Month: July 2021

I wish my biggest regret was not taking the time to learn to love you.
I wish my biggest regret was walking away too soon.
I wish I wondered what-if.

I wish I had treated you like shit.  I wish I had cheated on you.  I wish I had lied to you.

I wish it was you installing security cameras at every angle of your property.  I wish it was you going through 573 surveillance video clips before bed each night.  I wish it was you filling out RO after RO, and running down to the courthouse after work to make it before they close.  I wish it was you that had to explain to our friends and family that I’m drunk and willfully off my meds, unwilling to seek the proper help, and wreaking havoc on those around me whenever and however I saw fit.

I’m sick of talking about you.  I’m sick of hearing your name.  I’m sick of writing your name on restraining orders.  I’m sick of worrying that you’re going to show up at my house.  I’m sick of worrying you’re going to harm my animals.  I’m sick of being worried you’re going to put water in my gas tank, or nails in my tires.  I’m scared you’re going to try to compromise my sense safety further than you’ve carelessly destroyed it so far.

My biggest regret in life is responding to your text message in 2020.  My biggest regret is letting you know where I live.  My biggest regret is telling you my real name. My biggest regret is letting you get to know me.

You didn’t deserve to know me.  You didn’t deserve to know my friends, my family, my coworkers, or my animals.

You are my single regret.

June was a tough month for me. I’d say I went through a lot, but I managed to stay in survival mode the entire time, and feelings don’t seem to exist so much when you’re just going through the motions of your own life, week after week.

“Where’d all the bruises on your legs come from?” my mom asked me two summers ago, during one of the biggest transitional phases to date.
“I don’t know.” I told her, “I’ve just been drinking a lot.”
“Ugh. This is my least favorite version of you.” She told me on the porch of Tim’s guest house one morning.
“I’m just going through a lot.” I reminded her as I avoided her glance. “It’ll be over soon.”

A few weeks ago I was crying in your sister’s backyard.
“When you find the right guy, you’ll know.” She told me. “You have to stop wasting your time on the relationships you know aren’t right.”
“I just don’t think I’ll ever love anyone more than I loved your brother,” I told her. “I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“He loved you a lot, too.” She told me, “That was obvious.”

Two weeks after I moved out, I asked to come back to pick up a laundry basket of clothes I’d forgotten in the garage. I got there after work, and used the garage door opener on my visor when I got there. I put the basket in my trunk, and then used the stairs in the garage to go up to the house. The first thing I saw was a garbage bag of photos I’d wiped off the fridge door in unmitigated anger, magnets and all. I’d thrown the photos into the trash bin in the garage when I’d left. Our first photos together of when you would visit me in the bay on the weekends. Photos of brunch with your parents. Photos of our camping trips. Photos of every holiday together. The photo Jessica took of us, slouched over and asleep in each others arms on her couch on your 37th birthday.
“You’re keeping these photos?” I scoffed with a twisted face.
“Yeah,” you told me, without looking up from the dinner you were preparing for yourself.
“You don’t wanna just pretend none of this ever happened?” I asked, sourly.
“No. I don’t.”

I saw you a couple weeks ago for the first time in two years. I wanted my anxiety to overwhelm me. I wanted my nerves to make it hard to breathe. I wanted to get so nervous I barfed. I waited and I waited and I waited, and as your truck pulled into the driveway I didn’t feel a single fucking thing. You let yourself into my back gate, and I wish I had been so nervous I started rambling about nonsense. I wish I had been so nervous I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. We stood there, 3 feet away from one another for the first time since I moved out, and I couldn’t feel a fucking thing. I chased after your beautiful blue-gray eyes trying to get them to impale me, and you wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.

Recently I came across copies of the letters I wrote to you. I’d stuffed them into the top drawer of one of your cabinets the day I moved out. I’d been living part time out of my car, and part time in one of the guest rooms for a week at the time I’d written them. I’d already signed the lease to my new place.
“I found your letters.” You text me, a few weeks later. “Probably the most honest thing you’ve ever written.”

I had so many favorite things about our love story. The way we met. The way we reconnected. The way we immediately signed a lease together, and neither of us had any second thoughts on it. The way we pushed each other to not only pursue our dreams and hobbies, but turn them into a means of financial income. The way we built our house together. The way we could just exist with one another without any doubts, without any anxiety, without much work. My absolute favorite memory though, was waiting during the evenings for you to come home from work. Hearing your truck pull into the driveway, and dropping whatever I was doing. Before you had a chance to even close the car door behind you, I’d already wrapped myself around you, and we’d just hug for a few minutes. We’d just stand in our driveway squeezing each other. Relieved just to finally be together again after a day of being apart.

How could something so pure, be so tragically irreparable.

It was 10:00PM by the time I finally left the house. My stomach twisted with anxiety, which seemed silly, but it honestly was such a relief to finally feel anything at all.

The nostalgia flooded my mind as I turned the last corner, and I immediately realized the entire town was already here too. The bar parking lot was crawling with cars also looking for a spot. The empty lot on the other side of the highway was lined with trucks parked any way they’d fit. Out of habit, I pulled in near my regular parking spot and laughed out loud when I immediately found an empty spot. I quickly pulled in and a moment later realized I had just parked right next to a blue Chevy. “Oh my god,” I scoffed as I finished my drink. “What year is it.”

I met up with Kelsie who had parked at exactly the same time as me, and we rounded the corner of the bar to be met with a line of people against the front of the building. “Whoa,” I said out loud. “I’ve never seen a line out front before.”
“Sorry,” said the girl at the front door. “We are at capacity, we’ll let you in as people leave.”
Kelsie slipped in the front door to use the restroom with a promise to be right back, while I hopped in the line at the end of the building to wait.

It had been maybe 10 whole seconds when I saw the new bar manager come around the corner, obviously on a smoke break. “Hey girl!” I called out to her, not knowing if she’d actually remember me from my two-beer pit stop a few days before.
“What’s your name again?” She asked me on her way to the parking lot.
“Micaela!”
“Come with me,” she said as she headed to the back gate of the bar. The live music got louder along with the roar of voices. She unlatched the back gate, and opened it enough for us both to slip in.
“DUDE, YOU’RE SO COOL.” I told her as she latched the gate behind us.
“You’re welcome!” She smiled, “I gotta get behind the bar.”

I dodged through the swarm of cowboys, somehow all in long sleeves even though it still felt like 100 degrees out. Through the crowd, through the back door to the bar, when I finally saw Kelsie’s red hair standing in line for the bathroom still.
“HEY GIRL,” I smiled excitedly. “I’ll be at the bar!”
“How’d you get in already?” She asked me, laughing.

I had just made it to the front room of the bar when I felt an arm slip around my waist and pull me back. In the split second before I turned around, I already knew who it was. “Hey!” He smiled his normal perfect smile. “Glad things are back to normal!” He squeezed me tight and then immediately let me go.

I slipped in towards the bar, and scanned the room safely below a sea of cowboy hats. Kelsie met up with me soon after, and then Tim passed by again. “I have a tab open!” He called out in passing as we met glances. I put the backs of my hands under my chin, “Thanks!”

We stayed til 2:00AM laughing and dancing and spilling drinks, which is insane; I can’t remember the last time I closed down a bar.

The next afternoon, I was on the phone with my mom. We’d been missing each other’s phone calls for a couple of days already.
“Hellloooo,” I rolled over in bed while answering the phone.
“Oh god.” She said, “You sound hungover.”
I laughed. “The Wrangler reopened last night!”

She filled me in on her new life in Texas, and having just been able to finally move into their house after living out of a hotel and truck for two weeks.

“It was wild,” I told her. “Everything was perfect. I made a bunch of friends, and ran into old friends, and I flirted with everyone, and didn’t spend a dime while I was there.”

She laughed: “Good! Life is good!”

Not to be dramatic but, you saved me.

I remember passing by in the car on the way to his parents’ house.  A homemade casserole or dessert held on my lap.  It was always an hour drive from no matter where we lived, and I never knew the backroads by heart, but I always got so silently excited when he decided to take Grant Line Road back to his hometown.  We’d pass this old wooden bar on the side of the road, in this tiny town that popped up out of what felt like nowhere.  Four corners in bumfuck, which somehow always felt alive in this town that somehow just existed.  The gravel lot of the bar was somehow always full of trucks, the oversized wood door was always open, the inside always packed with cowboy hats.  I’d smile to myself and imagine my world in a parallel universe.

Just a cowgirl from a podunk town.

It’s not that I was unhappy with the life I was living.  It was the happiest, I thought, I’d ever been.  And if we’re speaking of wrangling, my man had done it.  He had shown me what it was like to be loved when I felt like I didn’t deserve it, and he showed me what it was like to be taken care of when I felt like I couldn’t do it for myself.  He was my bestfriend, he was my savior, and he was my future.

But the truth of the matter is that he was sick.  He was sick with a disease that neither of us knew how to address, or communicate about, or manage.  And so we were making it up and making it work the best I could, in the only way I’d figured out so far:
Watching my life from the sidelines with a homemade casserole on my lap.

“I don’t know how I got by without him,” I remember telling Kalista one afternoon.
“You did though,” she reminded me. “And, actually, you did it really well.”

Several years later I’d finally walk into that bar when I was completely lost at sea.  Everything I’d known, everything I thought was my future, had just come to a clamorous and abrupt halt.  I was sad, I was poor, I was lonely, but… no one here knew that.
I could do anything.  I could be anyone.  I could be the happiest I’d ever been.

Just a cowgirl from a podunk town.

I remember working overtime at that shitty job I hated, rushing out the door at 8pm to make sure I got to the bar by 9pm to catch the beginning of the live band.  I remember waking up on the weekends feeling the loneliest I ever had in my life and walking into that bar just to feel like I belonged somewhere.  I remember sitting around that bar waiting for my crush to walk in.  I remember dancing with strangers at the bar, singing with strangers at the bar, making friends from strangers from that bar.  I laughed the loudest in that bar.  I felt the most at home in that bar.  I met the most friends in that bar.  I felt the most like me in that bar.

So, not to be dramatic, but you saved me.