I Wish You Would Stay, But I Know That You Won’t
I wish I was the girl that everyone turned around to look at when she walked in the room. It’s such a petty thing to want, but when you’re only trying to get one person’s attention, you have to cast a very, very wide net. If I could hold everyone’s gaze, then I could probably hold yours. If I were a model, so much of what I said would be so much more compelling. The mistakes I made would have been just that much less of a death sentence. Almost any character flaw is rendered bearable, if not vaguely adorable, when possessed by someone who is also in possession of a stunning beauty.
The first apology I wrote to you — the first of the dozens that I never sent — was written when I still imagined that this would all blow over. I thought that I couldn’t hurt people the way I had been hurt, that I wouldn’t lose someone who would go from lover, to enemy, to complete stranger. And though we were still in the enemy stage back then, I somehow knew that it would be the stranger phase that would cut the most acutely. There would be a time when we would pass each other and pretend that we didn’t even see the other one, and that would be for the best, and I never wanted that day to come.
It has come, a thousand times over. And I have thought of inviting you to coffee one day, person to person, just to settle it all once and for all. My friends might…
