If I Can’t Love You From Behind My Phone Can I Love You At All?

It’s Thursday at 3:30 and the usual social media break creeps into your life. I think the reason we all love social media so much is because you never know what you are going to see. Is it divorce, a new baby, some interesting drama, sports, who knows. But today, today it’s a different. Today it was you, but in the most indirect way possible. See because when you left, you left social media behind to. So there would be no way for me to love you anymore.

If I can’t love you from behind a half broken iPhone that is two generations old then I don’t know if I can love you at all. But I have tried… I look through old friends and your families pictures to see if I can catch a glimpse of you. I like the new beard and you look like you’ve toned up. Oh this month you cut your hair. I remember when you cut your hair like that right before our trip to the mountains.

I knew you had a new girlfriend. I have been happy for you. I looked through her stuff to. She isn’t real cute, but she seems ‘outdoorsy’ and she has a dog. Wow, y’all went to the beach- looks like fun. She looks good in strapless shirts and I always thought my arms were to manly for those outfits.

But today she isn’t just this girl that I know you have been seeing for a while. She represents the life I would have had. As I watch the photos pop up in my timeline of the places I use to be I know exactly what that day was like for you two… because I lived it. Does she drink to many beers like I use to? Does she play with the dogs? Did she walk in on Uncle Booger smoking a joint in the basement like I did?

See it really isn’t about her at all. It’s about which life would have been better. See when you told me there were two paths in the woods and we would walk down either of them together I decided to leave the woods. Go somewhere else. Do something else. I made that choice long before we ever ended. And when these flashes of your life pop up on my timeline I find myself back in the woods and life doesn’t seem so bad there. It’s Simple. Consistent. Easy.

I am reminded of the choices I have to make. See when I walk in a bar and I chose between whiskey or wine. I don’t have to go back and re-live that choice. I get it. I enjoy it. I move on. But when I get taken back there with you in the woods every time I see your face. Or I see her face.

What does that mean? Where is the playbook for life that explains why we have these feelings? I wish it would stop and I don’t all at the same time. But some part of me doesn’t wonder if you wish I was still there. Do you remember the good or the bad? And what good would knowing those answers help me with?

I can’t imagine I am the only person who has these thoughts, but if I’m not then why hasn’t someone come up with the answers.