"You can't love me." he says to me. Abruptly. Interrupting my reading.

I look at him. Raise my eyebrow.

"You just can't love me." he repeats. As though. Those words will become clearer with no added explanation.

I nod my head. Slowly. Not knowing exactly what he wants. He just stared at me. I looked back at my book.

"Are you listening to me?" he sounds annoyed.

Sighing. I closed my book. And looked back at him. He had changed. His stubble has gotten noticeably thicker. The dark circles has gotten darker and I silently mused as to what has caused them. Me, my answer comes readily to my mind and I smile satisfactorily even though, in all likeness, it had nothing to do with me and more the stress of college getting to him.

Still, this was my mind, and I could think whatever I wanted in it, I say defiantly to myself and then go back to reading signs of change in the contours of his face. I saw wrinkles on his forehead that I couldn't remember was there before, and pimples near his chin. And then wonder about the new one that popped up in my forehead that I've desperately swept my fringe across this morning to try cover it. I nervously pat my fringe again.

I continued exploring like a scientist intrigued by new bacteria. I saw in his eyes a deeper pool of maturity and darkness that I don't recognize, or it could have been the trick of the light because when I blinked, his eyes were once again the same frustrating reflection of all that I could never understand.

It was like seeing an old picture with deliberate changes. And feeling out of place. Like familiar answers ready on your tongue but confused at the questions. Like well worn shoes that someone else borrowed and changed the molding of.

I start to wonder how much of him has changed. When it all changed. Why it has changed. And how much am I going to like or dislike the change. I stare at him accusingly, and realize with surprise that I see the same accusations being thrown at me.

And then I realize, that I've probably changed too. And I wonder, how much of myself has changed. When it all changed. Why it has changed. And how much I'm going to like or dislike the new me.

At any rate, judging by the obvious spite on his face, he clearly didn't like who I've become.

I smile. I like the new me already.

"I'm listening." I say. Remembering - a little late - that conversation was much like a badminton game, and it was my turn to serve.

He must have picked up on my disorientation of social cues because he repeated himself, rather annoyingly, "you can't love me."

"Okay." I reply simply.

"You just can't"

Maybe his repetitions of how I can't love him should be getting offensive. Like I mean, what is that all suppose to mean? That he's too good for me? That I was incapable of loving others as much as myself? That he will never reciprocate and that I shouldn't even try? That he was actually capable of thinking of somebody other than himself in order for him to try to protect me? Is this his way of getting me to fall for him?

But gone were the times when I would painfully analyze every word he threw at me and measure the velocity and rate at which he threw it. Gone were the times in which I agonized my relationship with him as a chess player agonized the wise-ness of the moves in his 64 square inch black and white world.

I have reached a new Zen - so to speak. Sleep, crying, more sleep and chocolate being crucial elements to my new-found state of peace. I've stopped overanalyszing, and choose, for now. to accept all that I have no power to change.

"Okay." I tell him.

There was a tense pause. Like that moment in the badminton game when suddenly, the opponent smashes and you valiantly dive to save it, and everything turns into slow-mo as everyone watches the shuttlecock being slowly pushed back over the net, and slowly dropping, making its way down to a... touchdown (that terminology actually refers to another sport but that's okay, this is my mind).

He stares at me. Sizing his new opponent up. He has never faced this person before. The docile, accepting one. I have always been the screaming with triumph at my victory, gloating and arrogantly striding around like a peacock with one too many feathers stuck up its-.

Well. I am triumphant. But the small smile I give him is more reminiscent of a player, weary from having lost so many rounds and finding very little more to go on on.

"What have they done to you?" he asks me, trying to make a joke out of it but snapping too meanly to be humorous  "where did you go?"

"A place of tranquility and hope and all things gentle and feminine." I replied promptly to which he laughed.

I think that's one of the things I miss most about him. Or about the old me. Hearing his laugh, and knowing that it was only I who could make him laugh when he didn't want to.

"I miss you." he says.

Good. I smirk.

He looked at me. And I looked at him.

He was expecting something.

Oh. Wait.

Was it my turn to serve?

OH RIGHT.

"I m-" iss you too.

I stopped. Because I realized how empty that sounded in my head. Because, well, I don't.

I don't miss how I felt when I was with him. Awkward, and confused. Angry and bitter. Up, and Down. How he could make me feel so secure and stable, like we could be forever, and then empty another moment where I would anxiously wait - for weeks on end - for a sign, a call, a text, anything that meant he wanted to talk to me.

I don't miss him.

I just missed, what we had. How we embraced the world by pretending we were invincible, as long as we were together.

But I don't miss who I was.

And I sure as hell don't miss him.

"You know Karl, you can't love me." he says again, softly. "Because I was never much to love."

"You've changed." He says quietly. After I remain adamantly silent. Staring at the book whose words have stumbled across each other, like Chinese characters sparring on galloping horses in search of honor and peace not knowing that they've been running away from it the more they search.

"You don't like it." I say, not a question.

"No." he replies. Honestly. Sincere. "Because there's no me in it."

And again. I'm back down the rabbit hole of madness and self destruction.

Free Fall - Ed Sheeran