Notes from a Hope(less/ful) Romantic
Thoughts about love and life to mark the end of 2024.
A Note from Ellie: All sections were written in the last week of December 2024 and the first week of January 2024, and are reflective of my situations, thoughts, and feelings up until that time. All names have been concatenated or otherwise replaced with alternate identifiers to preserve individuals’ privacy. Details of individual situations are kept vague to focus on my thoughts and feelings thereof.
“For what it’s worth, I think the act of writing and creating from a dark place is just as cathartic and reconciliatory to one’s self and others as it can be devastating.” — Em
---
December 24th
Dear Em*,
And we’re back at it again.
You popped out of my life as quickly as you entered it, all over again.
I’m not sure whether to be displeased, distraught, or disappointed—but you know me: you know I could never look at you, think of you, dream of you as anything other than perfect.
We found each other again with fall semester on the horizon, way back in August. And I fell in love with you all over again. I fell hard, like I did the last time I texted you first. Like each time I would text you first.
August 3rd, 10:57 PM: “hi,” Ellie texted.
August 4th, 12:25 PM: “Hey," Em texted back.
And the pair talked for hours that day, and every day for the next week.
Thousands of thoughts are running through my mind right now. That first day back, the things you said to me (You’re such a wonderful person, a light, and you’ll never be able to fully see that. It’s more than I ever deserved, and I found myself incredibly grateful and fortunate to have found that in my life, even if I inevitably pushed it away) and the things I said to you (I never resented you for all of this in the first place. This is the first time we've talked in almost half a year, and my first and foremost thought is: I'm glad you're okay) and all the things we talked about in that first week redux.
It was... well, how can I describe it as anything other than just lovely? Purely, simply, really entirely truly perfectly utterly lovely. When we texted, even though I was a hundred miles away from you, it felt like we were exploring the wonders of the universe together all over again. Talking about Robert Oppenheimer and the concept of the internal monologue and the Lovecraftian Outer Gods and moth arms and caffeine addictions and psychoacoustics and trans-humanism and industrialist worldly distractions and—
When we had our first conversations all over again, I found myself wanting more. But I wasn’t sure whether you did too.
“I’m scared that this is the end of our story,” I told myself.
“I’m glad I found closure,” I said to myself when I thought about what happened all those months apart, “but I don’t want this to be the end of our story.”
***
August 4th, 4:27 PM: “Sometimes time doesn’t feel real,” Em texted. “I know it’s been a while, feels like a lifetime and also not so far ago.”
Time doesn’t ever feel real, does it? I’ve loved you for over a year by now, and it has been an all-consuming year. Never in the bad way, when it comes to you. Sometimes it feels as if I just met you, and others it feels as if I’ve known you forever. At all times, it feels like it was always meant to be that I ever got to know you.
Em, my love, what happened to us? What happened to “I’ll always be here with you”?
I had the worst weeks of my life this month, and you weren’t there. Everything was up and down and sideways the moment you walked away all over again, just like last time, and you weren’t there for me to tell me that it would all be okay. I would ask for you, always you, in my worst moments, crying and screaming at the ceiling and begging for you to come back to me. Begging for my heart to feel complete again. Begging, begging, begging for the kind of love I needed from you, only you—the kind of love that perhaps you never could give me.
You left a hairpin in my room, the last time you stayed the night. I keep it on my television stand, and each time I see it, I have to stifle a sob. You left traces of you in my room, in my thoughts, in my heart, and each time I try to live a little, I break apart. It’s only been another three weeks, I would say to myself, of radio silence. But three weeks is enough to kill me all over again.
When you come back—if you come back—I probably won’t want to talk about what happened in those weeks you were gone. I don’t want to do that to you, like I did the last time when you left, making you feel guilty as if you did everything wrong.
***
August 4th, 4:29 PM: “I just hold a lot of regrets, and uh fears I guess,” Em texted. “I wish I made different decisions, but we can’t go back.”
I don’t think of myself as innocent in all of this.
I know I pushed you away, too, because I know I expected too much from you. You told me so yourself. “My feelings about you are complicated,” you told me. I understand that completely. I know that I put so much burden on you that at times it might feel too much to bear.
I asked you to be the kind of person you weren’t. I tried to mold you into my perfect vision of what I wanted this relationship to be, rather than accepting you as you are; as I should have; as is what you deserved.
Perhaps you deserve better than me.
Perhaps you deserve someone who could really, truly love you as you are, and who would never ask for anything more than that. Someone who you could really explore the wonders of the universe with, like we tried to do together. Better than how we tried to do together. Better than me.
(I still want to try to be that person for you.)
***
August 4th, 4:31 PM: “I don’t want things to be about me, not again,” Em texted. “I want to take responsibility.”
I don’t know whether to say goodbye to you, oh my lovely first planet from the Sun, my atomic number 80, my messenger of the gods.
Whatever you decide—whether you choose to love me again or whether you choose not to—I will always be on your side, always give you my blessing, and always tell you that it will all be okay. (Not that you need me to be, not that you need me to give it, and not that you need me to tell you that.)
But know that I’ll always be yours, whether you decide that you want to come back to me again or not. And you’ll always be a part of me, oh lovely little blue-haired girl who always made my day. (See: I Saw a Stranger on the Street Today, another column from “An Ellie For Your Thoughts.”) And the next time you walk in and out of my life again, if there is another next time, I’ll say a loving goodbye to you all over again.
You were a love found and lost all over again. Loving you was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. And I’d make that mistake all over again, every single time, in every single universe.
December 3rd, 10:40 PM: “i’m trying to get my shit together and i want us to figure this out, if that’s okay,” Ellie texted. “i don’t really know what you need right now.”
December 8th, 5:44 AM: “hey uh i know youre busy,” Ellie texted. “i just wanted to like, um, i just wanted to see how you were doing.”
December 12th, 2:04 AM: “was just listening to a song that reminded me of you,” Ellie texted. “and just wanted to say hi after that.”
December 23rd, 12:28 PM: “i feel like i’m going crazy,” Ellie texted. “if you don’t want to do this anymore, please just give me a text.”
January 5th
Dear Red*,
When we had our first kiss, it was electrifying. When we had our second, it was exhilarating. When we had our third, it was intoxicating.
And our fourth, fifth, sixth, and all the rest—they’re all quite animating.
I don’t know what to say to you here except that I quite like you, and I know that you quite like me, too. I already wrote you a letter penned on paper that you read and quite liked.
I do wish, and I know I already told you this, that we spent more time together. There’s always a stolen kiss or two here and there, but I suppose I can be quite covetous in wanting more. It’s the story of my life, isn’t it? The idea of “wanting more,” never being quite happy with what I have now.
Perhaps you’re the universe’s great answer to my great question. Perhaps you’re my next great challenge in learning to be content.
But I still want to know: what does our future look like? Do you want to be more than what we are? Should we be more than what we are? (What even are we? Friends? More than that? Less than that? Exactly just that?)
Red, are you my next great love or just another fixation?
December 23rd
Dear Rose*,
We had a conversation earlier today about this: “I don’t want there to be expectations,” you said.
“Okay,” I said. “Then how about this? I will only ever do what is comfortable for you. We’ll only ever do what works for you.”
“Okay,” you said.
“And whenever it comes up, you tell me what you want, and we’ll do that. And when you don’t, then we won’t.”
“Okay.”
My question for you: what am I supposed to make of what we are when it’s nothing but something but nothing at all?
January 2nd
Dear Cat*,
I’m sorry.
I don’t know what we had, and I don’t know what it was, but I’m sorry we had to lose it. We had left it unlabelled the whole time, not by my choice but with my assent, nonetheless.
I ended this because I needed to.
What you wanted out of “us” was never the same as what I wanted, was it? You wanted something nice and simple, and I always want everything to be all too complex. I can’t always just ignore my emotions and pretend to be okay around you the way I thought you needed me to.
I have good times, and I have bad times. You know that. I have really good times, and I have really bad times. You also know that. This past semester, I think the only times I’ve ever really spent time with you—really wanted to spend time with you—were in my bad ones. And when we had our good ones, they only really felt good for me because I was having my bad ones and I would need to wash it all away with anything. That anything always ended up being you, and I hated doing that to you.
I hadn’t liked how we interacted for a long time. I wanted to hear about you and your day; I wanted you to let me talk about my days, the many goods and the many bads; I wanted us to be vulnerable with each other in a way that you never could.
But that’s okay. It’s okay that we weren’t able to make it work.
Because we still have the memories. Can that be enough for us?
“In another life, we would have been good for each other,” I said, tears in my eyes. You nodded, tears in yours.
December 25th
Dear Em*,
You know what? I am angry.
I’m displeased at how you walked all over me and walked away all over again.
I’m distraught that nothing has changed.
I’m disappointed that we failed.
And I’m angry that I ever thought we were better than this—that we would be better than we were.
I’m so angry at you, and I’m so angry at myself, and I don’t know how to say it in any other way than that.
“I’ll always be here with you,” you said to me when we saw each other again for the first time in over half a year. What happened to that? Was it just another lie?
Every single person I know has told me to let you go. Get a better girlfriend, Ellie, they tell me. One who treats you better. I’ll never fucking listen to them, you know that; I’ll only ever listen to you.
Most days I tell myself that’s the only justification I need. But sometimes it doesn't feel enough; and sometimes I question whether all of this is worth it.
But I know it isn’t.
Maybe it’s falling apart because, deep inside, we want it to. Maybe both of us think that we don’t deserve this. I wish I didn’t believe myself when I say that, and I’m sorry I do. I have complicated feelings about you, too.
Because I love you so much.
And I hate you for that—for making me love you so much to and past the point of pain and hurt. I hate you because I know that the next time you walk into my life, we’ll just play this game all over again. And I know I’ll just let it happen all over again, every single time, in every single universe.
“Love doesn’t look like this. It’s supposed to feel better than this, isn’t it?” — Ani Mikheeva, Anora (2024)