I layed on my bed with the notebook sprawled open across my lap. I was playing aimless with the fringes I had torn from it’s binding, wadding the scraps together. I laughed and remarked on how I was making paper dinosaurs as that’s what they looked like to me.
There’s never been anything typical about us.
You know my secrets and I think you hung the moon. We laugh together and talk about the adventures we’ll have when we see each other again. I’ve known you so long we’ve become perfect friends, I see you so little we could almost be perfect strangers. But every time I get a moment with you, it’s just like nothing has changed. It’s like days and months and sometimes even a year haven’t happened, like time froze while we were 1500 miles apart.
Until today, now every moment will change. Every time I see you will be different, every time we talk the words will be stranger then before, the letters loosely stringing themselves together to create fumbled words that will settle on the surface. Yes, everything is different now.
I couldn’t understand why you did what you did, until I too had to do it. I thought you were selfish and it made me bitter, confused, and hurt. But you weren’t, were you? Everything you did was for me, so I could grow and live and experience life away from you. And without that experience, I don’t think I could have found the strength to face this trial now.
I wanted to hold on to you so tightly because I was terrified of letting go. I just thought that maybe if I could pretend I didn’t feel the way I do, I could fool myself into making it go away. That I could care for you selflessly, instead of selfishly. But the four letter difference in those words, makes all the difference. And now here we are.
I had to let you go because I had to do what’s best for you. I had to clench my teeth to hold in the tears as I told you this is good-bye. For today, and tomorrow and next week, and God forbid, maybe forever. I had to rip out my heart to lay it on an alter of consuming fire, to let the one who loves me most know, that no price is too great.
I once heard it said that you mean more to me then being with you. You always have, you always will. So as we sat there in silence, there were only a few words that made any sense.
“I can’t take it back and you can’t make it better.”
And we hung up.
Were there once paper dinosaurs there were now just three separate shreds of paper. There would never be paper dinosaurs again, everything is different now.
