I suppose it may have been his smile. It’s almost as if from that entire night, that’s what stuck. The way it grew in such a way that made you feel so blessed to have been the cause or even to have witnessed. He was everything. He was all. In his presence, he was everything that really mattered.  He was all I could ever imagine living for. When I think of it now, maybe I should have taken a step back. But I know very well that in our moments together, all I ever intended to take were large strides forward.

If anything, at this point I’d be so bold as to call myself a victim. I wasn’t myself. Every look he gave, every breath he took, every laugh we shared would cloud every sense of reality. I had lost it. Everything was lost. I know now that that’s exactly what he wanted. He would take until there was simply nothing left. Just a naked young girl, submersed in a fantasy that just didn’t add up. It didn’t matter how many hours, days or weeks he would be gone without a call. The moment the phone rang and I heard that voice on the other line, none of that mattered. There I was again with nothing but my naïve delusion.

I just wanted to be the one. I didn’t see what he did to me as wrong. I didn’t see it as unfair. In fact, his inadequacies are what fueled me.  I wanted to pick him up and show him the way. In the end I wanted to be the one there for him. Of course a small part of me knew he couldn’t have been faithful but I just wanted to hear that he was mine. That no matter where he went, or what women was moaning on his basement couch, that he thought of me at the end of the night. I wanted to be his rock in his unstable life of secrets and lace.

Fortunately all fantasies must eventually end, and it did. In the still of a close friends house I picked up the phone and forced the words I never wanted to say. I lied to justify and tread carefully but end with an open door. I told him it was only for a little while, only until we figure ourselves out. Nothing was permanent, only temporary, and this was only until we could figure out just what it is we want. I found that in time he would be true to this message. While I lay shaking and crying on my bathroom floor, he lay in another woman’s bed. I would later realize, he was hers all along.

With the realization that he never belonged to me, I slowly began to loath myself. I began backtracking, circling back, trying to figure out how things could have possibly landed in my favor. Had I caused this much hurt to myself? Was I to blame?  If I had let him break me down just a little farther, just a little harder, would it of been my bed he found comfort in? Soon enough it became less about what I didn’t do and more about what I could do. I became desperate, writing letters in the dim glow of my bedside lamp. Letters that I would then send to him in hopes that just maybe, he’ll come back. Each time I’d be sure those words would end my pain but they never did.

In time I began to realize that it wasn’t love that kept me crying at his feet but rather a sense of security. I started to see that without him, I had let everything around me fall apart. My friends began to worry and they started to notice more than ever what I was putting myself through. But it didn’t matter how many late night talks we had or how many times they suggested I eat, only I could pull myself out of it.  I was so foolish as to let myself get wrapped up in him. It was my fault for leaning my entire life upon an unstable young boy with a deceiving smile. With this knowledge I began to heal. Slowly, I found a sense of strength in myself. Sure, I’ll admit that when we exchange smiles from time to time, I still feel that undeniable pull to fall back into who I was with him. But now, I have the ability to keep our relationship as simple as a smile could ever be, and the nerve to keep on walking.