In Your Window

My ex girlfriend used to leave me notes clothes-pinned to my mailbox. They never said anything, really. "Biking home, listening to Pat Benetar, thought I'd see if you were around." They made me smile when I found them, that she had been thinking of me, that she had left a little piece of those thoughts for me to find.

I told her that, once. She said she was a bad girlfriend, that she didn't do anything for me. And I said, "you leave me little notes. I like that." She told me that she didn't do it to make me happy. She did it because, well, she was biking home, and I was maybe home and she didn't have anything else to do so she stopped by and when I wasn't home she left a note. It was nothing sweet or endearing. I should know that. nothing sweet.

I wanted to scream at her then, "why admit that?" Why frame the fact that you are thinking about me in such a dull and lifeless way? Why can't you just come out and say it, that you think of me. That you think of me and you don't want to because it might mean something about who you are.

She left me a note two weeks ago. "Biking home, listening to Pat Benetar. Hoped your face might be in the front window." As much as she might have thought, back in the tumult of our what-have-you, that those notes meant nothing more than a circuitous route home, she was wrong. The note was the first in 6 months, and it meant more than anything that she was willing to concede that some days, I passed through her mind as breezily as she biked by my house.

I have learned to not say entirely what I mean. I have learned to let people read what they need to from what I'm saying, so long as I know it won't break them. She could have let me believe that she loved me that much. I knew, after all, that she did. And it wouldn't have changed the trajectory of where we went or who we became. It still would have ended, just as sad and sweet and right as it did. It still would have been worth it. But I wouldn't have felt so stupid at that moment. I wouldn't have felt decieved. I wouldn't have felt so much like I was lying to myself.

For the record, she taught me to be honest. I'll never do it the way she did, all busted broken full out hurting. I'll never tell you an unneccasary truth just to watch your face crumple with the honesty of it all. It wasn't that she was cruel, just that she didn't understand how badly it hurt me to be confronted with a truth I already knew. But I'll tell you now what you need to know.

Usually. Mostly.