Cold Pizza and What I Wanted to Say

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

I invited her to go out to get pizza with us. It was a beautiful, seemingly simple task - catch up on the last few eras of your life with an old friend. But my heart raced. My head was spinning. I asked her a lot about her. I spoke very little about myself.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

There was plenty I could have rehashed. Plenty of stories to tell, plenty of dramas to unfold, plenty of pages of the past to revisit. But I didn't know where to start. My hands shook a little. I sipped my Coke. "Is it hot in here?" I asked.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

I tried to keep it light, airy; I tried to be the friend that she must remember. Optimistic. Fun. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at any time of morning or night. A hint of insanity behind the eyes. I tried to mimic things that THAT girl would say.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years, so maybe I have her fooled. But maybe not.

I felt so tired, so inexplicably exhausted, so profoundly dead inside. Oh sure, new romance, new job, birthdays have passed by, vacations and holidays. Things have been great. Things have been great. Isn't that what I keep telling myself? "Oh, things have been great." But I could feel an empty space inside my head, a flickering, dim light that once burned so brightly. I felt unrecognizable to her, and maybe I was.

What I wanted to say was, "There's a reason I look like a corpse. There's a reason I have bags under my eyes. There might even be a reason that my hair is orange."

What I wanted to say was, "There's also a reason I'm acting robotic. And cold. There's a lot of reasons that I can't laugh quite the same anymore."

What I wanted to say was, "It feels like I'm being slowly crushed in a trash compactor, over and over again, every single fucking day."

What I wanted to say was, "The bad outweighs the good. And I haven't read very many books lately. And really, I'm not okay."

What I wanted to say was, "Damn, it's hard to breathe in here."

What I wanted to say was, "Yeah, I lost the love of my life. And it was at LEAST half my fault, and I'm willing to admit that now. And I'll likely never get over the guilt and regret."

What I wanted to say was, "You don't get it. He's a good guy. I never deserved him in the first place."

What I wanted to do was run to the bathroom and cry.

What I actually did was, I sat there, and played with my daughter's hair. I tried to pay little attention to the lies coming out of my mouth.

What I said was, "You know, it just didn't work out. I guess that's life, sometimes." And she agreed.

The pizza was cold.