Platforms.

You are a platform.

You rise high above the floor. 

Steep, tall, daunting.

When I climb onto your platform, my toes peek out over the edge, and I nervously curl them over the rough concrete in anticipation of the coming jump. How can I depart from you? How can I let myself lurch forward into the unknown?

I live in constant fear of the plummeting free fall so inevitable when standing on your platform.

I'm up here, and the wind gently nips at my shirtsleeves, and I try not to think about the dizzying, breathtaking, all-encompassing height from which I currently sit atop the world, sotospeak. I close my eyes and there's a faint salty smell, mixed with tobacco leaves and pool chlorine. This smell encapsulates all the best parts of you, and also some of the worst parts of you. Like Fleetwood Mac, "damn your love- damn your lies." 

God, for a platform though, you are sturdy. I can feel your balance and your weight and your constancy beneath my feet. 

When I jump off your platform, I dive into a world that is beyond myself, finally. Beyond my nerves, beyond my fear, beyond my chaotic self-conscious wreckage that screams doubt from the tops of its' worn-down lungs. 

My self-destruction locomotive chugga-chugga-chugs to a full stop and I'm left with this annoying sense of satisfaction, and a competitive curiosity which burns brighter than the brightest white light. 

I miss you, it would seem. 

I find myself thinking about you, and I find myself wondering. 

What does the platform think these days? What does the platform do? Does the platform miss me? Does the platform wonder where I am, too?

I love the self I was around you more than any other self I've ever been, and I have a lot of selfs in the closet of my past. 

This particular self was caught in a world that burst with all the colors in your rainbow. 

It always starts accidentally. I rewatch your favorite movie on Netflix without meaning to, and then I find myself listening to Jack Johnson and arguing with strangers about David Bowie and existentialism, convincing myself that I still know you better than anyone else. Then the next thing I know, I'm wearing red lipstick again and driving a little more recklessly. I allow my mind to stray back to memories of us from so long ago.

I pushed, you pulled. Push. Pull. Push. Pull. 

Hated the way you would call me on the carpet, but secretly loved that you were the only one to call me on my bullshit. Our fights were outrageous but I still count them among my favorite memories. You were the only one who never tried to control me and you respected the hell out of me and you treated me like it. So you supported me, and you raised me a little higher, you thrust me a little taller into the breeze and casually pushed me off the edge and I leapt off your platform. 

I leapt and I dove and I twirled and I laughed and I rose into a higher level of self-acceptance and then I would fall back into your arms. (Landing back in you was my very favorite part.) 

I jumped beyond myself. Because I jumped from your platform. 

One day, I grew wings. I grew wings and I flew far away from you, and I kept looking back over my shoulder- but you only grew smaller and smaller in the distance.  I tried to fly back, but by then you had disappeared. 

Now I sit here, many years and days later, a little wine drunk at 1AM after re-watching your favorite movie and I find myself thinking once again, for the first time in a long time, about you. About the way I pushed, and the way you pulled. 

You are my favorite platform. You always have been.