(no subject)
It had been years. Years since the last time you’d spoken to him, even longer since the last time you’d seen his smile. All you could remember of the last time you saw him was the tears streaking down his face as he told you that he couldn’t do this anymore, he couldn’t watch you destroy yourself. You’d watched as he’d gotten into his car and driven away, and for the first week or so you hadn’t even tried to call him. You’d thought that he was going to come back. Of course he’d come back, of course he would, he’d always been there, he’d been your life for so long. He hadn’t, and when you’d finally gotten that fact through your skull it took you another week to get the courage to call him. By the time you did, his number was disconnected.
He disappeared from your life. Even your mutual friends severed their ties with you. You’d had no one. You’d been alone for years after that, losing yourself to your vices and your demons. You’d drunk, and you’d drugged. You’d fucked and you’d fought. You’d done everything you could to get him off your mind, and the memory of his touch off your skin. You’d run for so long that you couldn’t remember what you were running from. It took your mother telling you that she was done for you to get a clue, for you to smarten up and get clean. It had been hell. The detoxing, the sobering up. It had been absolute hell, but you’d done it because you couldn’t lose the last person who cared about you.
Getting clean meant losing another set of “friends”. It meant going back to having nothing and starting all over at the beginning. It meant knowing that you were the lowest you’d ever been, and that every day was going to be a fight to get back to where you wanted to be. It meant longing for him even more as you remembered the days before things got bad, the days where you were happy. Slowly, but surely, you learned how to function. You learned how to have a life, and make a living. You made new friends, friends you could go out to the movies with, friends who would go to meetings with you. You made friends who introduced you to their friends, until one day, you were at a party, very steadfastly sipping on an Arnold Palmer, when you saw him. He was standing there across the room, just staring at you. You didn’t know what to say, or do, so you waved awkwardly, and it was apparently all the sign he needed. He came over and asked how you’d been.
You told the truth. You admitted everything that had happened after he left, and the hell it had been getting to the place you were now. You admitted that you were lonely sometimes, but you were happy, proud of yourself for how far you’d come. You admitted that you missed him still. You waxed poetic about how his bedroom had probably changed, how the paint was probably different because he never could keep it one color for more than six months and it’s been three years. He looks at you with wide eyes while you tell him, and he agrees calmly that it’s changed a few times, but that maybe you should come see it sometime soon. He tells you about how leaving is the most painful thing he’d ever done, but how he’d had too. It had been too hard to watch you ruining yourself.
You take his new number, and you go home knowing that there’s a possibility here. There’s an opportunity you’d never expected yourself to have. You don’t text him first, though. He’d taken your number too, and if he’s serious about wanting you back in his life, you figure he’ll text you. He does before the next morning, asking you how long you’ve been clean. You tell him honestly that it’s been 13 months, three weeks, and five days. He asks you if you ever think about what would have happened if you hadn’t stopped and you tell him honestly that you would have died. You’d had no joy left in living. You tell him that it took your mother giving up on you finally to realize that you needed to really change. You’d noticed it at first with him, of course, but you’d been so hurt and sad that you’d dived headfirst into forgetting him with any substance possible, and it had only made things worse. You’d never forgotten him, not for a day.
A month goes by, then two, then three. You’re texting every day, and you’ve done lunch and dinner dates. You’ve gone out to the movies, and he’s always respectful of not drinking around you. You tell him he doesn’t have to do that for you, that you’re strong enough in your sobriety that others can drink, it doesn’t shake you. He tells you that you matter more to him than some cheap buzz, and that’s when you feel it. This overwhelming sense that you’re back on the path you were always meant for. He kisses you that night, when he drops you off at your apartment, and he asks if he can come in. You tell him you want to wait, until the moment’s right, until you’re both sure that this is where you should be.
You take it easy for the rest of the year, having a few nights together here or there, but you still don’t fool around with him. You want to do it right this time, you want this to be a new beginning in your life, not the same old song and dance. On the anniversary of the night that you’d seen each other for the first time, you bring him back to that friend’s apartment building and up to the rooftop. It’s late, after one of your late night diner dates after your late shift at work. You take out the little ring box you’ve been saving for the past four months for, and when he sees it, his bursts into this sunny smile with his blue-hazel eyes wide, and he nods without you even having to ask. You slip the ring on your finger and you know. You know that this is where you were always supposed to be, this is the person you were always meant to have a life with. You’re finally happy, content in your own skin, and you have such hope for the future that you can’t stop yourself smiling as you kiss him and thank him. You wouldn’t be who you are today without him.