Bubba

I don't know how to feel most days.
Sometimes I think that it is better not to feel at all.
It is easier to feel numb, than to think about you not being here.
And thinking about you makes me feel like an imposter.
Much like the imposter that I felt like when you were alive.
It's all too much most days and I can't always wrap my head around it.
I like to think that we could've been more than we were.
I missed the opportunity to take care of you,
even though we both knew how difficult we were together.
We weren't always difficult together,
but you could never see me as the part that completed you.
And we loved one another.
I don't know how we loved one another for so long.
Every other failed relationship.
Every other heartache.
Every moment that brought us back to one another.
Somehow gave me pause.
Even years now that you have been gone, you give me pause.
Along with questions and doubts about who we really were.
Were you mine and was I yours?
Was I fooling myself into believing you could ever love someone as inconsequential as me?
I didn't look like the other boys that you liked.
I didn't talk to you like the other boys and I didn't cower down.
I don't think that I ever intentionally tried to hurt you.
And I waited like a dog, for you.
I always felt so mixed up and so confused by the little scraps you gave me.
Why wasn't I good enough to love you, when so many others failed?
These are the things that I beat myself up over everyday.
Since you died, I haven't been able to reconcile every fucked up scenario in my head.
I think about our last conversation.
I remember you told me to come home. To be with you.
And I remember how good it sounded, but also how conflicted I was.
I was already in the ending of my last happily ever after and I thought there was still hope.
And again you said to me "I love you, you love me...tell him to fuck off and just come home to me."
I know that is how it sounded in my head and I am sure that the conversation was probably not as I paraphrased.
But you were home to me at one time.
You were the warmth of love and fidelity (and I use that word loosely) that I wanted to be part of indefinitely.
And yes, you scared me many times.
I couldn't quite understand how your mind worked.
It was taxing, always trying to figure out your wild mood swings and I thought that surely something would settle you down.
If only...
If only you could see just how much I love(d) you and understood how much I wanted to help you and make you feel better and make all of that pain go away.
Fuck....I would've given anything to make you feel just a smidge better than all of the medications you were on.
I only wished that love could've done that.
I wish that commitment could have given you the things that you so rightly deserved.
If only somehow, something that I could've said or did/done, could've made you feel better....
These are the things that torment me.
I feel a figment of you in my dreams.
Over the years, pieces of you get so scrambled, that what we had and what we were are no longer coherent.
Sometimes I hear you calling my name.
Sometimes I smell your cologne.
Sometimes I feel your arms wrapped around me.
Sometimes I hear you say that you love me.
And then I wake up.
Honestly, if I wasn't so afraid of the afterlife or if I even beleived in an afterlife....I would rush gung ho to find you.
I would go to the ends of time to find you and prove to you that you were loved more than you ever let me love you.
I dunno...
If you were still alive today you would probably consider me your good friend.
I would probably still be trying to figure out why you keep me at a distance.
Part of me believes that you and I might have rekindled that magic.
That spark that we shared, so many nights ago when we first kissed.
I remember that look in your eyes.
I was dressed up and going out, because you couldn't be bothered with me.
You stopped me.
Asked me "where do you think you're going"
And you pulled me into you.
You kissed me like I had never been kissed before and in that moment the world stopped.
We both felt it and we both knew what it meant.
All the bells and whistles.
All the things that pulse and explode when two people who were meant to be together happened.
For years it was something that we always managed to come back to.
So now, when I think about all the progress that has been made,
I think about how you would have asked me to marry you.
Or maybe how I would have asked you to marry me.
I think about the vows that I would have written for you.
I think about the large group of friends and family (who would've attended) at our wedding.
I imagine how the words would've sounded, how repeating
"Jason, from the moment I met you time stood still. You captivated me with your dazzling smile. I remember our first meeting, but could barely remember a word that we shared. I remember how you first kissed me and how you took my breath away. And I remember thinking how lucky I was/am to have met a man who sees me as his shiny happy ending. I spent a long time thinking about the words I would say to you on our special day and the main point of everything that I feel is this: I would spend my whole life loving you if you will let me, as you husband, your best friend, and as your soulmate."
And then of course you would give me some amazing vows in return and the person officiating our wedding would have us face one another to repeat our traditional wedding vows.
You would slip a ring on my finger.
I would slip a ring on your finger.
Then we would hear " I now pronounce you Husband and Husband; you may now kiss"
And we would illuminate the room with that spark that we shared.
It's a happy thought that I have created in my head.
It makes me ruminate.
And though I don't always think of you like I always did, you are always with me in ways that I can never truly explain.
This coming from a man who has given his heart away so many times, to a man who has broken so many hearts in the past (including mine), should give you pause.
I miss you.
I miss the you that made me feel like a loving man.
I miss the me that made you feel like a loving man.
I miss us.
I won't ever stop missing us and even though I try to get away from it, I won't ever stop thinking about you.
The man who stole my heart.
There is nothing in the world that I wouldn't give to hold you in my arms or to feel the touch of your lips on mine.