A Broken Love

[Medusa72]

Index.

[Medusa72]

We weren't always broken like this.
I wasn't always broken like this.
But you quit. Maybe you thought you were being noble, or doing the right thing. And maybe you were just doing the only thing you could do. But that doesn't change the fact that you quit.
You might has well put a gun to my head, drop dead, quit.

I love you.

[Medusa72]

They were thirteen years old when they met. He was a quiet boy who had been to hell and back. The secrets that he kept, hid in the dark purple shadows under his eyes. But his eyes... Those were sharp, and blue like the sky.
Her eyes however, were a deep, intelligent green. She saw the exhaustion in him. And although she was yet to experience her own version of hell, her old soul could see into him. She found it strange, because when she saw those eyes, the girl named Katrina felt a connection. A silent understanding with the boy. Like he was an old friend.
"Katrina, do you know Robert and Harry?" Katrina was introduced by her friends mother at a church.
She shook her head no. Though she seemed to know that the boy who she was making eye contact with was Robert.
Robert looked away. Harry however seemed to be blushing from his name being mentioned. He was clearly the younger and less mature of the two.
Katrina didn't go to church often. Her friend, Mindy did. Mindy believed in things that seemed impossible. In God and heaven and hell. Katrina had always questioned not only Mindy's beliefs but all beliefs that she had heard of. Katrina herself knew two things. She knew that there was love and she knew that there was hate. She had felt the effects of both, but always in small doses.
But Robert, she knew... He felt them in big doses. Most people who don't sleep at night do. Because how is your mind and your heart supposed to rest when the darkness and lightness are trying to consume you at the same time?

[Medusa72]

"We're not going to get ice cream with the others," Robert said.
"Why not?" Katrina asked. He was far too serious.
"Because I need to talk to you."
"Should I be scared?" She inquired, he wouldn't look at her anymore. In fact, he hadn't looked at her very much all week. Even when she excitedly announced that she was going to make him a birthday cake since he was turning eighteen this month.
He hesitated, "Lets... just go to my house."
She said, "okay," and got in her car. She knew what was coming next. She knew it had been coming for a while now, regardless of her efforts to prevent it.

~

"So what do your parents do for a living?" Katrina felt odd saying this. She knew this wasn't a question most sixteen year olds asked each other, but she was curious.
"She drives a truck."
"Oh, so who do you live with?"
"I actually go back and forth with my grandma and aunt. I used to live with my aunt but... some things happened between us and now I live with my grandma. But it's just one house over, so it works."
"Well, if works..."
"Yeah, but for the first five years of my life I lived on the truck with my mom."
"That sound like fun!"
"It is, I've been to all fourty-eight continental states and I've been into Canada a few times."
"That's cool, I've been through most of the western states of America, but I've never been east."
"The food there is amazing."
"Is it?"
"Yeah..." Robert kept talking about the places he'd been and the things he'd experienced.
Katrina felt a little buzzing along her spine. She'd never been this excited to talk to anyone before. Few people her age could keep up with her intelligence and people older than her didn't take her seriously. This boy... Robert... he was something different.

[Medusa72]

I choose to remember a young boy deciding one day to pull a photo album out of his backpack and share with me a story about the man who taught him anything worth knowing in life. Who left too soon. Who raised him to believe that life might actually be worth living.
I choose to remember a boy who cried when his mom gave him his father's wedding suit to wear to his first school dance. That dance was with me and we ended up spending most of it in the car laughing because who needs other people around.
I choose to remember the boy who took me back to his house later and told me that I owed him a dance as he played our song on his radio.

It's true that I could remember the boy who tried pressuring me to do something I wasn't ready for. Or the boy who got mad too often.
I could remember the boy who used me until he couldn't anymore. The boy who ignored me when I needed him most.

But I choose not to.

[Medusa72]

"Hey, I've been thinking about you."
The text came to Katrina 5 years after their breakup. She was engaged to a woman now, not that he had anything to do with that but she finally started being true to herself and figured out a long time ago that she couldn't keep moping about him.
So why did her heart skip a beat when she read that text?
Why did she keep that conversation to herself?
Why was she kept awake at night thinking about his beautiful eyes?

[Medusa72]

Katrina sat next to him and felt at home. His grandma sat on the other, comfier couch. She had never felt so at home in her life. Robert suddenly jumped up and came back out with two leather jackets
"Try this one on," he said handing one over that had quite a few patches on it. In response to Katrina's hesitation he told her about how the jackets belonged to his dad and had been handed down to him.
She tried the jacket on and looked to him for approval. A crooked smile appeared on his face while him and grandma exchanged a look.
"It suits you," he said.
"It does," grandma confirmed.
Katrina felt special just then, and honored to be placed on such a high pedestal. She held his hand and blushed, happy to be a part of his family.

[Medusa72]

Do you remember that Christmas? We wanted to get back together, but you were going to graduate and leave for college and that kind of long distance commitment intimidated me.
Is that why you broke my heart?
We had Christmas dinner with your family, and then breakfast the next morning. That's the last time I can remember you smiling at me. I didn't know everything would change after that. But I took your picture. It's the only one I still have of you. The only one of you smiling at me. The one that makes me fall in love with you all over again when I look at it.

Yet...

You still left me. And I still moved on.