a bridge

ph: Emma Hartvig

It’s odd how every year seems to go faster as you get older. Here I am, almost a year later feeling blind sighted by the entire 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8765 hours, 525,600 minutes, and 31,556 seconds that made up this year. Amazing how you become a blip in someones life after they meant the world to you.

Sometimes I consider myself a bridge. I’ll meet a new guy and sometimes the very first time we’ll speak I’ll hear the sentence “you’re different than any other girl I’ve talked to before.” Something along those lines always seems to arise often in the course of the friendship, relationship, or simply conversation. It’s something I should be thankful for, a compliment, as some would say. But I’m tired of hearing it.

It’s not that I want someone to tell me that I’m exactly the same as the last girl they were with, or all my tendencies and quirks are that of similar people’s personalities. It’s that my relationships end for the same reason, not on bad terms, but simply general relationship problems. The reason for calling myself a bridge is because after they tell me for their first time that “I’m different than any other girl they’ve ever dated”, very soon after they find another girl, so similar to me in so many ways, and then stay with her for what feels like forever. I’m tired of that, when does someone lead me to a guy who stays with me?

After seeing this happen to me for the third time I sat and thought for hours, I thought about love and hate, and how they are indeed the strongest emotions, but they really are more similar than they are different.

I keep teetering between hate and love for the situation. They can be mistaken so often, but I never thought about it in that way before. I hate love, sometimes I wish I never fell in love, because I feel it’s an emotion that gives the human race something to strive for. The ultimate euphoria. It feels good only for a little, but takes work to keep up. So what’s the point? We work hard to get this feeling that everyone is dying to have and some people don’t even achieve. Even if you do it bites you in the ass on the way out. A final “goodbye” or what have you. Hate, on the other hand doesn’t do that. No one wants it and it doesn’t hurt you as much as love does. Hate burns people’s faces, love burns away dignity, pride, respect, trust. Hate doesn’t forgive, but it can forget. Love doesn’t forget, so it’s always there hurting you, tearing you apart, but love forgives.

I just needed to get this out there, I was then thinking about breaking up. How you’re never really fully over someone. When one person drops out of a relationship for whatever reason, the other is left out to dry. You’re out of sunlight, the wind isn’t blowing, and you’re on the ground. It’ll take forever to dry. So you don’t let go until someone else picks you up, pins you on the clothesline to feel the breeze and the sunlight.

I’m young, and also awful at getting over people. But I’m tired of dwelling. He’s my friend, a very good one at that. We loved each other. He loves his best friend now, but he still loved me. He loves me as a friend, and cares about me. Yes he was my first love, but it doesn’t mean he’ll be my last. I’m young, I’m flirty, I’m spontaneous, I’m goofy, I’m passionate, I’m determined, I’m strong, I surround myself with amazing friends, I have opinions, beliefs, ideas, thoughts, dreams, hates, loves, but for the past 3 years I’ve lost parts of myself every time I’m a bridge. This time I’m tired. No matter how many times I cry, how many times I scream and yell, how many times I don’t talk to people, it will still be there. It happened. I knew it was coming. So I guess it’s my turn to live.