(un)Anniversary.

It was two years ago today. I'd forgotten. But there are certain rituals that take place the same time every year in the life of a student, and this pseudo-Spring cleaning is one of them. And while throwing out all the papers I'd spent too many hours writing and reading, I stumbled across it. The box. I'm not unusual for having it - at least that's what I tell myself. I think most people who spend a quarter of their life with someone have some mementos from the relationship. And as I was fingering the dog-eared pages of the notes I'd held where he professed his unending love, I was all too cruelly reminded that, exactly two years ago, it ended.
I tried to fight back the tears, but I couldn't keep myself from reading those letters, smiling just the faintest at his misspelling, but feeling the sting of remembering when I believed he meant the things he expressed in those notes. And everything he said.
And then there's the ring. Of course, it would be better if he'd had terrible taste. Unfortunately, he didn't:


Sapphire for his birthstone, diamonds because he knew I'd never owned them, white gold because he knew I never wore yellow. I watched myself slip the ring back on my finger, unable to stop myself.
And I read the note, still stained with tears from the first time I read it, where he writes "I would be a lucky man if I were all you needed." The irony is, by the time I was ready to admit he was, I was no longer all he needed. So it goes.

Worst of all, I feel silly that running across these things on a day like today, while my iTunes, which clearly has evil intentions, decides to play a song whose chorus is "she stole my future when she took you away," still upsets me. Not as much as it used to. I didn't do anything drastic. But I'd be lying if I said there were no tears. Shed not so much for the lost relationship, but in a way, mourning the person he used to be. The people we were together. None of those people exist anymore. Of course, the girl he loved once doesn't exist anymore, either... but I was so ready to try and continue being that girl that I was blindsided when he said he didn't love me anymore.

All this is just therapy - me working through something that I can't really explain to anyone because, well, in a way, my life now is a result of what happened between us. And it's not all bad. I have a good life. I am, for the most part, happy. So is he. But that doesn't mean I don't miss how happy I used to be with him. And I can't believe anything but that he was happy with me, too. At least for a while.
But, again, in the words of the illustrious Mr. Vonnegut: so it goes.

Happy Anniversary. And while I'm on the subject of nostalgia, here's a poem I wrote a month before the end.

He painted my canvas with
careless ease. His eyes
confined the blue that was drained
from my sky.

Painting the sunrise with
violet colors and tawdry reds
he had drawn up
from my body.

Then in winter with
glove-covered fingers he
tended to the trees, giving each
snow from my tears.

White-washed each season
this canvas which he
never could make flawless
beauty out of me.