading up to our break up, remembering how she was in contrast to how she was later. 

That's a long paragraph, and a lot about one topic. Have a break, and listen to that song. I tried to find the video that was really good, but it's eluding me. 

I'm not done on that topic though. Sorry if you thought I was done. My sincere apologies. Cut #5 came after our next game, when my best bud Trebor's girlfriend, who'd become close with Kennedy, told me that as she and Kennedy watched Trebor and I play, Kennedy said shed been thinking more about another guy for the last portion of our relationship than about me. That shit stung. It made me angry. I felt like shed cheated on me, which I guess in her mind she had. It also justified her breaking up with me a little bit, which was kind of nice, but I guess I lost the 'how could she be so heartless and do such a thing with no cause' feeling that gained me so much pity. She and that other guy are now happily dating, I'd assume, or at least in some sort of relationship, because I saw them together a lot the last week of school. She only waited a week after we split to dive in head first with him, which has been widely regarded as a classless, low, scumbaggish, all around bitchy move. Seeing that made it easier to watch her go, because at least she was happy with him, and it gave leaving me cause, but seeing the girl I'd invested everything in for the last five months with a guy who I'd always thought was just a friend burned. All I can do now is be glad she's not mentally cheating on me and say good riddance, as difficult as that can be. 

Still not done. Just more enter key happy. Cut #6 came just last Friday, when Abby,  katelyn and I were hanging out. The subject of Kennedy and I came up again, as it often does in late night conversation, and they told me that on her 16th birthday, may 1, after she, her family and I went to wild chef, and after her little get together with some friends and I, she, Alison and Devi got wasted in her basement. This was news to me. She and I had smoked weed once together (shh), but she knew I wanted to be done with that kind of stuff, because of the tough standards of the lacrosse team, and how Nolan, my closest confidant and best friend, wanted me not to, and she told me she wanted to be done, also. To be honest, had she just told me the day after or the night of, I wouldn't have been too mad, and as I try to be gracious and flexible, and i mean it was her birthday, even if it was technically five years too early. Cut #6 hurt the most, I think. There was no real reason for not telling me, aside from maybe being scared I'd get mad, but with all the shit shed put me through before that, she should have known that wouldn't have bothered me. That means the only reason she could have kept it from me was simply because she wanted to hide something from me. That's why it hurt so much. It made me and still makes me angry. All that time (I guess only a week) shed been hiding that from me. That's not how a relationship is supposed to go. Sure, that's given me even more reason to be okay with her gone, but it just frustrates me. No, I wouldn't have been mad, and she knew that. And if she hid something so mundane from me, keeping in mind her secret admiration of someone else while we were dating, who knows what else she hid from me, and why. I like to think those two are the only two things she hid from me, because knowing she never quite gave me the full picture when we were dating, there could have been countless other things. I don't think there were, honestly, because despite those two instances, she usually kept or tried to keep to the straight and narrow. I also never pried too much about what she didn't share, because with all the things shed gone through and how sensitive some of those subjects were, I wanted to play it safe. 

Another note in this story: she never gave me the full spectrum of her emotions or thoughts, and as I just mentioned, I was okay with that. All girls do that, I've come to know, so I just rolled with the continual punches. I was never like that though. I was transparent. I let it all out to her. Every hope, dream, hate, love and fear I had she knew. She was my best friend. Was it smart to give that much to her? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe, though, because if you're going to do something, do it well. I think of all my past relationships with females, this one I did the best on. I studied her. I observed her. I learned of her. Then I put it all into practice by making her the happiest girl on the goddamn planet. I thought. People commented on it, too, the way I treated her. She was more or less treated like a princess at home, and I made sure that didn't change with me. In retrospect, any girl who receives the full Isaac treatment better thank her lucky stars. That's one thing no one will ever be able to take from me: how much I gave to her. That's Cut #7, I guess, because she was my best friend for a long time, and I gave her so much, just to have her strip it all away. Oh well.

'Oh well.' is the only attitude I can have. If I look past all she did to me, ill just remain hung up on her. If let myself get angry, I'm caring too much and letting those cuts stay open. Neither are my aim.

I'm getting past her. Slowly. Slowly but surely. It took a very uncomfortable conversation with someone who loathes her trying to rip every good idea of her out of my head to make me decide what I was and wasn't going to defend about her. It helped me out a ton, though, because i gained perspective on the bad things shed done, which for a month I'd repressed and blocked out, just so my idea of her remained pure in my mind. I don't know why I wanted to keep her so perfect in my mind for so long, or why I looked past her indecencies even as we dated. Maybe because id always seen her as a good person, or because I knew she wasn't but she would be if i  kept her that way in my mind. 

Maybe it was because I loved her. 

I remember the first time she told me she loved me. It was over the phone, 10:20 pm on April 20. I didn't know what to say. I knew I didn't love her back, and i didn't want to lie to her. I said nothing. I couldn't say anything. There are few things more powerful than the first time someone tells you they love you, and I knew no matter what i said it would pale in comparison, in lieu of saying it back, which I wasn't going to do. I also remember the first time I told her I loved her. We'd spent an evening together, and I recall sitting on the boardwalk at kollen park with her, watching her eat her McDonald's. I thought to myself, 'why yes. I do love you.' we existed in that moment so perfectly, so calmly, so together, that I didn't know what to do with myself. Of course, I couldn't tell her right there, because she would have wanted me to wait till she wasn't eating, and she would have wanted to kiss me, and big macs are not my favorite flavor. I told her when I dropped her off a few minutes later, as she was getting out of the car.

I think we only told each other we loved a few times, and we made sure it was in person. We couldn't demean it so much as to say it over text. We only verbalized it a handful of times, but we both knew the intent was always there, so saying it wasn't always necessary. That's why I've been able to write all this, and why I tried to keep her so innocent and perfect in my mind. Because I loved her. That's why it's been so hard for me to just abandon ship like she did, because I was the co-captain of the ship. Seeing all the things she did to cut me make me question if she ever really did love me, but a part of me wants to believe she did. A part of more knows she did, or has convinced itself so, because if not it was all a waste. And I can't bear to think that. Maybe that's Cut #8. The uncertainty of if she loved me. That one is up for debate, though, and I don't know if any of us know, so I'll hope she did and not consider it a cut.

These seven cuts are healing.