On B: Tall Tales (from the Hood)

I write this blog and I get the awesome emails and I see the how-do-you-always-verbalize-what-I’m-thinking comments and I’m still in awe of them. Because half the time, I have no clue what I’m doing. I tell my stories, I put my life on the internet (albeit anonymously to protect those who aren’t as free as I am), and at some point it goes from a funny anecdote to therapy to quite similar to the little pink diary I scrawled in ferociously when I was nine. Sometimes, I write on here just as a train of thought, as a way to release into the atmosphere what I might not be able to do in conversation. In conversation, people interrupt and judge, whether they mean to or not. In real life, people impose their own life lessons and examples onto your own. In real life, people don’t understand because they simply aren’t you. But when I write on here, you guys seem to get it. You seem to say, “Yup, I’ve been there or yea, I was a fool once too. Sure, my sh*t stinks just like anyone else’s.” And it feels like a big hug, it really does. One of my closest friends in the world read the Tales from the Hood series and informed me she had to stop midway through the second post because she felt I was making excuses for him. I won’t lie, when she first said she read the series, I got quasi excited. I thought maybe she’d see what I wasn’t able to convey in our long conversations about Trey, about what this thing was we were doing, how I felt, how he felt. I thought she’d get it a bit more. But she didn’t. And that doesn’t mean, she’s anything other than my best friend honestly. She loves me enough that if anyone even so much as thought to hurt me, she’d call in the firing squad. I’d kill someone for her too. So I get it, I really do. But I still wanted her to understand. To see that this was more than a crush, more than a little fling, more than someone to pass the time. That despite the drama that came packed in suitcases at his feet, there was just as much good, just as much appeal. I’m a glutton for punishment, but even I’m not gonna run around with a 100%, Grade A Asshole. I have some common sense.

So, here I am, the point of this post. Trying to figure out what happened. Trying to understand how you can want someone, want to be with someone, maybe even love someone and not be able to figure out how to make it work. Of course, I’ve been with people whom I had strong feelings for, even loved, and it didn’t work out. I’ve watched relationships disappear, I’ve shed a tear or ten thousand over a seemingly broken heart. But, this right here. This Trey thing. I don’t know how, I don’t even know when. I think I knew from the very beginning that this was about to be some sh*t, but I had no idea it would roll into what it’s become.

I miss him. Terribly. I miss him when he walks out the room. I miss him when it’s been a few days. I miss him when I haven’t talked on the phone with him six times a day. I miss lying in bed with him, talking. I miss his crazy stories about his crazy life, one that is so opposite mine, it’s amazing we can find common ground at all. I miss going somewhere, meeting people who respect him like crazy and listen when he says, “This is my girl. Take care of her.” I miss shopping in the grocery store at 3am, watching him meticulously pick out snacks that are actual meals to other people: eggs and turkey sausage, fish, crablegs, jerk chicken over rice. I miss how long it takes him to get dressed, just to wind up in some version of jeans, a tshirt with a hoodie and a fitted. I miss his annoyingly, sparkly white teeth, his dimples that jump out and steer me off course. I miss how he needs to have his right bicep tickled to fall asleep. I even miss how he snores if he’s on his back. I miss how he walks, how he talks, how he looks at other people with authority, how he looks at me, goodness, how he looks at me. He looks at me and I pretty much fall apart cause of what I know he’ll do to me later. But you know what I miss most of all? I miss waking up to him slipping his tattooed arm around me, pulling me over to his side of the bed, kissing my forehead, and snuggling in for more sleep. I miss when my little thug melts into me. I just miss him. Terribly.

And there is nothing I can do about it. He hates me for leaving him. He hates me for “making him fall in love with me,” yeah, love. He’d said it on numerous occasions and I’d always tossed it off to him being drunk, waited for him to bring it up again, knowing if he didn’t, he didn’t remember or didn’t mean it. Until the last time he said it. When I told him I had to go for good. He said he tried to fight it off, knew it was happening all along, that damnit, he loved me. Like for real and it was f*cking him up. He didn’t know what to do with it, so he was putting a wall up, pushing me out, after all, I was abandoning him.

He asked me to stay. Told me he’d take care of me, love me, be with me. Isn’t that what I wanted? Isn’t that what we all want? As surely as I know the answer to that, I also know I have to go. There is so little that could work between us. It would be a disaster. But, God, I think I love him too. I have this feeling in my gut, that I don’t understand, that I haven’t felt in a really really long time. But I don’t know what it is? I don’t know how to label it. Does that make sense? Like love seems corny, seems small, but it also seems too big, too serious, not possible after only a couple months-not to mention a couple months laced with drama. I wonder if the drama had anything to do with him trying to fight me on what he knew was brewing in there. But, I can’t. Like I physically can’t. There are so many reasons, a big one that I can’t share with you guys yet, but I will really soon. But it’s taking me out of his life whether I want to or not. I’m not dying, so don’t worry, and I’m not moving to Mars, but I won’t be around for a long period of time, so geographically, we’ll be separated. I would never ask him to hold out or wait for me. I would never expect him to change his life from what it is- I also know him well enough to know his stubborn ass wouldn’t. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to let go of him. It feels like my own little personal The Notebook except not nearly as romantic. More, the feeling I know they felt, that ridiculous connection, one that you couldn’t forget, wouldn’t be able to shake, even when the next one came around. Cause you can’t help it. Flaws and all, the heart wants what the heart wants and my heart is so stuck to Tre, it’s, well, it has to be something special right? But alas, life is nothing like the movies...unless, it's Blue Valentine.

That bitch stole my line,

xoxo

Blackie Collins