I 'something' you too

“I love you” you said.

Then there was that pause that always accompanies cross-Atlantic telephone calls. I think I may have paused too, which must have added a few seconds to the obligatory response you were waiting for.

“I love you too”.

It echoed through the receiver and in my head, and across an ocean and a continent. When I said it I think I thought I meant it. Back then I think I thought a lot of things that haven't ended up being true. But we both said what we thought we were supposed to say. Couldn't we have just said “I miss you”?

I remember sitting on a bench by the harbour. We had only been dating a few months. You started crying, then I started to cry. I had broken up with you over the phone the night before. I told you that day, on the bench by the harbour, that I knew I'd hurt you one day. You assured me I would not.

Much later, like say a year or more later, over drinks at our first apartment in Montreal, you said “One day you're going to tell me I stole your youth”.

At the time I thought it was rubbish. Today I think it is rubbish. There was a period though, shortly after we split up when I resented you, having thought that you had, indeed, stolen my youth. Now I know for myself that I just never wanted to be young.

Later still, beyond our beginning and end, after meeting the girl that I would shortly marry, you told me “She seems nice, you better be good to her, don't treat her the the way you treated me”.

As you said it I brushed it off. Back then I still thought I had been good to you. I know better now, but for whatever reason the affect of your words stuck, and whenever I behave like an ass they surface to taunt and guide me.

With the new girl, the current girl, the wife, I remember we began with something. Instead of “I love you” we'd say “I something you”.

The implications were the same, but the possibilities were greater. We knew there was a feeling that resisted a label. We knew there was a common phrase, but had tired of it's use. Still today, although we've succumbed to the “phrase”, we fall back on our beginnings to remember how we got to where we are.