We broke each other’s hearts.

That is probably the most fair and accurate way to succinctly put into words the neverending cacophony of events that comprised my romantic life until this point. I can tell the story as a victim, as the remorseful antagonist, as the grown up version of a dumb kid.

The worst part is it’s not an original story at all. Whenever I get deluded enough to think that I am a hopelessly complex and interesting person, I only have to think back to sitting across a shit brown library table across from an indignant and silent Sean waiting for an answer. I realize that the story of my life and the story of probably everyone else’s are moments like that, moments where simple truths can’t be put into simple words, or any words at all. Seconds, or weeks, or months where you can recognize potential and do nothing to change the inevitable failures of your own life, and that fault is rarely in your stars and nearly always in yourself. In an incapability for change, or of honesty or communication. I haven’t encountered anything more painful than recognizing a missed opportunity to alter the course of your future, or at least, missing the glimpse of what it could be, if human beings weren’t so fucked up in the first place. It’s to me proof of the non existence of God. Why, given infinite power of creation, would you choose to make this?

In the green and brown faux woodpanelled abomination of a high school library, I refused to admit fear. I was afraid, sometime I still refuse to admit or succumb to in my life in general. I certainly wasn’t going to admit it when he masked his fear with open hostility. Heartlessness was left as the only choice for both of us and we pursued it with restless abandon. Breaking up and staying present in each other’s lives lead to the most paranoid and self-centered viewpoint I hope I will ever have.  I can still to this day turn even any innocent action of Sean’s into something malicious. Maybe all women are trained to do that by movies and friend’s thoughtless attempts to make us feel better. At least for my sanity, Sean admitted to purposely trying to deconstruct my life. It makes me feel better that my perception of him purposely subverting my longest standing friendships was completely accurate, but I am smart enough to know that there are no easy answers to anything. Every simple answer is most likely so oversimplified that it might as well be wrong. And so I am stuck, halfway between learning a lesson and knowing that in the long history of the world and the long history of me and Sean, nothing can be put in a nutshell, categorized, or easily referenced.

I’ve only recently come to understand why every few years he reaches out to me for answers. It’s tempting to think that someone else could fix everything. If coating ourselves in the saliva of other people hasn’t worked yet, and I can safely say that it hasn’t worked for me, then we must only be able to fix each other, but when it comes to me, and him, and us, we are both utterly incapable of telling the truth and unwilling to accept “I don’t know” as answer. We are unwilling to risk opening up the wounds that are scabbed over but not healed, unwilling to create more bruises.