April 14th.

The clock struck midnight and she hardly blinked.  She thought back to this moment last year.

Seated at a table at her favorite bar she was surrounded by some of her favorite people but not all of them.  Not him.  Though he was only a mere 20 feet away, he wasn't really there.  They sang and then they drank and then she walked in.  The second she saw her something inside of her died.  Her best friends had been trying to make her life a living hell for weeks and now this.


Her smile crumbled to the floor met by voluptuous tears flowing with an ease.  She excused herself to the bathroom where she could breakdown in semi-privacy.  She slipped to the floor, cradling her heavy head in her hands; make-up on her fingers.  Her phone rang.  Tricia.  She answered, trying to conceal her stuffy voice.  "Happy Birthday!"  More tears.  "Are you okay?!".  No, but I can't talk.  She hung up and continued her pity party, deservedly so.

If she could rewrite history, what would she have done that year?  A great question that will never see an answer because she had loved him.  When you love someone all rationality goes out the window.  Unfortunately, when looking back, although you remember the bad, you feel the unknown- the "what-ifs".  There's always that false hope that if you went back in time that you wouldn't have done anything different, rather he would.  He would have been better; he would realize how amazing she is and he wouldn't fuck it up this time.

Unfortunately, she thought, when it's time to blow the candles out and make a wish you're better off wishing for MSU to make it to the Rose Bowl than for the power of time travel.

Relationships are like movies.  Admittedly, mostly movies with sad endings.  Yet they seem to always have a beginning, middle, and end, even if they aren't quite clear at first.  The problem arises when there's an undying hope that it's just not quite the end yet.  How long do you wait before you give up or before you realize your movie was nothing short of a bad B-movie?  When do you come to the realization that what you thought was Titanic-worthy was really just a bad episode of Felicity after the haircut?

It was 12:01 and it was time to blow out the candles, and role the credits of such a sad and beautifully messed-up movie.  He was never coming back, and April 15th was just another day.