sometimes people leave.

I think that maybe for most of my life, I’m going to be the one to leave, so as to avoid the feeling of being left behind. I’m learning that people come into your life and may not stay for a very long time, but they will always give you something to remember or to hold onto. I don’t know what to hold onto just yet, but I know that I like collecting people, I guess. Even now, going through my college things post quarantine, I’ve realized just how much stuff I have from different people in my life. I keep everything, because everything means something. But, I think I mostly keep everything because I’m terrified of forgetting.

In between New York, Boston and California, I’ve collected some people. I like to think I keep each of them, or maybe the spirit of each of them in a little spacious jar in my head, on a shelf somewhere between a gland and a nerve (or whatever the fuck’s in a head). So far, I think that there are some people that have left my life forever, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to see them again. I had a crush on this boy when I moved to California in my second year of high school. I don’t know where he is now, but in my head he’s right where I left him. He still wears oversized 80’s jackets and he still has curly hair, and I still hardly know him but also know him far too well for just a couple of months. I don’t know where he is now, but I’m glad he was there for the time that he was.

There are some people that are never going to leave my collection, no matter how much I want them to. I always thought of my high school relationship as my “first love” but it never really was. How could it be? I didn’t know how to handle love. All I knew was that I was young, and people were dating people and the first boy to ask me on a date received a girlfriend, and the girlfriend was me, based on no actual substance. I was determined to learn all of him. He told me all of his sad stories and all of his shitty memories and of course, about his mother. She passed away when he was a child and at the time, age 16, I never really thought about death. I had been fortunate enough to grow up living a fairly blessed life without attending any funerals and two weddings (both for the same uncle). So, when he told me in such detail about his dead mother, I couldn’t help but feel this immense sadness cloud over me. It loomed throughout the entire time I was dating him, but I tended to ignore it when I was with him. Then I moved to Boston for school, and I realized how sad I actually was.

Nowadays, I hear about Boston everywhere and every time I hear it I think of the time in my life when I was there. I think about my few college friends I met there and acquiring my first job and speed walking home at midnight after work, because just two seconds of cold Boston winter air is enough to make you regret ever going outside. I think about going on walks after work with someone special, knowing I wouldn’t be in bed until around two because I just couldn’t stop talking to them. I think about going back home for winter break and realizing that I was different. I wasn’t high school me anymore, I was Boston me, and Boston me had grown a semi thick skin because of the cold and I realized how shitty my high school boyfriend was.

So I broke up with him over the phone, which I wouldn’t have done if I knew how to drive.

Sometimes I wonder if I did it right. I didn’t wonder about it right after or even for the month prior but now, I do. He wasn’t good to me, and when I found out he wasn’t good to me, I hated him. I still do, but not so much. I want him to live, at least, and I hope my break up words weren’t too cold. Anyway, he was a person in my life and he took up a whole year of it. The nice parts were… not memorable. I have some memories but most of them have that shadow that I had over me when I was dating him, and it’s hard to access those memories. I’d rather not, anyway but they’re nice to have. I’m a collector after all.

Then, love happened. I thought what I experienced in high school was love, but it never really was. It was a big, giant something, but it certainly wasn’t love. Love happened when I went back to Boston, which is why every time Boston is mentioned in anything, my heart tugs a bit. Love was intense and strong, at least for me. Love was being so attracted to someone that it was always hard to look away. Love was having the longest conversations about nothing at all. Love was hard to feel at times, because the person I decided to love was very, very sad. Love was picking him off the floor and trying to get him to hold on. Love was wondering how often he had wanted to die. Love was hoping that what I was doing was helping, but knowing that it wasn’t.

Love was wishing I could make him better, and knowing I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.

I felt love when he got drunk and high at the same time and I was too scared to be either. It was when I felt his hand rest on my lower back as he pulled me in to dance. I felt it all spiral around me and he began to fall, as he continued to say, “please, I don’t want to sink.” And love didn’t let him sink. I wouldn’t let him.

I remember when I came home from a night out with friends around 3 am, crying after getting off the phone with him knowing that love was over. Not for me, of course, but for him. At first, I didn’t even know if he loved me the entire time that I loved him. I hoped it wasn’t true, and looking back on it now I know that it isn’t true. I know that for those couple of months we had together, he loved me.

He’s better now, or happier, I should say. The other day he thanked me for our relationship. I asked why, and he said that it was the only relationship he had that wasn’t “crazy.” I chuckled at that. That made me feel happy.

Anyway, I came home at 3 am and my mother came into my room. She saw me crying and of course she knew. I remember her saying that she never expected me to fall in love so soon, but how could she not know? Love is easy for me, or at least, I make it easy.

Now, I’m back in California. My time in Boston was brief and weird, but wonderful at the same time. I miss it sometimes, but most of the time, especially in the winter when it’s 70 degrees here and 2 degrees there, I’m happy with my decision. The person I loved isn’t completely gone, but he is in a way. The version that I knew is gone. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Sometimes people leave and that’s terrifying. In my mind these memories are pristine and crisp, they’re real. But they’re just memories. I’ve only experienced them once and I will never experience them again. The thought of that is terrifying, but that’s okay. It’s okay to be scared.

Sometimes, people leave and that’s okay.