We used to be really close. She worked at a Starbucks I was a regular at back when I wasn't working for the company. The first time I met her she said, I don't mean this to sound weird but you smell really good. I told her I was wearing Chance by Chanel and from then on out she always called me Chanel. And so did all the other girls that worked at that Starbucks. I became pretty good friends with several of the girls there. And eventually Mr. Indecisive began working there which understandably changed the entire dynamics of my relationship with those girls. Breakups never involve only two people; when you have joint custody of friends they have to choose who they're going to stick with. In an ideal world we'd all be mature enough to coexist.
But that only works when you're not dealing with a man who has the emotional maturity of a zygote.
This girl contacted me because she found out I'd transferred from my old store and wanted to know what was going on. I think I kind of laughed out loud when I read her message. It just sort of put into perspective how long it had been since she'd been a part of my life. It's strange to think about how a matter of months becomes a long time. And I started thinking about how different people know you in different ways, they know pieces of you or parts of yourself that remain frozen in certain times. I think it's a rare few who transition with you as you grow and change, as you stop being that person they first grew to love.
Feeling nostalgic for that chapter of my life this girl had been a part of I opened up the journal I'd kept earlier this year concerning the rollercoaster of a love affair I'd been stuck on. I could barely read through any of it, 'twas nauseating to read how codependent I was on someone so unworthy of my affections. And the games, Lord have mercy, the ongoing inconsistency.
Do you know how many times he invited me on one of his trips and then uninvited me? FIVE times! Yet he still showed up at my work with cds he'd burned for me and followed me to a concert he'd said he didn't want to go to.
You're still the only girl I ever bought flowers for, that has to mean something.
The saddest thing I read, though, was sometime in the middle of the haze when he said I loved you and I still love you. And I want to hold onto you. I want to keep you in my life.
I can only think of one other man in my life that I shared an uglier goodbye with than him.
God, that's just sad, isn't it?
I don't know how people stay friends with their exes. I would love to be one of those people. But I just don't see how it's done. It's like you have to take all those feelings, all that intensity, all that was and never would be and channel it into this new title: friendship. And that relationship is so limiting compared to all the two of you once shared. And for some, it proves to be too difficult a transition to try and fit their overflowing heart into such a small box. Him and I couldn't do it. But you can't make someone trust you. And he never trusted me. I remember the night of my movie premiere as we were walking, I stopped and grabbed his shoulders, looking in his eyes and almost yelled at him, I don't want to be your girlfriend anymore! He never believed me. He didn't understand how I could be a loving friend to him without suspecting me of wanting something from him. It was tragic, really. I'd never learned to love such a frustrating human with such forgiving patience before. I see now that God was preparing me for something else, someone else. Mr. Indecisive was like the guinea pig and I passed the test. Maybe he just didn't pass his. And part of me hoped, like the other ugly farewell that haunted my past, I would be protected from ever crossing paths with him again.
I hadn't seen Narcissus in two and a half years and as far I know, he still lives around here.
That was divine protection. When God wants someone removed from your life, he removes them. Like Grandma joked about the disappearance of Mr. Wonderful, that regular I was smitten over at my old Starbucks. Well, didn't you pray that if he wasn't a believer he wouldn't come to your show? she'd asked me.
Yeah, Grandma, I did pray that.
Well, God must have thought it best to just remove him from your life.
And God knows best.
So if there was ever a great failed love that didn't run screaming for the mountains, that didn't send me hateful messages of contempt, if there ever existed one who remained loving with a love that distanced, merely out of a desire to stay connected, out of a love that couldn't bear never seeing me again, I don't think I'd know how to respond. I've never known a love to stay in my life after the love fermented.
It was so foreign to me, it made my stomach nervous, the thought of it.
How would that work? What would it look like? If such a man even existed would he grow to resent me for sticking around like my lost love prior had done? Would he glare at me with black eyes and spit out words that mirrored We should have stopped talking months ago I just don't know how to set boundaries. We can never have anything to do with each other ever again.
I don't know.
I don't understand a lot of things.
I especially don't understand the men who fall in love with me.
I guess loving me drives the calmest men mad.
I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
But it kind of overwhelms me,
the thought of having another Anna Karenina ending to a failed love story.
I don't know if I could bear it again.
I'd rather hide with my memories.
Truth has a way of morphing into whatever circumstances hinder it.
And I wanted my truth untainted.
I wanted truth that was frightfully real, inconveniently true.
I wanted a truth that wouldn't lie to me.But maybe I'm asking for the moon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8ACzEFtcc4&feature=related
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