The Catherinette Chronicles

Night time is the hardest part of the day.  It’s when I’m alone with my thoughts and there’s nothing left to distract me.  I lay awake in bed, with the pillows piled up behind me.  Every once in awhile, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I back up into the pillows.  Once or twice, in my drowsy state I believed it was him.  Last night, I reached for his hand, only to find his side of the bed empty.

This is the hardest part.  Knowing I’ve made the right decision, but not having let go of what I feel for him.  I’ve never experienced a break up quite like this.  He’s not right for me, I know that, but I still love him.  I didn’t end things with him because I didn’t care.  Had that been the case, this would all be much easier.  So now I find that I question everything, and I’ve reached that stage where I glorify everything about him.

I manage to keep myself together most of the time.  But there are random moments when the tears creep up on me and I can’t make them stop.  It happens while I’m at work.  Or driving down the road.  In a movie theatre.  At a friend’s house.  Visiting with my family.  Something inside of me whispers, “Never again.  He will never be yours again.”  When I hear that, I feel as though my heart is being crushed, and then the lump begins to grow.  A lump that has lodged itself in my throat-one that just won’t seem to go away. 

I put up a facade for everyone. 

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“He’s a jerk and I hate him.”

But I’m not fine.  I don’t know when I’ll be okay.  He’s not a jerk, and I don’t hate him.  I will never hate him.  I wish I did.  This would be so much easier if I could hate him.  If he would do something to make everything that I feel for him just go away.  Erase it.  I don’t want to love him anymore.  I don’t want to think about him anymore.  I just want it all to go away.  All of it.  But the thought of all of those things leaving me makes me anxious.  I begin to panic at the thought of forgetting things about him and our time together.  Those are memories I never want to lose.  I’m afraid of forgetting so many things.  As if letting those memories will lessen what it all meant.  Will just make this whole thing into a small part of my life.  But it doesn’t feel small, I don’t ever want it to be small.

There are random memories that roll through my mind… 

• We made paper airplanes the night we met.  We had a little contest in the bar parking lot to see who’s would go the furthest.  I lost.  I still have the airplanes.  I can’t quite make myself get rid of them.  Not just yet.
• Our first kiss was in his pick up truck.  We’d been playing a board game and the winner got to choose what he or she wanted.  I threw the game.  He wanted our first kiss to be in his truck.  He had never kissed anyone in the truck, and he wanted me to be his first. 
• There were 3 more kisses that night: one while I was sitting on his lap after having lost the rematch.  Another kiss when we took a walk at the local college campus at 1:00 in the morning.  The final kiss for the night was in the middle of the street in front of my car.
• Our last kiss was in his house.  On a Tuesday night, after midnight when I was leaving him to come home.  I didn’t know that it would be our last one.  I wish I did, I would have remembered it better.  I know he wouldn’t have been wearing a shirt.  I know I had my hair pulled back. 
• He has a smattering of freckles on the right side of his torso.  He joked that there are 3 that form the Bermuda Triangle of Love (BTOL).  Once you’re in, there’s no escaping-you’re lost forever.  But it’s not those freckles that I find myself missing.  There’s a freckle on the left side of his lower lip.  This one was my favorite.  This was the one that I greeted with a kiss whenever I saw him, and the hardest one to kiss goodbye. 
• Sometimes I would sing to him.  When we’d go to bed at night, and he would kiss me, I woud whisper into his mouth.  This always made him smile-he found it endearing.  When I hear the songs I would sing to him, I can’t help but wish he were with me.  And I think, “just one more song.”
• The fist time I heard “Everything” (Buck Cherry) we were in his bedroom.  It was dark out, and the blinds were up.  I was standing in the doorway of his closet.  He leaned me up against the right side of the door frame, and he kissed me.  Things began to escalate.  As he reached for me, he realized that the neighbors could see into the window.  I didn’t want to stop.  The song had ended it and “Let it Die” (Foo Fighters) was playing.
• The night he told me he loved me was a Thursday.  We were in my bedroom and I knew he was going to tell me.  I had known all week that it was coming, and something had happened earlier in the day that led me to believe that he would tell me that night.  I played dumb.  I told him I would never say it until he said it first.

And the bad stuff?  The night that I cried myself to sleep because I felt so lost.  The anxiety from having to talk one more time about something he was insecure about.  The arguements about Un-boyfriend.  The way he looked at me when I packed all my things at his house.  All of that I can forget.  Just erase it from my memory.  Make it never have existed.  Leave me with only the good things.  That’s all I want.  Just the good things, and that freckle.

How long does it take to memorize the lines of someone’s body?  How long does it take to forget those same lines? 

Never again.  He will never be yours again.

I’m fine.

I’ll be okay.