July 7th
I think it’s stupid to regret anything. So when I started regretting having given my body to my best friend, I told myself that I was being stupid. I don’t remember who said it, but I read somewhere the philosophy that “your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.” He has loved my naked soul for more than two years now. He has loved me more than I’ve known. He knows everything about me, including things that I don’t even know about myself. He knows that I want to die, and that I sneak outside at night when I’m upset. He knows what I look like when I cry, and what my voice sounds like when I wake up. I loved him. But I loved him as I love my dearest friend. And although he never said it, it was an unspoken truth that he loved me in a different way. One night, sitting in the bed of his truck on a small mountain with the city lights in the distance, we kissed and laughed and peeled off our clothes. We were skin on skin. I counted thirty nine mosquito bites on my body after that night. He held me until it was time for me to go home. And that wasn’t the last time his skin was on mine.
Now I love him for the warmth of his embrace, and the smooth feel of his lips, and the weight of his hand on my knee under the table. I told him that my heart had changed, because I tell him everything. He wanted to be happy that I loved him, but he wasn’t. Because, you see, he had wanted me to fall in love with him before his lips ever touched mine. “It’s not fair to either of us,” he whispered through the phone at 1:30 in the morning as I lay sobbing on the damp grass of my grandparents’ front yard. I knew he was right. I wish I could have fallen in love with him when he bought me a cowgirl hat at the beach and sang country music to me the whole way home, or when he carried me over puddles in the wooded trails we walked on. I wanted to fall in love with him while I cried on his shoulder on that terrible night, and while I wrapped my arms around him from the back of his motorcycle. But I didn’t. And now he’s saying that everything will be alright. And he’s seeing a beautiful girl who’s everything that I want to be. And I’m hurting. But I refuse to regret a thing. Because he loved my naked soul. And he still does.