That first night we met I was wearing stupid shoes. I was drunk. You held my hand when there was ice, but you wouldn't kiss me. You made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.

Remember the nights we used to sit in your car and talk? The windows would ice up, it was February. We had so much to say. We were so excited to have found each other.

Or what about the day I came back from Spring Break? I was so excited to see you that I parked my car in a stupid spot. Forty five minutes later my car had been towed. I was scared my parents would be mad. You made me laugh 'til I forgot what hardasses they could be.

We got really, really stoned one day. I'm sure we were supposed to be doing something else. We laid on your bed and cracked each other up all afternoon doing impressions of people we knew. I thought my face would fall off I laughed so hard.

The day of your surgery you insisted that you could have a cigarette. I told you no a million times but you did it anyway when I was in the bathroom. I came out and you were stumbling back in the house turning a disgusting shade of grey. One of your roomates was helping you back down the stairs, when you saw me you reached for me. Your eyes lit up with love and comfort.

We ordered Chinese and they sent us Pepsi in a styrofoam cup that looked like it was meant for soup, and a bag of ice. We thought that was the funniest thing we'd ever seen for weeks.

I was nervous to meet your parents the first time. But they just acted like they were my parents too. They loved me, they scolded me, they opened up their family to me.

The jokes, all the inside jokes. Sometimes I hear you use them with other people. I know you've forgotten we started them together, that's ok. Their still ours at the core.

Or how about the night we made up all those crazy names for different kinds of people on the phone? We must have talked about just that for at least two hours.

You looked at me like I was the most amazing thing that'd ever happened to you. Every day. Even on the last day. The day I told you all those lies.

I was trying not to hurt you. I was trying to justify my decision to betray you to myself. I was wrong. I should have waited, thought things through a little more carefully. But you were lying too, somehow I knew it. There were lots of bad times.

But...

You and I have some beautiful memories. I love to remember them. I love to look back and remember how happy I was. That is the happiest I've ever been. I don't want you back, that isn't the point.

I just want to feel happy like that again.

I look into the layers of things around me and I wonder what is real. What is time doing to me? What have I convinced myself of, and why have I convinced myself of it? As everything compresses I find that I think of you often. Perhaps it was because it was so simple, we met, we fell in love, I was sick, it all got fucked up. Until the swirling illness engulfed me completely the only thing I knew was that I loved you and you loved me, I never doubted that you loved me.

Now it's all so confusing. Not you and me, I know where we stand and I like it. I like our friendship. It's everything else. I feel tied up and worked over. In some ways I feel incredibly fooled. I feel that I've fooled myself.

Remember how I used to squeeze your hand when I saw something bad coming our way?

I'm squeezing your hand now.