29th
I came home to my old house, but the walls were different colors, the furniture had been moved, and my bed was missing.
For the last two years, I have been under the impression that a certain person was in love with me. It’s funny to me how much of an affect that has had on my actions, whether I recipricated…. well I never reciprocated it, but whether i enjoyed the fact or not. There was guilt in my imagined transgressions against that loyalty. I guarded against growing affection for others, took confidence from the knowledge of an unseen but unconditional companion, and was comforted by constant support and pacts given via my email address, or the occasional cross-continental phone call.
In person, this affection was always less of a comfort and more of a dilemma, but it feels so good to feel adored that I became very good at forgetting that fact. Having little experience with romance, I’d convinced myself that a relationship is hard work, that there are things about people that bug you and they always will, that I am person who needs space and time for myself no matter what my feelings toward the individual infringing on that space, that this all encompassing overpowering love is a lie, an illusion, a fairy tale made up to intensify stories, that it’s a trick and a wise person knows that such love is not the way life works and pursues relationships with people they admire and chooses them dispite the lack of constant zsa zsa zu.
I was ready to tell the person who told me they’d be waiting for me when i was ready, that I was ready to try, like a big girl, to make a relationship work out of sheer will. So you can imagine my surprise when instead this person puts down his cup of coffee and tells me that I’d been the woman in his life…. until three weeks ago, at which point he had found the one. He had found the woman his inner child cries out for, the woman he plans to move to be with, stop leaving the country to stay with and plans to build a life with, specifically in the very town that two of my best friends in the world are currently starting to build a life as well. Part of me wanted to roll my eyes at said declaration, part of me was relieved to have escaped the whirlwind of pain and uncertainty that would have obviously ensued had i tried to force this relationship to work, part of me wanted to cry from rejection, and part of me was flabberghasted that someone who I admire so much was declaring that this, in my mind fictional love, existed outside of the religiously forced realm.
The warm blanket of expectation has been abruptly pulled off me and I find a draft blowing through the window. I had been so proud to have come to a conclusion about what I was willing to try for, only to find that conclusion to be a poor one. I suddenly felt the youth of my age and the immaturity of being so tight with my own love, slow to give it and reluctantly done so. I felt the immaturity of my cynicism, for wisdom in my mind teaches us to embrace every opportunity.
I am quite sure that everything will be okay, that endings such as these often lead us to better things. I have confidence that said person can stay in my life in a different capacity and remain a devoted and much valued friend. My intuition tells me that this swift change in the winds will blow me to a place where I can thrive. But in the meantime, in this second, I am experiencing the karmic punishment for the times I have wronged him. For now, it’s still a bit hard to look at him, despite knowing I would have never wanted him once we were in the thick of it. I wish I could fast forward into a routine where things get easier and new friends blossom. I wish Alex were here, because I know he’d understand and know before I did what i need, whether it would be a day out in nature or a night of drinking somewhere we wouldn’t run into anyone I could embarrass myself around, but unfortunately he’s not here. My biggest safety nets have been removed and now that I’ve fallen, I will have to sit in the dirt for a while and until I can recover my pride and gather my strength and start over. Start over with a new place to find comfort. Start over without any prediction or comprehension of what the future may hold. Start over because I must. Start over because I’m sure I’ll find in the next months or perhaps even years that this was the best thing that could have happened. But for now, for today I think I’ll sit here and draw pictures in the dirt.
