By RYAN O’CONNELL

You learn not to assume things. You learn not to assume that the day you spent together in bed and took photos of each other against that white wall was important to both of you. In reality, only one of you will ever care about that day. Only one of you will flinch when you see the white wall again. The other person will forget it ever happened. You’ll have to remind them, years later when you meet for coffee, about the pictures and you’ll feel so stupid for holding it so dear. Why do you have to be the one who remembers that day? You assumed that your memories would be the same. You didn’t know that one gets to forget and the other has to remember.

You learn that the person who once protected you from all harm could one day become the harm. They could become the thing they spent so much time shielding you from. That’s how it always seems to work though, doesn’t? We give people power over our lives, we let them dictate the rhythms, and then we act surprised when there’s scratches.

You learn about the cruelty of time, the cruelty of fickleness. You learn that it’s possible for the person who knew you the best to eventually know nothing at all. You counted on them always knowing. You took solace in someone keeping score. But reliance is the first thing to go in a break up. You lose the right to call someone. You lose the right to ask how they’re doing. Imagine that. One day you had a VIP pass to their life and the next, you’re shut out completely. They’ll tell their grandma more things than they’d tell you.

You learn how bad heartbreak can hurt. All of a sudden you’ll be relating to sad love songs and feeling like such a chump. You listened to them before but never quite understood why they had so much resonance with people. Then you realized that it’s strictly for people who’ve dealt with the loss of love. To get the full effect of a Patsy Cline song, someone has to take an emotional dump on your face. Otherwise you’ll just be like “Gee, this lady sure sounds sad!

You’ll learn terrifying things about yourself. Most notably, the fact that heartbreak will turn you insane and obsessive. It makes you irrational and cripplingly nostalgic. (Your friends will even get fed up with you for a bit because you’re so cray cray.) There’s no real way to fix a broken heart other than time and sleeping with the next person you could potentially love. It takes someone’s else dick to get over the last one.

Most importantly, you’ll learn that it will all be okay in the end. Just like time killed your relationship, it will also be the thing that repairs you. Eventually enough time will pass that you’ll have nothing left to mourn. You’ll develop swiss cheese holes in your memory about the relationship. All you’ll recall are occasional flashes of happiness and feel grateful for it. You understand that this is just how life works. You fall in and out of love with people until you land somewhere that makes sense. You’ve learned a new secret about life and people. You get it now.

It’s bitter to know. It’s better to know.

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8:52 AM
March 27th, 2012

I Want To Know You!

I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you’re different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can’t be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren’t like that. You still ask questions. You’re still looking for the answers.

People with kind hearts make me feel dirty. Like I need to give my personality a bath or something. Rub it clean of my neuroses and judgments. But that’s a good thing. When someone inspires you to take a long hard look at yourself and question all of your bad habits, they’re someone worth keeping around. It’s all about finding that person who’s able to hold up a mirror to your life and cause you to reevaluate the noise. It’s all about wanting to be a better man.

I know you’ll surprise me. I know you’ll take a right turn when I’m convinced you’ll take a left. All of this may seem arbitrary (why does it even matter if you take a right instead of a left?) but it provides me with a giant sense of relief. Do you know what it feels like to go through life rarely being surprised? The person who you think is going to hurt you ends up leaving you alone at three in the morning. The person who will never understand your jokes or passions turns out to be a stranger forever. You sleep with them, go out to dinners, and even run away to a bed and breakfast on a long weekend, all in hopes that they’ll start to make sense to you one day. But they never do. They just get more and more foreign each day. Experiences don’t always breed intimacy. Sometimes they just make the distance more apparent.

I want to know how your weekend was (I never want to know these types of things but you’re the exception to all my rules) and I want to know how you got that scar on your knee (biking accident when you were twelve? Tell me more! This story is more riveting than The Hunger Games!) and I want to know about your mom and dad (Are they assholes? No matter! We’ll start our own family!) I want to protect you. I want to preserve your innocence and drink it up for myself. You learn from me and I’ll learn from you. Deal?

You’ll open me up like an orange, leaving a mess of pulp and sticky peels everywhere. Certain parts of my personality will be extracted and I’ll find myself feeling stuff I never knew was possible. It’s strange to think how many things we’re capable of without really knowing it until we have a proper catalyst — something or someone to bring it to the surface. Dig, dig, dig. No, you might need to dig a little deeper. I have a lot of crap sticking on top of the good stuff.

In order for all of this to work though, you have to let me know you. You have to let me cut you open and trust that I won’t accidentally hit a nerve. You have to accept me for my shortcomings and understand that you’re a better person than I am. I’m a little rotten. Please don’t let that deter you though. Because when I look at you, I see someone who makes sense. I see an anomaly — someone who’s untouched by all of the modern inventions and hang ups. I see someone I want to know.

Author: Ryan O’Connell.

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10:12 PM
November 2nd, 2011