19[AN: Read Strangers (1st Picture)]
Past Wasting Time
I feel Sixteen again—awkward and unsure. Your voice washes over me in a wave of uncomfortable, comfortable familiarity. I thought I grew up—five years is a long time for growing up, for saying goodbye. (But we never got our goodbye). Five years is a long time to move on. (I thought I moved on). I hear your voice, your guitar in this silent room. Standing in this room is suffocating as I remember what we never had.
You never gave us a chance, and I never wanted a chance. I wanted something more. I wanted the boy who played his guitar and sang about True Love Wait[ing], not the asshole behind his music. I wonder if I should give you another chance—a first chance. I wonder if you wonder if we even had a chance. It's uncomfortable sitting here, drowning in what we never had.
I feel like that sixteen year old girl I once was. Uncomfortable with my body, uncomfortable with my nudity. It's not my voice that wants to call your name, but the Twenty-one year old self that is unafraid of confrontation. My sixteen year old self represses the urge, buries it among the moment of heart sobbing and guitar playing from the past.
Hearing you sing, gives me the old familiar butterflies in my stomach that are unsettling and make me want to vomit. I repeatedly tell myself that YouandI are not supposed to happen, will never happen. I am not in love with you.
I, am not in love with you.
Each word your string upon your lips unravels the years that I have grown up in. I forget that at twenty-one I am no longer foolish, and I no longer wear my heart on my sleeve. I am sixteen and overzealous.
I forget that I'm supposed to be avoiding a lyrical heartbreak.
We are strangers; strangers who have a past and no past. I am in love with the music and the singing, not the boy who plays and whose voice weaves a web of ever after. This is what I tell myself. At sixteen I can't help but fall in love with you, and at twenty-one I am no better.
I feel Sixteen again—awkward and unsure. And for this moment, I let myself be sixteen. And I know that I will always love you, not you, but the you of the guitar playing and True Love Wait[ing]. Sitting in this tiny room, it will always be past wasting time.