Cornelia Boom

i am the princess, and you are the pea

4:30 AM

goodnight, good luck, i'll see you soon

5:21 PM

goodnight, good luck, i'll see you soon

5:10 PM

so not in love kind of love

10:29 PM

I hate the word love. And the amount of times I'm about to use it makes me cringe. Love is for old people, love is for boring people, I'm only 18, and I like to think I'm anything other than boring.

But even though I hate the word,

I have 3 ways I like to categorize it:

#1) Some sort of mature and/or logical kind of love. Typical. It's just right. It's comfortable, you're together all the time, you never fight, but if you do it's cause, like, they're late picking you up for a wedding reception, or they say something really stupid in front of your mother. It's serious. It's grown up. It's the most successful, but you'll get bored and stir crazy after your 3rd trip to Disney.

#2) Compassionate kind of love. More of a friendship so to speak. It's "In love with my best friend." or it's, "I'm gonna run to the store and buy her tampons and inexpensive chocolate." It's awkward cuddle with me under 14 blankets, sweaty hands, sweaty wrists, it's eat Chinese take out while you watch another rerun of some show you never got into. but you do, you're supposed to, you're in love.

#3) It's not really love, I guess, but if it was, it'd be the best kind. It's noncommittal-make-out-in-my-bedroom-but-you're-not-allowed-within-10-feet-of-my-house kind of love. Rebellious. Poisonous. It's 1 am 2 am 3 am. Talk 4 hours about stuff you'll forget in the morning. It's just friends, it's don't tell anyone, it's "Mom I'm at so-and-so's" but she'll never know. It's sneaky. It's dramatic. It's selfish. It's miserable. It's love, but it totally isn't.

You and i, we write checks like adults but pay tuition with our academically inclined high school surnames. We were whispers through the walls, "i didn't see you" in the halls, they engraved you + not me onto every bathroom stall, they knew apples from oranges about us, but they knew nothing about 3 am. oh baby they knew nothing about 4 am. We were so far from nothing, but we don't mean anything kind of love.

and the weeks keep getting shorter, and the days keep getting shorter, and the moments, they're all time bombs, and we're stuck in them.

and tomorrow I'll be 19, then 20, then 30, I'll be far from here by 40, and our names will just be nouns carved into empty bathroom doors.

you were just a time bomb, just a friend, a catastrophe.

we were so not in love, kind of love,

and i loved it.