I write about people with a vigor unmatched by anything else in my life. I’m fascinated by them and fixated on capturing their humanity with words. I have notebooks full of pages dripping in purple ink, detailing the things that make my friends incredible, celestial human beings. I have countless documents on my computer about the boys who aren’t important enough to write about, and the way their hands feel and the way they laugh at the things they’re supposed to laugh at when I say the things I’m supposed to say. I write about the way my best friend smiles when she knows she’s saying something funny, and the way her entire face and being expands when she talks about the thing she's most passionate about. I write about the man on the subway whose eyes are fastened to the posters on the walls of the cars, as if he hasn’t seen them millions of times before. I write about the way my friends talk about the films they adore the way I used to adore you. I write about you. But this is the last time I’m writing about you.

You can tell a lot about a relationship based on the writing involved. I used to write you texts with heart-eyes and love and I would scrawl blue-inked paragraphs in my favorite journal about the way you made my heart feel like it was draped in velvet and floating on air. And then I wrote long, senseless pages on my computer about what it felt like to be away from you and how other boys had different hands than you and maybe that’s why I didn’t appreciate the way they felt. My fingers acted like jackhammers on my keyboard for hours on end so I had a way to get the sad loneliness out of my system. There were pages in my notebook and even my planner about missing you. Assignment due dates lay lost between jotted confessions about what it felt like to kiss you and the things you always did right. The margins of the pages of my math notebook were littered with words about the way you smell and the music you listen to and the way you take your coffee.

And then I ripped out all those pages and scratched out the notes and deleted the documents off my computer. I started writing stories about you as an awful, unrelenting monster that ripped happy memories out of me and stirred them into your coffee like sugar. I stopped writing about you like you were a sunrise and started writing about you like you were a car crash. Like you were a tragedy that gouged holes into me and my life. Like it was your fault that I didn’t feel like me and it was your fault that I couldn’t figure out how to. Like it would make it easier to move on. I wrote words like tornados that ripped me out of the ground and spit me out far away from where I started, still not knowing how to feel or how to be. But eventually the storm in me settled and I had a moment of clarity, because car accidents involve two people. Not just one; not just you. It might have been my fault. And that fact turned a car accident into a pile up. But I couldn’t stop writing about you, even though the writing hurt like hell because the t’s were crossed with anger and the I’s were dotted with self-doubt as I did a reckless dance with myself to music of blame and “fault”. I danced and twirled circle after circle until I realized I didn’t know what I was doing and I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I didn’t have to be dancing in the first place.

So, I’ve decided to stop dancing. Because you are not my “you” anymore. And because there are too many other people to write about and too many other scents to smell and coffee orders to memorize and I still can’t figure out why I’m letting my mind focus on yours. Other boys will laugh at the things I say and respond to my text messages with heart eyes and have hands that feel at home on my skin. Not just you. It’s time for me to write about the way my roommate dances around our room when she’s happy to be young and alive, or the way the girl at the bar wears scarlet lipstick like it’s armor keeping her safe in battle. It's time for me to write about other people. There are too many other people and things that they do for me to write about. Thank you for being the “you” in my writing for so long, but I’ve let you overstay your welcome in my thoughts, and that stops now.