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Valentine's Day post 2025
This all happened years ago when I was younger. The first part.
I once fell for this girl really hard. Thought about her all the time. Like, minute-to-minute. I couldn't eat sometimes, I was so enamored. I used to live my days wondering what she was doing, as if every space she filled were magical. Was she eating? With whom? Was some guy making her laugh? Would it be okay to send her a short message? Sometimes I would then send one on inspiration--a joke, a link to music, something else inane--then ride the buoyant wave of anticipation for a while, until I got no answer and no answer, and eventually my face burned with shame at my own fey sentimentality. Was I not a man? Had I not been raised to be tougher than this weak sniveller? God damn it.
Just being around her, though, was a thrill I had without questioning it, something I felt without having asked for it or willed it. I sometimes saw her from the bus, me riding, her out there walking and my heart skipped--literally I could feel that palpitation. She was a good deal younger than I was--tall, willowy, sure of herself. Beautiful. Her hair was in a popular style at the time, though rare now. When I did see her, time stood still. They say you should plan dates and do fun things--and it is true, you should, you must--but to me, truly just sitting on a bench with her was better than sailing to the Bahamas (which yes, I've done), if she were there on the bench with me. Just staring into air. All very corny. Pathetic even. What I'd warn anyone not to feel. The stuff of saccharine pop.
She left, though, and like a teenage girl I spent my time pining over her. Tried not to show it, did show it when drunk. My closest drinking buddy at the time was sympathetic but couldn't relate and told me just to move on, move on. Cease all communication. I tried. It worked for awhile. Still I'd wonder where she was. I could even stir a perfectly benign moment like waiting for a bus into an existential crisis of jealousy by simply imagining: "What if right now she is with some guy?" I ruined my own day many times by doing this.
I always wondered what it would be like to know her forever, and I actually envied her family--that they might know her for so many years, whereas I would almost surely be forgotten, and soon. It took a lot of alcohol and sinking into shallow self-indulgence to shut her out of my mind.
Then this and that happened and I married her and I left her sleeping this morning with her feet sticking out of the covers.
"Life is a trick. Life is a kitten in a sack." --Anne Sexton
Did you at least tickle them as you were leaving the bedroom?
It was early. I let her sleep.
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