Dear x,
I broke a promise today. But I reckoned it didn’t matter, since you probably wouldn’t remember anymore anyway.
I read the journal that you gave me. The one that you made me promise you that I wouldn't open for 10 years and that was the only reason you’d give it to me. Why 10 years was a promise we believed we could keep, only teenagers who knew little beyond our bedroom walls I’m not sure. But now, it has been 6 and I haven’t spoken to you for almost 1, so I reckoned it didn’t matter and you probably didn’t remember anymore anyway.
I’ve had the chance to do it before, in the years it was tucked away on my bookshelf. All those afternoons when my eyes would drift from my math homework, the moments in between you sleeping on my bed when you were caught dreaming and wouldn’t catch me, the nights I would lie awake as moonlight crept between my skylight curtains. I’ve had a chance even after I broke your heart.
Something was always wrong in our relationship. You had a gravity to you, collapsing the walls I built for myself and drawing promises from me that I couldn’t keep. Too much, too close, trapped. 10 years is forever when you’re only 16, but caught in your orbit of obsession and sadness I lost the ability to say no. But now, we broke up a year ago, so I reckon that it won’t matter, and you won’t remember anymore anyway.
You told me I made you better. You handed me your heart and looked at me impatiently, immediately asking for eternity. I was only 16. 19. 21. The world was spinning, I was spinning, so I blindly grabbed your padlocked feelings and promised not to peek, promised I would be there later.
So for years I did. I kept your sadness closed on a shelf in my home where it would live untouched. It looked different from my other books, a black tattered cover and worn spiral rings standing in contrast to my elementary school yearbooks and family photographs. I didn’t always like how it looked, broken and tempting and different next to my world. But I promised it would be safe, and it always was. Laid to rest, heavy, haunting, even when we moved 300 miles away together.
I wore your anger on my skin. Around my stomach. In my eyes. As I was pulled closer and closer to forever I could feel the metal spirals poking me from the inside, black ink bleeding onto my favorite books and broken words mixing into my memories. The only place that was mine was yours now, too.
Dead weight.
I spent so many years holding your sadness for you, taking up space. I learned that love was locking the burden of others in the deepest and safest untouched places. Hold it. Never ask what is inside. You asked me for a lot of things back after the end of us: clothes, love, money, books, friends. But you never asked for the journal: I reckon you probably forgot, and that it didn’t matter anymore anyway.
So I read the journal. Unceremoniously and impulsively, my hair still wet from the shower dripping onto the carpet, curled in a partially naked ball in the corner of my room. The room was wide. I was small, vulnerable, clean.
You’ve worked so hard to hurt me now. To try and get me back for breaking your heart. And I’m sorry for doing so, but when I read your journal I remember this is how you’ve always been. In pain. And wishing pain upon others. And how naive was I to think I could resolve that.
10 years meant forever when we said it. It hasn't been 10 years since you gave me the journal, but it has been 10 years since the things you wrote. Seeing your words now, I know you have always been and will always be the same. Forever. I wanted to help you. But your resentment was insidious, bleeding and raw through ink. Funny, how quickly your love for me contorted into that same rage I saw on those journal pages. If I had read it earlier, maybe I would have seen it coming. Or maybe I would have been too scared of you to push you away.
Reading the journal, I remember holding your sadness, and that if I were to ever have that space for myself, I had to let you go. I always remembered. And it always mattered. Even when I broke my promises.
Anyway,
Skye