And now, here he was 6 months later moping. He realized he couldn’t mope anymore. He couldn’t keep thinking of her beautiful sad eyes. Even when she smiled there had always been a hint of serious lurking beneath the surface.
He had always wanted to make that sadness go away, to make her smile like there was no tomorrow or yesterday, as if that moment of happiness was enough forever. But he hadn’t been enough. He hadn’t been enough to save her from her haunting. He could only hope that she would be okay.
There was nothing else he could do.
He sighed heavily at the computer screen in his home office. His hand twitched on the mouse. He created a new folder and labeled it “The Past”. He transferred all of the pictures of their time together into the folder. He right clicked and made it hidden.
It still existed. He couldn’t bring himself to delete them, just like he couldn’t bring himself to delete the files in his office. This was the next best things. The files would still exist. Like the past they were still vivid and accessible but no longer on the forefront.
It was time for new memories, a new present and a new future.
He couldn’t keep thinking about what could have been. He couldn’t keep wondering what would happen if he went to her now. He was done. She wouldn’t try to save them. She never had, and he was beginning to accept that she never would. They were done.
She was a part of his formation, important but no longer present. It was something that he would have to learn to live with. It was too late to do anything about it.
It was time to move forward and put the past behind him.
Finally.
***
She sat in the dark eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish food while watching a marathon of sappy movies. The crunch of chocolate and the taste of caramel comforted her as the tears continued to roll down her cheeks. She had tried to go back to compartmentalizing but it wasn’t working.
He was haunting her. She was sure of it. Whenever she left her apartment, she could swear she saw him. She saw the back of his head walking blocks ahead of her, the cowlick apparent in his dark hair. She saw his weathered brown briefcase swinging to his jaunty gait. She saw his big hand hail a taxi. She saw his head tipped to the side holding the cell phone between his head and shoulder while he fiddled in his pocket for a pen. She saw him in everything and in everyone in gestures that her brain wouldn’t let her forget. But it was never him. He wasn’t actually there. She would do a double take, his name on her lips but it was never him. It was always someone else, a similar build, the same hair color.
It’s how she knew she was going crazy.
In the last few days, he was never far from her thoughts and tears were always close to the surface.
And it was frustrating because her thoughts kept running in circles back to him and the feeling that there was nothing she could do. It was a feeling of helplessness that she wasn’t used to. She had ultimately made him leave, let him walk out the door. She could have chased him, talked to him, and explained what had been going on in her head; the stress, the confusion. But instead she had shut herself off and started to clean the glass and water from the floor. She had let her favorite vase fall and break, the blue and white ceramic vase that he had given her on a random Tuesday the year before. She had let it crash and shatter... When he gave it to her it had been filled with her favorite sunflowers and poppies. She remembered looking up when he walked through the door vase in hands. She saw the flowers before she saw him and had jumped from the sofa, knocking her papers to the ground, laughing happily. “They’re gorgeous!” she had yelled and then launched herself into his arms, kissing him. They had been so happy, not always, but often.
And she had let the vase roll out of her grasp and shatter with the slamming of the door. She had let him go.
She was lost because she had caused her own pain. And in retrospect, she had always caused her own pain. She had always gotten in her own way. She had talked herself out of feeling things, convinced herself that the emotions she felt weren’t real or valid or justified. She had always pulled back and kept her heart safe. Five years into the relationship and she had still been trying to protect herself. Look what protection had gotten her. Look what protection had done.
She still loved him. She still needed him but she had lost him due to her own stubbornness.
That kept repeating in her brain. It was her fault, everything was her fault. And she couldn’t figure out what to do about it.
There was a battle going on inside her. A stupid battle really. It was a battle of thought; whether to take action or to be still. Up until now she had always chosen stillness. She had always chosen to wait things out, to see what happened. She had never actively sought anything out in her life. She had never searched for a boyfriend. They had always chosen her. Her college had basically fallen into her lap, a random whim, something she had fallen into. She had chosen her concentrations; writing and psychology. But she had fallen into her career. It didn’t really relate back to her studies. She had fallen into it by luck, by word of mouth, because every now and then things worked out.
She disliked the life she had fallen into. She had disliked it for months, if not years and she had convinced herself it was okay. It was what grownups do. They fall in line and take responsibility. They find a job, create a life that suites their needs.
The problem was, she had been so unhappy and frustrated that she had lost the one blip of good in her horizon. She had lost the one man who loved her and who she loved because she hadn’t been able to let go of preconceived notions. She had pushed him out when she needed him most, when he had just been trying to help her.
And now, she had to figure out a way to fix it, all of it on her own.
She couldn’t call him broken and in pieces expecting him to step back into her life as if nothing had happened with a glue gun in hand. She realized that he had always wanted to do that, help her pick up the pieces of a puzzle that she hadn’t even realized was incomplete and scattered.
The problem was she had always denied the wrongness. She had pretended that it didn’t matter when she knew it did. At least subconsciously she had always known. The stress had manifested in different ways pushing her away from those she loved.
He had tried to push to keep her. She had let it fall apart.
It was rare for her to feel such resolve, but if she wanted him or anyone for that matter she would have to fix herself first. She couldn’t keep fighting invisible opponents that no one could see but everyone could feel.
And then if fate was on her side, she would find the right opportunity to get him back before he found someone new, if he hadn’t already.
No comments:
Post a Comment