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I do recall, a good while back, we snuck into the circus.
You threw your arms around my neck;
back when I deserved it,
and we were happy. Taylor Swift. We Were Happy.
I don’t really know how we got here.
Okay. That’s a lie. I do know. And now you’ve seen it all, you know too.
You don’t have a good impression of me.
You think I have a very high opinion of myself. You’re not wrong. I work hard, and I excel at everything I’ve turned my hand to. Exams, rugby, university, my job. I care about the way I look, and I know I’m an attractive guy. Hardly a Hemsworth, but good-looking enough to get a second glance at the bar. I care about money, and nice cars and holidays. So shoot me. I don’t have to apologise for wanting a nice life with nice things, not when I’ve worked this hard to get what I want. I don’t happen to think it’s noble to work your arse for fuck all at the end of the month. I happen to think it’s a good thing to get paid what you’re worth- which, in the end, was part of the problem.
When did it get difficult? Everything was so much easier when we were young, even though it felt fraught at the time. High stakes, stolen moments and heightened drama. Long drives with nowhere to go. Holding hands in the cinema when you haven’t figured out how you fit together yet. Adrenaline, Lynx and cheap cider. Hormones and grand, impossible declarations. I’ll never love anyone like I love you. I meant that when I said it, and I know she did too. Every teenager in the history of the world has meant those words more than any others when they’ve uttered them; you never fall in love again like you do when you’re seventeen.
For some reason, it’s important to me that you know that I really did love her.
But then we started growing up, and in amongst it all, I forgot how. And to be fair, so did she. We forgot how to love each other, the way we promised we always would.
You don’t have a very good impression of me.
I understand that, and I can see why. Believe it or not, I know I haven’t always behaved the way that I should. I really tried to hold myself to a higher standard, but it got so hard when I realised I was losing her. In the beginning I really did think it was to him, with his missing leg and his hero status and his stupid fucking coat. It took me a lot longer to realise that it was more than that.
Do you know what it’s like to feel someone falling out of love with you? What it feels like when someone starts disappearing from the life that they share with you- so slowly that you didn’t realise they were leaving until they were already half-way out the door? To have your place in someone’s life replaced. To realise that someone who needed you so much for a while has discovered that they don’t anymore. To realise the life you thought you had has already ended, and you didn’t know it was dead until it was much too late to do anything about it. She was like ghost; there but not. Standing right in front of me, completely intangible.
I hugged her today. I couldn’t help it. I just kept thinking about how it might be the last time I’ll see her, the last time I’ll be close enough to touch her and Christ, but I missed her in that moment. So I stole a hug and even though it was just for a second, she felt more real than she had done in a long, long time. She was warm and solid and there, just us suspended in that second together, and for a tiny moment I was transported back to when things were easy and sweet; back before all the growing up and the trauma and the bad choices. Because it was good.
I know you haven’t got a very good impression of me, but it wasn’t always like this.
Do you want to know what I remember?
The first day she held my hand in the sixth form common room and I felt like a king. She was clever and pretty and a few of my mates fancied her but it was me who’d asked her out; me she’d said yes to. She was holding my hand in front of everyone and laughing at some stupid joke I made, and it really did feel like we ruled that tiny, shabby world for a bit.
Our first date. We were both over-dressed. I wore a shirt to the cinema, for fuck’s sake, and she wore these stupid heels that she kept turning her ankle in. We got dinner at Pizza Express and went to see a film. Afterwards, we managed to get served at a pub in Harrogate. We drank cider and blackcurrant and our unskilled kisses in the back of the taxi heading home were sweet and sticky.
Our sixth-year formal. I found some photos when I was clearing the flat. We looked ridiculous. My tux was a bit too big. Her hair was in some elaborate up-do for the first and only time. I didn’t remember either of us looking stupid though. I remembered us sneaking in a bottle of vodka and sharing it between our mates. I remembered drinking the cheap table wine, filling our glasses almost to the brim. I remembered dancing, laughing, smoking shitty cigars with the lads while the girls giggled, our faces getting steadily greener with the rank fumes.
Weekends visiting each other at university, feeling like it was a seriously adult thing to be doing, getting on a train to visit your girlfriend in another city or going to the station to meet her. Nights out at the student union, hosting a couple of dinner parties and playing at being grown-ups.
And then…. well. You know what happened.
The thing that I’ve never, ever, been able to say is that it was shit for me too, you know? Imagine, for a second, being twenty years old and finding out that someone raped and tried to murder your girlfriend. Imagine knowing that you are completely ill-equipped to help her. I walked around for months with this feeling inside, this burning aching wrenching pain that was impossible to escape from because I knew I was in no way old enough, mature enough, man enough to do anything useful. I was twenty. What the fuck did I know about anything? Clueless, useless, hopeless.
So it’s a shitty excuse, but maybe that’s why things started with Sarah. Sarah didn’t stare off into the middle distance. Sarah didn’t wake up screaming in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat. Sarah didn’t cry and apologise when we tried and tried and tried to have sex. Me and Sarah were what me and Robin should have been, before everything turned to shit.
I was a bastard. An arsehole of the highest order. I’m not proud of it, but I’d also like to meet another twenty-year-old bloke who would have coped any better.
All this is to say, is that he might have her now, he might get to see things that I won’t and have conversations with her that we never got to have, and he might end up being the love of her life and she might end up being his, but there are things that are just mine and hers. Experiences we had together, things that made and broke us. She might tell him all about it. But he won’t know. He wasn’t there. Those are things that he can’t have.
I’m not stupid enough to think that this’ll make any difference in the grand scheme of things. You don’t have a good impression of me. I doubt anything I’ve said has changed that. I don’t expect you to like me. I don’t think I even expect you to believe me. But I did love her. I really loved her. And she loved me, for a bit.
We were happy. I’m sure we were. It wasn’t all like what you saw at the end.
We were happy. That’s all I wanted you to know.