Its quite the tale, and this is a combination answer between your question and one asking “what happend” It all starts two years ago, with a boy. He was quick witted and funny, but carried with him a darkness that he hid with bright allusions and an irony as finely wrought as lace.The gap between his teeth was the most darling thing I’ve ever seen. His rolled up sleeves and dirty fingers leave prints on my coffee table, and my dog liked him. From the brevity of our acquaintance he was perfect. He hadn’t requested much, his broadest aspiration was simply to “Make my heart though damaged and unsure feel all the amazing things it could.” From the passenger seat of that old Volkswagen the world was perfect. The red bandanna was loosely covering my eyelids. A “just because” surprise was in order. We drove for about twenty minutes the air smelt faintly of the sea, then again it always did in Tiverton. When he put the highway sign colored Volkswagen in park he opened my door and told me to tread lightly. I stumbled over branches he wasn’t the best guide. He politely asked me to stop and he removed the make shift blindfold. He had led me deep into the woods to a tree where he had hung wine corks individually from red strings. It seemed every branch had been decorated. From behind his back he manifested a bouquet of hydrangeas and daisies, two of my favorite flowers. He took from his bag fresh strawberries and my favorite children’s book Ferdinand the Bull. I was in complete awe. I remember feeling like crying. He had brought a dream of mine to life. He had listened so intently to me that he captured a fraction of a thought and desire. I remembered weeks before simply mentioning that I wanted to spend my days like Ferdinand smelling flowers beneath a cork tree. No one had every done something so nice for me. It seemed no one had ever care that much. We laid under that tree for ages discussing ancient civil wars and the migration patterns of geese. All the way home we laughed about nothing and everything.

Now, over the past six months we’ve been a hurricane. Life has crashed down on us, we are not the kids we were then. We yelled more then we thought we could and hurt each other more than we’d like to think. I think we expected to fall like sea glass and become softened by every tide but despite our best efforts have remained jagged and course. On an evening not too far off from now, when we had thought we’d had as much as we could take, he proposed we take a we night to be young and in love. With a bottle of pink moscato in hand we headed towards the beach. It was nearly dark by the time my beaten down car reached the shore. Yet it was not the sunset nor the water that caught my surprise but message written in the rocks. A simple message that took enormous effort to say. Yet, when I looked upon that message I wasn’t in love.I was tired. He had taken several hours to try and capture a time when our love was outlined as a concordance yet to be agreed upon. Where he had spun into sunshine and applause and he wrote a love song that night every time he looked at me. Where he had made my bloodstream feel like the place that gods had to find before they could discover fire. From this I learned that no romantic deed may rewrite the past. My life is not a fairy tale. A Tiffany’s necklace may not replace the feeling of rot and self loathing I got when he struck me or told me I was swine. Later even that evening he struck me in the mouth. I was given an “I love you” but also five stitches and saddening graduation photos.
I had spent years waiting for god before realising I’d be waiting my entire life. God doesn’t take collect calls.