i used to say that i do not write for the purposes of stream-of-consciousness, thinking-out-loud therapy, but i need it tonight.

as it turns out, love is hard.

o.f. and i, it seems, will not work out. i have played out the scenario in my head many times and it never works out quite so.

she says "i don't know" a lot in her speech. if she didn't know the trivial things in life, like what she wants from our stop at morton williams, that would be fine and dandy.

she doesn't know what the rest of her life looks like.

i do love her. just haven't mentioned it.

she doesn't know what she wants. if i were a betting man — and sometimes i am — i would predict us far apart, either in location, vocation, or both. i know how tenuous this is. she's in university, and here only because somewhere between the dining tables of a house in chicago, a decision was made for *this* city over that city. it could have been any of them.

just as easily, she could be anywhere in ten years. probably not next to me. overseas. across the country. back in chicago. filming a movie in south america. on a journalistic assignment in china.

physical. distance.

she doesn't know where she'd like to go, and i can't hold her back. from the wisdom of others, i know that i can't be there to light the way. i don't know the way, either — only my own path. my strides grow in length on my own journey, hers are still unsure (as they should be, as i want them to be. open to all possibilities, regardless of me.)

i've never even figured out why we like each other so much. we keep talking. we walk slow. we hold hands.

alas, i am the more bothered of the two of us at this realization. this is the most subtle form of tearing two people apart the universe does. the expression "tearing apart" paints the scene too violently.

i would much prefer we found each other cheating, fucking someone else, doing hard drugs, stealing money from charities; anything that could allow us a clean break, sure in our knowledge that walking away from each other is the right decision.

anything but this ambivalence.

patience could yield o.f. and i together in a chelsea apartment with one (she says two) kid(s), spending our evenings at the park, summers at the in-laws, mornings in bed together. inseparable by way of significance. forever intertwined because we did too much together.

it could also take us to places so far from each other that we'll have never existed. i'll just be another boy from a few summers in new york when o.insert-her-future-last-name-here. wanted to be an actress.

to her future kids:

your mother worked as an usher at a theatre where the famous actors and actresses would attend. she was the most beautiful woman in madison square park when she'd meet me for lunch there. she stood with the stature of a diplomat and the authenticity of a farmer next to me in washington square, with a perfect smile, she made me proud to hold her hand. your mother was once here, in this young man's shoebox of an apartment, reading on the couch for class, those silly college classes. she once kissed me on the cheek and looked at me like she loved me, and i think she did, before life started telling her what she didn't know, and what she didn't know was that my apartment was a pit stop, a much-needed checkpoint before she became who she is to you: one of the only people in the story of your life who will never cease to love you.