“Feeling This”

An internal monologue set to Blink-182

“Let’s go on an adventure.”

That’s how so many of our memories began. Although our friendship-bordering-on-romance lasted less than a year, I can still recall, with great intensity, the emotional roller coaster we went on together. And the ride always started with an adventure.

“I’m bored,” one of us would text the other. “I hope you’re home, because I’m five minutes from your house.” We’d drive around for hours, talking, laughing and blasting our favorite songs. We never knew where we’d end up, and more often than not, we didn’t care. With you, it was never about the destination, but the journey.

It was your spontaneity that drew me in. I had always been so careful and calculated. I had a plan for everything. I was the responsible one, the person who took care of everyone but myself. But part of me was bursting at the meticulously-stitched seams, yearning to live without an agenda or an end goal. You set that part of me free, and I was intoxicated by it.

One late May afternoon, when the air was warm and laced with the sweet taste of summer days to come, we were barreling down a New Jersey road at far beyond the speed limit. Tom DeLonge was screaming out of the speakers at top volume. We sang along, and, as if in a movie, you placed your hand in mine right on cue. As we approached a red light, we looked at each other and belted out the end, harmonizing over the recording. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said I loved you.

Have you ever had a song hit you so powerfully that you can physically feel it in your chest? You’re almost holding your breath through it, and when you exhale, you release with it a flood of emotions you didn’t even realize were building up inside you. That’s what happened to me in that moment, and it still happens to me every time I hear that part of this song.

I don’t think I fell in love with you, so much as how I felt when I was with you. It was precisely the way I felt when I was overcome with sonic bliss. I was wild, reckless, beautiful, and limitless. I was alive in a way I’d forgotten I could be.

As much as I loved that feeling, I knew it couldn’t last. I wouldn’t change. Not really. I could get high on your spontaneity, but at my core, I will always be the person who needs certainty; stability; a plan. Going any further than the fleeting moments of electricity and intimacy we shared would have been a mistake, and I knew it.

So I let you go. As quickly as it began, whatever we had fizzled out. We came so close, but fate fell short this time.