I've been with Ben Frederick. Think about it now.
Imagine the angriest you've ever been at your parents. The angriest they've ever been at you.
Imagine the worst fight you've ever had with them. Imagine the worst fight they've ever had with each other.
Good. Now you're ready.
Now imagine them with other people. Not being seperated, that's going too fast now, and it's far more taboo and for some reason a much harder concept to wrap your mind around. Imagine seeing the two people who have raised you get uncomfortably close in your presence. Except this time, it's not with each other. You find out that this is going to inevitably happen, and for a week your parents still sleep in the same bed, still treat each other with civility. The night They tell you, you ask your friend if you can come over. You pull up to her house, you see her perfectly happy family through the window, and you know you can't handle it. You pull away. The night they tell you, you tell Her you need to go outside for a fucking cigarette but all it does is make you feel even more sick so you throw up and then you throw it away. Imagine that for months, no one knows and you have to make up excuses why your father is never in the house anymore. You lie to your friends about the new furniture, the new paint on the walls, the new car and the new silverware. For months you listen to how bad their families, their lives at home are. This is the last time you will be a family, the last time everyone will be under the same roof. Imagine that after They tell you you leave for a week, stay in other houses, and when you come back to your own it is so empty that your voice echoed where it never echoed before. You come home and the furniture, the rugs are gone, the rooms are bare. This is the house you've lived in your whole fucking life. It's the house your little sister was born in. It's the house They were supposed to get old together in. He would never let you turn the air up high enough, but with Him gone the house is so much colder than it ever was before. Imagine that He took most of the dishes, the silverware, so for days you have almost nothing to use and when She buys new ones you won't use them because that means "they've won" and that things really have changed. You aren't invited to your uncle's birthday party because His side of the family doesn't talk to you anymore. After He leaves you don't hear from Him for a week and you mutter under your breath when he finally does call "you must have been in one hell of a hurry to get out of here". Now they both sleep in beds that are meant for two. You still don't talk to Him, you yell at Him for not calling but when he does you don't pick up. She goes out, but it's not with Him. She doesn't tell you She's going out, and She get's back later than you do if she comes back at all those nights. She expects you to be comfortable with it. A marriage that lasted 22 years, and they couldn't wait 6 more months until you're gone. They couldn't wait 4 more weeks to move on to someone new. They aren't even fucking divorced yet, and They're with other people. He didn't give me a name, He gave me His name. All three of them. Love is something that is just there, it has no beginning. But it certainly does have an end.
You know that somewhere on the bottom of the ocean there is a place with talking seahorses where girls call you back and where everyone is happy and this never happens. But you know you can't hold your breath that long.