mistaken for strangers.
mistaken for strangers
Steven Gerrard/Xabi Alonso. 1,565 words.
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
1.
I have this dream where I start to talk to you and you don't recognise me. I have this dream where I start to talk to you, but can't say anything. I have this dream where you just look at me, kind of mournfully, and I get choked up and can't speak. I have this dream where I say everything, I tell you everything, I tell you things I haven't even dared to think, I tell you things I didn't know I felt, I tell you everything, and when I look up, you're not there.
2.
Sometimes I think about if we'd never met.
I sign a contract, I go to London, I survive the backlash (barely).
You replace me, and I don't resent you. Not then. I watch all your matches. You're an instant success.
Maybe I fail. Maybe I don't. Maybe it's worth it.
Maybe it doesn't work out (it hardly ever does, does it? - but we've gotten used to fooling ourselves, to pretending that we don't need it, we don't need them, that we're bigger than this).
You're captain eventually, and you stay for a long, long time. You're the legend I could've been. You're all I threw away. I hate you, but only for a while. I've hated myself much longer.
They still talk about us collectively sometimes, years later, when we've both hung up our boots, you as a Liverpool great and me as a has-been and a sell-out and worse things (the pity, the what-could-have-beens will always hurt the most).
I don't like forgetting things. But I don't like being forgotten even more.
I don't ever see it ending any other way. Maybe you always like to think the paths you never took would have ended badly. But you can never really know. It's just reassuring to think that.
(I wonder if you think about it too. If you think about going to Real Madrid five years earlier. If you think about playing against us a couple times every few years. If you think about not knowing me, how much harder or easier that would have been. How much less complicated. But how much less.
You probably don't. You're not one to dwell too much on the past, on what-ifs, on possibilities long lost to us. You're far too good at moving on. I resent you for that.
Maybe I think about it so much to convince myself there are worse alternatives to this.
It doesn't always feel like it though.)
3.
You're good at moving on, but I wonder if you're happy sometimes. Your form, your team, your results say yes, but I know there's always been more to it.
Maybe I mean to ask, "Are you as in love as you were with us (with me, with me)?"
It's terrible, it's selfish (but I've always been a bit selfish, a lot selfish), but I hope you miss me.
(I ask you once. You say no. You say, "How can you miss something that's so irrevocably gone? How can you miss something you never really had, something that's so easily forgotten?"
I don't ever know how to forget, I don't ever know how to not miss things.
How do you ever know you're alive if you don't let yourself hurt? How do you ever feel happy if you don't feel pain?
That's how I know you're not. Not really.)
4.
We meet in park, we meet at a football game, we meet at a party, we meet outside my childhood home, we meet.
(In actuality, the first time we met was at Melwood. I took you to a couple places, showed you around. We ended up at the docks, and had our first real conversation.
You said, much shyer than I know you are, "I'm glad. I mean. That you're staying."
You looked kind of apprehensive afterwards, but I knew it was harmless. I knew you meant it.
I said, "Me too." And I meant it too.)
We meet on the street.
I bump into you on the sidewalk. You say a hurried, "Sorry," but I hear your accent clearly, see the warm brown of your eyes.
I recognise you instantly when I see you in the bar. I probably decide to not say anything. But you speak to me first. Maybe it's the alcohol or it's just a good day, but we hit it off. You say you're new in town; I say I can tell. You say you don't really drink much; I say I do. You ask if I bumped into you on purpose; I say maybe. You say maybe we'll fall in love, have an epic romance that everyone will be jealous of; I say I doubt it. You say I should have some faith.
I say we should get out of here; you say okay.
Maybe we don't see each other again after that night. Maybe we meet years later when we're older and jaded and looking for something to believe in again. Maybe we find it.
Maybe we spend the weekend together, and you leave on Monday morning, and as you're looking for your shoes under my bed, I realise you don't have my number. I wonder what would happen if I didn't give it to you. I wonder if I want my life to go back to what it was before, getting drunk alone and going home alone to throw up on the bathroom floor, or going home with randoms I'd never see again. Sometimes, you think your life is what you want it to be until you realise you could have something completely different.
"Wait," I say as you reach for the doorknob.
Maybe we don't go home at all. Maybe we spend all night out roaming the streets and kissing against lampposts and smoking on park benches. Maybe I tell you everything there is to know about me; maybe you tell me some things about you. Maybe you have to fly back to Spain in the morning and I don't see you for years. Maybe you decide to stay. Maybe we both decide to stay.
Maybe we know it's better this way.
5.
We used to go for walks a lot, in foreign cities, before anyone else woke up. Just you and me, and the sunrise, and the new sounds and smells and light. We'd catalogue all the things that made up a city. We'd catalogue all the new things we found out about each other. There was still a lot of them, a long time after. Maybe we didn't want to rush; we wanted to make it last. We wanted to make sure we had things to talk about always. We never thought about if it was cut short though. Why don't people always say, do, feel everything they ever need to at once? Why do we always think we'll have a little longer?
When I knew you were leaving, there was so much I wanted to say to you that I couldn't breathe, all the words settling heavily in my chest, my lungs, my throat.
Sometimes I get bits and pieces out. I don't think you like to hear them though. It's too much like remembering, like regretting, like missing.
"Sometimes, I think I'm not anything to you anymore, and I just - I can deal with a lot of things, but I can't deal with that."
"God, Stevie, of course you mean something to me."
"But what though? What could I possibly be to you right now? What do you need from me anymore?"
"I never needed anything from you. I just needed you."
It's all you've ever wanted from him. And you had it, but it's gone now.
"What do you need now?"
"I need you to be happy. That's the only way I'll really be too."
I say, "Okay," and I mean it.
6.
Maybe I meet you, twenty years from now, on a sidewalk in Liverpool. Maybe it feels like we could be strangers passing each other by. Maybe it feels like we're lovers meeting for a stroll. We're neither, now.
(I wonder how you think of me now. I wonder how you'd describe me. I wonder if a friendship can endure for decades as long as neither party ever acknowledges that it's over. I wonder if love can, if it's stored away but never used. I wonder what the expiry date of us is.)
Maybe I clap my hand on your shoulder, as I say, "It's been a long time." Maybe you touch your fingertips to my face as you lean in to say goodbye.
Maybe it's not goodbye. Maybe we see each other again soon.
You don't argue when I suggest it. It's time. It's been time for a long while now. We decide on Greece or Turkey, somewhere far away that means a lot. Somewhere that hurts a little, somewhere that eases the pain, quells the longing. Maybe you've always been homesick for places far away. Maybe we've always been homesick for each other.
There are memories in the soil, in the air. Not all of them are ours. (We make some more, too.)
We get to share each other, completely and equally. We get to end this together, instead of having it ripped away from us too soon. We get to hold on to it. We get a little longer.
Steven Gerrard/Xabi Alonso. 1,565 words.
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
1.
I have this dream where I start to talk to you and you don't recognise me. I have this dream where I start to talk to you, but can't say anything. I have this dream where you just look at me, kind of mournfully, and I get choked up and can't speak. I have this dream where I say everything, I tell you everything, I tell you things I haven't even dared to think, I tell you things I didn't know I felt, I tell you everything, and when I look up, you're not there.
2.
Sometimes I think about if we'd never met.
I sign a contract, I go to London, I survive the backlash (barely).
You replace me, and I don't resent you. Not then. I watch all your matches. You're an instant success.
Maybe I fail. Maybe I don't. Maybe it's worth it.
Maybe it doesn't work out (it hardly ever does, does it? - but we've gotten used to fooling ourselves, to pretending that we don't need it, we don't need them, that we're bigger than this).
You're captain eventually, and you stay for a long, long time. You're the legend I could've been. You're all I threw away. I hate you, but only for a while. I've hated myself much longer.
They still talk about us collectively sometimes, years later, when we've both hung up our boots, you as a Liverpool great and me as a has-been and a sell-out and worse things (the pity, the what-could-have-beens will always hurt the most).
I don't like forgetting things. But I don't like being forgotten even more.
I don't ever see it ending any other way. Maybe you always like to think the paths you never took would have ended badly. But you can never really know. It's just reassuring to think that.
(I wonder if you think about it too. If you think about going to Real Madrid five years earlier. If you think about playing against us a couple times every few years. If you think about not knowing me, how much harder or easier that would have been. How much less complicated. But how much less.
You probably don't. You're not one to dwell too much on the past, on what-ifs, on possibilities long lost to us. You're far too good at moving on. I resent you for that.
Maybe I think about it so much to convince myself there are worse alternatives to this.
It doesn't always feel like it though.)
3.
You're good at moving on, but I wonder if you're happy sometimes. Your form, your team, your results say yes, but I know there's always been more to it.
Maybe I mean to ask, "Are you as in love as you were with us (with me, with me)?"
It's terrible, it's selfish (but I've always been a bit selfish, a lot selfish), but I hope you miss me.
(I ask you once. You say no. You say, "How can you miss something that's so irrevocably gone? How can you miss something you never really had, something that's so easily forgotten?"
I don't ever know how to forget, I don't ever know how to not miss things.
How do you ever know you're alive if you don't let yourself hurt? How do you ever feel happy if you don't feel pain?
That's how I know you're not. Not really.)
4.
We meet in park, we meet at a football game, we meet at a party, we meet outside my childhood home, we meet.
(In actuality, the first time we met was at Melwood. I took you to a couple places, showed you around. We ended up at the docks, and had our first real conversation.
You said, much shyer than I know you are, "I'm glad. I mean. That you're staying."
You looked kind of apprehensive afterwards, but I knew it was harmless. I knew you meant it.
I said, "Me too." And I meant it too.)
We meet on the street.
I bump into you on the sidewalk. You say a hurried, "Sorry," but I hear your accent clearly, see the warm brown of your eyes.
I recognise you instantly when I see you in the bar. I probably decide to not say anything. But you speak to me first. Maybe it's the alcohol or it's just a good day, but we hit it off. You say you're new in town; I say I can tell. You say you don't really drink much; I say I do. You ask if I bumped into you on purpose; I say maybe. You say maybe we'll fall in love, have an epic romance that everyone will be jealous of; I say I doubt it. You say I should have some faith.
I say we should get out of here; you say okay.
Maybe we don't see each other again after that night. Maybe we meet years later when we're older and jaded and looking for something to believe in again. Maybe we find it.
Maybe we spend the weekend together, and you leave on Monday morning, and as you're looking for your shoes under my bed, I realise you don't have my number. I wonder what would happen if I didn't give it to you. I wonder if I want my life to go back to what it was before, getting drunk alone and going home alone to throw up on the bathroom floor, or going home with randoms I'd never see again. Sometimes, you think your life is what you want it to be until you realise you could have something completely different.
"Wait," I say as you reach for the doorknob.
Maybe we don't go home at all. Maybe we spend all night out roaming the streets and kissing against lampposts and smoking on park benches. Maybe I tell you everything there is to know about me; maybe you tell me some things about you. Maybe you have to fly back to Spain in the morning and I don't see you for years. Maybe you decide to stay. Maybe we both decide to stay.
Maybe we know it's better this way.
5.
We used to go for walks a lot, in foreign cities, before anyone else woke up. Just you and me, and the sunrise, and the new sounds and smells and light. We'd catalogue all the things that made up a city. We'd catalogue all the new things we found out about each other. There was still a lot of them, a long time after. Maybe we didn't want to rush; we wanted to make it last. We wanted to make sure we had things to talk about always. We never thought about if it was cut short though. Why don't people always say, do, feel everything they ever need to at once? Why do we always think we'll have a little longer?
When I knew you were leaving, there was so much I wanted to say to you that I couldn't breathe, all the words settling heavily in my chest, my lungs, my throat.
Sometimes I get bits and pieces out. I don't think you like to hear them though. It's too much like remembering, like regretting, like missing.
"Sometimes, I think I'm not anything to you anymore, and I just - I can deal with a lot of things, but I can't deal with that."
"God, Stevie, of course you mean something to me."
"But what though? What could I possibly be to you right now? What do you need from me anymore?"
"I never needed anything from you. I just needed you."
It's all you've ever wanted from him. And you had it, but it's gone now.
"What do you need now?"
"I need you to be happy. That's the only way I'll really be too."
I say, "Okay," and I mean it.
6.
Maybe I meet you, twenty years from now, on a sidewalk in Liverpool. Maybe it feels like we could be strangers passing each other by. Maybe it feels like we're lovers meeting for a stroll. We're neither, now.
(I wonder how you think of me now. I wonder how you'd describe me. I wonder if a friendship can endure for decades as long as neither party ever acknowledges that it's over. I wonder if love can, if it's stored away but never used. I wonder what the expiry date of us is.)
Maybe I clap my hand on your shoulder, as I say, "It's been a long time." Maybe you touch your fingertips to my face as you lean in to say goodbye.
Maybe it's not goodbye. Maybe we see each other again soon.
You don't argue when I suggest it. It's time. It's been time for a long while now. We decide on Greece or Turkey, somewhere far away that means a lot. Somewhere that hurts a little, somewhere that eases the pain, quells the longing. Maybe you've always been homesick for places far away. Maybe we've always been homesick for each other.
There are memories in the soil, in the air. Not all of them are ours. (We make some more, too.)
We get to share each other, completely and equally. We get to end this together, instead of having it ripped away from us too soon. We get to hold on to it. We get a little longer.