To Alma

To Alma,

Everyone always says that you can’t help but know for sure when you’re in love.
Fair enough, but it took me an entire year and a half.
Before the end of that year and a half, I knew I was in love with you in sort of the same way I imagine Marcus knew he was about to die (because I know Marcus knew). It was knowing but not knowing, drawn to the comfort of ignorant bliss.
I ignored the fluttery feeling in my chest when you touched me or said my name, the stupid smile I couldn’t help but put on, and the steely guard I tried to put up when I was with you. My eyes followed your combat boot-clad feet up the stairs, down the hallway, watched you through the windows of classrooms.

I was happy when I forgot your birthday because I thought it meant I didn’t care.

You aren’t really conventionally beautiful, taller than me by exactly eight and a half inches, with a mess of curly black hair, and big pale green eyes that contradict your brown skin. You’re curvier than your baggy clothes let on, I know from seeing you in a bikini last summer on the same day you told me your dad was an alcoholic and we were drunk and I didn’t know why I wanted to kiss you. You’re adorably insecure about your puffy cheeks.

I promise I tried but I couldn’t find the right words for how I feel about you, the best thing I can think of is alluring. Your voice, your life, even your smell; like ice cream cones and sunscreen and sun.

I always worried you could smell the cigarettes on my breath when I talked to you, because you made me ashamed of the packs of Marlboro Golds I only smoked in my room, blowing the smoke out my window so my parents wouldn’t notice. Secretly, I wanted you to know. I wanted you to try to make me stop smoking, to tell me to quit, to care. For the same reason, I worked in flagrant violation of your good example, throwing gum wrappers on the floor, not doing homework. You made me want to be a better person and a worse person at the same time.

I realized I was gay before I realized I was in love with you. It was one of those humid, heavy nights of mid summer when you can feel the thunder brewing in the air. I was watching Rent again, and my crush on Idina Menzel’s character finally gave myself away. After that night it still took me a few weeks of looking at pictures of shirtless Channing Tatum to give up on trying to become straight or to even begin to accept who I am. I’m not homophobic or the slightest bit right-wing or conservative, and I like to think I’m a lot less ignorant than a lot of people, but I didn’t want to be gay. I guess because it wasn’t the life that the Disney movies had trained me to imagine for myself.

Because I had never had a girlfriend I decided not to come out to anyone out of an acute fear that there wouldn’t be any other lesbians to date and (with guys obviously out of the picture) I would be left alone forever.

Recognizing and acknowledging something that’s always been a completely innate part myself but not being able to tell anyone about it made me feel compelled to do something drastic. I cut off my hair, and regretted it. I opted for drinking more, so the summer before my sophomore year got hazier and blurrier as September came closer. Marcus started spending more time with me to keep me from doing stupid things and I spent less time with you because I couldn’t figure out why you made me so nervous.

You only knew Marcus for a few weeks, so here’s what you need to know about him.

Marcus started being my best friend in kindergarten, I only met you two years ago. Marcus had brown curly hair, dark, serious features he hadn’t quite grown into yet, and 10 pounds of extra fat I imagined he would lose before college. Marcus was always allowed to sleepover at my house even though he was a boy because even the thought of kissing Marcus, suggested during a game of Truth or Dare in middle school, was thoroughly disgusting. He was the friend who came into the girls bathroom to hold my hair back when I started throwing up from cramps in sixth grade because I had gotten my first period. We discussed who we had crushes on together. For him it was other girls. For me, it was feigned crushes on boys until he became the first person I came out to. I didn’t tell him who I had a crush on because I couldn’t explain how different my feelings were from a crush.

Alma, I realized I was in love with you when I was high on Robitussin cough syrup alone in my room, watching shapes on my ceiling and listening to Clair de Lune and talking to you because for some reason you were the only other person in the world awake at 4 am.

I realized I was in love with you when Marcus asked me what your number was.

I realized I was in love with you when I told him it was 860 and it was really 203.

When I told him you had a boyfriend in college.

When the three of us were coming home and he was driving with you in the passenger seat and me in the back and we should have gotten a ride but still none of us were as drunk as the guy in the truck who hit us.

And when I saw his head shatter the window but mostly I thought about just you.

When I was fine and I ran to your body first even though I could see enough in the fluorescent glow of the traffic light to tell that Marcus was covered in blood and you were not.
I called the ambulance before I even saw his face.

I’m sorry Marcus.

I loved you both.

But I was only in love with you, Alma.

And being in love is a terrible thing.

Trying to Love Less,
Me