Negative Two: Our Relationship in Arithmetic | Teen Ink

Negative Two: Our Relationship in Arithmetic MAG

March 3, 2016
By canaryairy SILVER, New York, New York
canaryairy SILVER, New York, New York
5 articles 2 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain." --Jack Kerouac


Before you click away, please read this.

I left you. I’m perfectly aware that I’m the negative part of our former equation. I’m perfectly aware that I added the heartbreaking exponent of leaving you for someone else. But it was a long time coming. I couldn’t see living the life that you wanted and certainly not with your mother as a variable.

I’m sorry.

But, in the long division of things, you and I were never going to end up as a perfectly square interval. There would have always been remainders, unaccounted questions. Differentials were always added when we were together, while all of the rational was subtracted. Some people could see this as a good thing. That’s what love is, right?

No.

Loving someone should not mean that you lose yourself in such a dark, black hole of depression that no amount of quantum physics can rescue you.  I should have been more honest about the trauma I went through. But I didn’t know how to tell you that my entire life seemed to have added up incorrectly. I knew I needed help when the slightest touch would make me tense and aggravated. But it wasn’t help you could give.

I did get proper help and I did get better. We got better. Something made sense again. Everything had been recalculated. And then a variable. Someone new. Someone I never expected to fall for but with whom everything made sense. Suddenly, everything was less complicated, clear. I left with no explanation, no side note. No asterisk to provide more information. Just gone.

Along the way I realized how unhappy I had been. I was still hurting from the complicated process of putting my life back together. It was all addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Looking back now I realize how heartless, how coolly I viewed our situation. Just like multiplying complex fractions, I crossed you out without thinking.

I’m sorry.

I know sorry doesn’t fix sleepless nights or that dull ache that sits in your chest. I know sorry doesn’t remedy angry, hurtful words that must still sting. I’m sorry doesn’t excuse immaturity– but it does acknowledge it.

I’m sorry.

I know it’s ironic that I just simplified our entire relationship in terms of math.

I’m sure you remember it was never was my favorite subject.



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on Apr. 8 2017 at 10:30 am
anuthereal GOLD, Duluth, Georgia
18 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I will suffer because of my morals, but my morals will never suffer."

This is amazing! I love the metaphoric value.