if it's not chaos, i don't want it.

i.

A year and a half ago (a little longer now, actually), I went through a break up. A big one, a quiet one, a long one. We’d been together for 4 and a half years – life hasn’t felt normal since that night spent crying on our maroon futon.

I use crying in lieu of screaming; into his chest, into my bones, my body feeling like I was being stabbed over and over and over again as he held me so gently. I was a dog he needed to put down and I couldn’t bring myself to die. I didn’t go with much grace in that moment; I’m not sure I’m going with grace right now.

ii.

My friend once told me he always cries on his birthday; it’s cathartic, he says, to mourn the year before. What you lost, what you never did, all the things you’ll never do now. I was 26 then; there’s been two birthdays spent without him. My birthday and our anniversary fall on the same weekend.This year would have been six years; I cried while turning 28.

iii.

I look through old pictures often. I used to delete, destroy, decimate any evidence of having once loved before. It’s easier now, with archives and erase buttons. There’s very little physical remains of a life we once shared together. I’ve sold the furniture we bought, got rid of clothes I wore, stopped hanging around spots we used to covet.

But I hold his face, framed through an $8 lens I found on a dusty thrift store shelf. He rests peacefully there, the shadows and lights filtering over his eyes and keeping him still, exactly as he looked when he still loved me.

How lucky I am to have captured that look before it left him.

iv.

My body is haunted by everyone I’ve ever loved and ever will love. I make ghosts of men who haven’t even died yet – I know they’ll all end up gone eventually.

v.

There’s been someone since, you know. I’m capable of more than just mourning.

He laughed loudly and honestly, breathing life into jokes I never knew I could make. I trusted him when he told me I looked beautiful, that I would look beautiful until I was old and wrinkly and complaining about my wrists hurting. He was chaotic in the kitchen; no surface was safe, meals often going cold as we giggled and wiped away his messes. I liked being beside him, offering a hand or kiss whenever he needed, whatever he needed.

He left too, eventually.

Not with a bang, but with a soft close of the door.

vi.

My friend asked me if I can only love when it’s turbulent, when the chaos is so great that I can’t help but love the high.

I hate flying and have never been tall enough to ride; I get no pleasure from my stomach dropping. But I love hardest when it’s against the odds, when my stomach twists from the anxiety of my affection not being returned. Because when it’s good, it’s great; when it’s bad, I’m in my shower crying over someone who was never going to love me anyways.

But I always come back to the chaos, seeking the first high I ever found in the green green eyes of someone ready to break me. If I can make them love me, the ones who never will, what worry will I ever have of being unloved?

If there’s no chance of falling,

I keep my feet grounded.

If it’s not chaos, I don’t want it.