Baggage

It was a Saturday. I hadn't seen him since Tuesday, and everything was going so well. I couldn't wait.
"Do you want to meet me and some friends for a couple drinks in the afternoon?"

He couldn't make it.

Eight o'clock. I was drunk. I don't even know how it happened. The hours in between when I left the bar and when I showed up at his apartment are a blur. I can't remember what I said or how it became a huge, escalated, blown up fight.

The tension in his room was too much for me. I huddled against the wall, awkwardly perched under a frame, my head swimming with tequila and my heart hurting from the space between us. "Lauren, this is too hard. We're not even together!" I couldn't cry in front of him but I saw it happening again. I was losing another one.

"I don't understand what we're even yelling about!" I screamed back. All I wanted was to hug him. It had been four days since I'd hugged him and now all of my ugliness was on full display. I was trying to say all the things I thought he wanted to hear but it was like trying to talk under water. I couldn't think straight, I couldn't see straight, I could barely form coherent sentences.

"I can't believe you were going to meet my friends like this." I was suddenly aware that my makeup had all melted off. My hair was a tangled mess. "Your eyes are all bloodshot, you can tell you've been crying." But I hadn't been crying. I was drunk. And I was so embarrassed.

"Part of me wants you here and part of me doesn't want you here at all," he said quietly. I stood awkwardly in silence for a few more moments, trying to think of what to say. I should have walked out. But the last thing I wanted was to walk out without him.

"Tell me what to do," I said. But what I needed to do was crawl back in time six hours. I had let too much slip. I had told him how terrified I was to let myself care about someone and how easy it is for me to tumble into head-over-heels territory. This was the second time I had embarrassed myself like this. The conversation got heated again, and once more I yelled out that I didn't understand how this argument had happened. We were going in circles.

"Okay, now you have to go." I spun on my heel and slammed the door behind me. Every nerve in my body was trembling as I raced home in a cab. I arrived at my front door. I had forgotten my keys.

An hour later I sat outside a friend's house, waiting for her to come home. I got a text. "I wish you were here with me. I miss you."

I feel like the sad girl, like the messed up girl, like the girl who lets all her baggage get in the way of happiness. I just don't know how to break out.