I just had a
birthday and instead of feeling a year older and wiser, I felt lost and naive.
I'm thirty three and I can no longer say I have things figured out. I'm
questioning my understanding of things I thought I had a firm grasp on. I feel
like I need another lesson on life and love and happiness. I need to
take some remedial classes, brush up on a few things… Because I forgot, I simply must
have forgotten what it was like to be loved. I really lost touch with the
feeling I’ve felt when I was loved. It had been so long since I felt the love of
a great man, I mistakenly grabbed on to the first thing that resembled it. I
was emphatically mistaken. But no matter how much I recognize my error, it
doesn’t stop me from wanting and yearning for that admitted mistake.
When a
relationship ends, people so often say that the timing was off in some way or
another, “we were in different places in our lives” or some variation of a pathetic
cliché. Though time seems to be the easy scapegoat in my love story, I refuse
to succumb to that bland and small minded excuse. I want to call a spade a
spade. I want to dissect this bullshit love story down to the pathetic excuse
for love that it truly is. Really, this is no love story. Love stories at
least start with love. And though my suitor claims he has “plenty of love” for
me, I can’t possibly believe such irrelevant words because he hasn’t the
faintest idea of what love truly is. He is a cad, a man who acts with
deliberate disregard for another's feelings. And no cad could ever truly
understand the complexities of love. I can’t even rightfully call this man a
suitor. He never actively pursued a relationship with me. He’d merely
dangle a string of hope along my periphery whenever he was bored. And I
actively chased that string with the determination of a feisty cat. And, like
any feisty cat would do, I shredded that string of hope ‘til there was nothing
left. There is nothing left but a shredded pile of hopelessness.
I have to
understand fully, here and now, that the problem we face is not time. I have to
squash that belief because if I consider that time is all we need, I will
continue to hold onto that shredded pile and call it hope. I will try with all
my heart to mend and love every string, every strand. I will wait – not so -
patiently at the window, staring with my sweet and salty water rimmed eyes. I
will continue to yearn and moan and ache for him. I will drive myself insane. I
know this because I have done it for a year. I have done this because I believed
all we needed was time. But I need to ask myself, “Is it really the timing? Is
there no other reason why this relationship is not working out?” I
have to be brutally honest with myself and face the real man I am pining over.
Who is this man?
The man I fell
desperately in love with is a broken man. He once loved a girl with all his
heart and when she left him, she took his heart with her. I don’t think he ever
got it back. This is a man who has the coveted ability to put emotions on paper
like no one I know. When I read the way he expressed love, my heart melted. He
once loved someone with a passion and perplexity that I endear. I can empathize
with that kind of love… that gut wrenching, life-changing devotion that seems
to be endless. I miss that kind of love.
So, the first thing
that drew me to this man was his writing ability; the second was his voice. He
has a tambour in his voice that very few have and even fewer admire… but I do. I
could listen to it for hours. When I didn’t want our first date to end, I
knew there was something there. There was a spark. I felt it. I know he did as
well. But that spark couldn’t be lit. He still had a fire burning where his heart
used to be. He was not over the woman who left with his heart. And she would
not give it back.
I should have
walked away when I realized he was still reaching for the life he had with her.
I should have known to not give that man another minute of my time. I should
have known. But he asked me to give him time. So I did. I gave him a year. And
in that year, I fell hopelessly in love. And now it is killing me to walk away.
I have tried over and over again. I have failed each time miserably. And in the
end, I am just miserable. But I thought I could handle the pain. I thought it
would all be worth it in the end. But there is no end in sight. I held on so
tightly to the belief that even if love is full of thorns, I would still embrace it
because I thought that in between those thorns, there would be a rose that’s
worth all that pain...
I need to break
this down further. I need to know for a fact that it is not timing. I need to
know it is me. I need to know I am not his rose. I need to accept that he is not
mine. He will never be mine. I fell in love with the man that he displayed in
his writing. I fell in love with a man that once loved with all his heart. I
thought I was falling in love with a romantic. I thought I found the right man
for me. I thought I found the man I would marry. I was ready to take on the
challenge of loving that man for the rest of my life. I knew I would succeed. I
thought he had all the qualities I could ever want in a man… and more. I
thought, in time, he would open his heart to me. I thought eventually he would
put it on display. He kept telling me to wait, to be patient. He kept saying he
needed time. And when I would say, "maybe I am just not the right woman for you," he would tell me I can’t say that. But, fuck, I am saying it. Maybe I am not
the right woman for him. Maybe he didn’t fall in love, not because he is not
over his ex but, because I am not the right woman for him. I’m sick of excuses.
I’m sick of time being the defining factor of our relationship. I want to
eliminate that mendacity.
I have been
saying for a year that maybe I am not the one for him. Not once did I think
maybe he is not the one for me. I have felt for a year that he could be the one
for me. I have believed for nine months that he is the one for me. I have
agonized over the thought of losing the man I believed to be my life-partner. I
have been in love with a combination of the man he once was and the man he has
become. But what if, in order to become the man he is, he can no longer be any
part of the man he once was…
I am having an epiphany.
He said the other day that he hadn’t changed from before. And I didn’t think
twice about that very important sentence. I focused on the words that followed: “I’m focused on other things and I’ve asked you to chill and wait.” I
immediately thought that it was just another line. I got defensive and
questioned how this 'great' guy could be so indifferent toward me. Now that my
rage is somewhat simmered, I can put focus on the vastly more important point that
he made. In the year that I’ve known this man, he hasn’t changed a bit. It’s
not like he once was affectionate and now he’s not. It’s not like he was
romantic and now he’s not. I was holding on to this façade of a man that I
never met. His writing may speak toward a depth in him that I admire and adore,
but he is not that man with me. He has never been that man with me, not once. But
I fell in love with the hope that one day that part of him would come back and
he would be the romantic man he once was. I am so ridiculous and should have my
head checked for falling for that.
I know what I want
in a man. This man has nearly every quality I could ever dream of finding in a
man. The one problem (honestly, there is only one) is the lack of romance. This
man has never had the drive to be romantic with me. He has never swept me off
my feet. He has never even tried to spend a romantic evening alone together. We
haven’t so much as gone for a romantic walk since our first date. He has barely given me a glimpse of his heart. And he has never given me the satisfaction
of truly seeing it. It almost doesn’t exist. I have looked deeply into his eyes
only a few times because when I do, I start to cry. I have fallen so hard for
this man and I don’t see that love staring back at me. And that breaks my heart.
I need to focus
on reality. If in a year he can’t show me he cares, then he is not the one for
me. I need to stop thinking I may not be the one for him. I need to stop
leaving myself open to ridiculous notions that, with time, he will one day
shift his focus to me. I need to face reality that he is no different than he
was when we met and he will never be the man he claims he is. He is not a
romantic. He is not affectionate. And he is not the man for me. It is as simple
as that. I wish he were romantic. I wish he were affectionate. I wish he wanted
to pay attention to me. But the reality is he does not want to be romantic. He
has little desire to be affectionate. And he has no drive toward me. He seems
indifferent because he is indifferent. He seems to treat my wants and needs as
trivial, insignificant and irrelevant to the importance of his life because I
am unimportant in his life. So it doesn’t matter that I am “marriage material.”
It doesn’t matter how beautiful or funny or smart or great I am. It doesn’t
matter what I do for him. None of it matters. I am unimportant in his
life.
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