You

It was an early night, not yet tired enough to go to sleep, wary of getting lost on the internet and going to sleep to late.  I looked at my bookmarks bar.  I haven't used a book mark in safari for months, it seems like such an impersonal way to categorize websites.

I clicked on your old blog, the one that you wrote throughout college. The one that I read in its entirety when I was a sophomore at SLU, my favorite place, and your least favorite. I would check it daily to see if you had written anything new.  I still like to imagine I was your only reader, that even you forgot about giving me the address, and I got to read someone's journal.

It was your writing, a blog ostensibly about traveling to rome, written for parents and friends.  It evolved, grew, and lost audience when you came back to campus.  I met you for real then, when you came back.  You were a junior, beautiful, funny, dreamy.  I was drawn to you superficially.  We talked, via phone, while I roamed the halls of DeMattais hall.  I learned later how much you disliked phones.  At the end of the conversation, you told me about your blog, it took some prodding.  In the next 48 hours, i was done reading.

You were you in those writings, but you were more than the you I had met that semester.  After a guarded beginning, you slowly let your defenses fade away.  I began to anticipate turns of phrase, to hang on every timestamped word.  I appreciated your word choice, your emotion, your intelligence.  You were an adult, intelligent, emotional, relatable.


We walked to church, you questioned whether I would freeze solid because i walked so slow, and you were the you I met at parties.  It was hard for me to reconcile the person who's words I devoured and the girl standing next to me.  Beautiful, funny, dreamy.  I tried not to get lost in those big blue eyes, I tried to reconcile the girl from the writings with the girl on my right.

I followed your relationship, from a voyeurs vantage point.  I didn't know if the invitation to read extended into the future, but it became a thing to never bring up the writings.  I lived the parallel life with you, seeing you out, reading about your life, never knowing which to believe.  I tired not to get lost in those big blue eyes.

We didn't grow apart as much as we splintered at a very specific moment.  I was not ready for it.  I was a kid.  A smart, funny, confident kid, but a kid.  I had fallen for two girls, they both happened to be you.  I kept reading, looking for a sign that you cared as much as I did.  I left unreturned messages, never saw you around.  Beautiful, funny, dreamy.  I got over it, transplaced my affections on a different blue eyed blonde in rome.

I saw you one more time.  A BYOB Sushi restaurant in Chicago, where you escaped to, running from St. Louis and Kansas with equal vigor.  We over indulged, you stayed home instead of going out.  I went to Ravens.

When I clicked on that link in my favorites bar, expecting to be reminded of all of that, I found the writings password protected.  Words I had read two and three times behind a lock and key.  Intelligent, emotional, relatable.  Writing that had mattered to me so much for a semester, gave me a role model and a crush, were now gone.

I thought about it anyway, all of the things, 2 euro cones, serendipity, ladies night at lacledes. And I wrote on my own Rome blog turned writing blog about it.  And I missed you. I missed sophomore year and writing and reading and emotion.  I missed going to church, Rome, fights with parents and thinking i was all grown up.  I missed blogger and photomontages and crushes and the Village.  I missed being young, and college and emotional funks.  I missed you, though too, i missed you a lot.