Week 7: Everything I Wish I Could Say

In all honesty, this week has been too much for me. Perhaps if it was a rough week in the midst of calm weeks this post would be different, but it is a rougher week in the midst of rough weeks, and so this post will be a poem/monologue featuring everything I wish I could say to all the people I grew up with in my small, evangelical town. These are the people who, in all honesty, I think about daily. The ones who I watch exist from a distance, always wondering if they’re truly happy, and always questioning why we stopped being friends. They are the people who I compare my life to, who my current state of chosen singleness stands in starkest contrast to. They are the people who, on weeks like this one, that I wish I could have one final conversation with.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way:

You vs. me,

Living lives more apart than together.

We were supposed to choose one another. 

To be in each other’s lives,

To count one another as friends for forever. 

Those were the promises we made.

That was the plan,

That was how it was supposed to be at the end of the day.

It’s hard to say which one of us left first.

We could debate it endlessly.

I abandoned a town and a church.

I abandoned an ideology that brought me more grief than goodness.

But, trust me when I say that leaving you was never in my plan.

You were not supposed to be abandoned in the midst of my becoming.

Our connection was not meant to be a casualty of my journey - 

At the time, I couldn’t have imagined anything worse.

My exit was far from graceful,

Leaving more questions than answers.

I imagine it hurt you.

I imagine that I hurt you.

I imagine my decision redefined what you thought “us” would look like. 

I imagine it was hard to be associated with me,

To have my reputation tarnish yours.

I imagine that you felt I had changed overnight,

Like everything I’d professed before had been a lie.

I imagine that, in your eyes, I was a wolf who had finally removed the wool.  

And so, now our lives exist on separate planes.

While you’re getting married, 

I’m exploring new cities.

While you’re having babies,

I’m having drinks. 

While you’re sitting in your family’s pew,

I’m building new ones. 

In spite of this divergence,

I have this hope that maybe, one day, our paths will cross again.

Maybe we will stop and talk about why we stopped talking,

About how you unfollowed me and I stopped messaging you,

About how our journeys have been nothing like we’ve expected, 

But they’ve been exactly what we needed. 

Maybe that will happen, just this once.