I keep thinking about how differently I occupied the same road coming home.
On the way there, I was making room for you. Letting myself imagine that, for once, someone might actually mean the things they said. On the way back, I couldnβt stand the sound of anything. Every song felt fucking stupid. Every mile gave me another chance to remember something you promised and feel embarrassed for believing it.
There is something degrading about arriving with sincerity and realizing you should have brought less of yourself.
I hate that you have made me ashamed of something I liked about myself. That I would go that far. That I could still get excited. That beneath all this suspicion, there was enough tenderness left to take someone at their word.
And you had so much to say before I got there.
Where did all of it go? How do you speak with that much certainty and then stand in front of someone who believed you with so little to offer? I would have respected an honest limitation. I could have done something with the truth. Instead, I spent my time arranging myself around promises you apparently felt no responsibility to remember.
I have never watched my regard for someone collapse so completely. I kept looking at you, trying to find the person I had been talking to.
By the drive home, I was angrier with myself for still looking.
You should have let me stay a stranger. I had a much higher opinion of you.