Wisconsin? Phenomenal. I can’t put into words how great it was to be with her, to share in her life, to hold her hand and cuddle and talk and laugh. My heart, it came alive like never before. A sort of “waking up.” It cemented in my mind the reality that, yes, I really want to be with her, that she means so much to me, and that, yes, I can truly see this going somewhere. But it had the opposite effect on her. She expected some great and heavenly fleeing, some validation of all this, a “coming awake” of sorts, a flip being switched, a dam bursting and flooding her heart with passion and excitement and an innate desire to move forward and to see the world differently. But that didn’t happen, and things haven’t grinded to a halt, they’ve been thrust into retrograde.
Really, I’m not surprise. I knew, deep down, that this would happen.
Call it intuition, but history’s cyclical.
Qoheleth had it right: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
The last six years have taught me, in unapologetic terms, that the more I want something, the greater the chance of it not happening. Solely because I wanted Mandolin so much, it didn’t work out. All the potential, the chemistry, all the hope, my heart bursting at the seams and the world flooding with light, all this came together in the perfect storm, and now I’m not just being tossed around in the swelling whitecaps but am being pulled out to sea, the shimmering lighthouse of my Hopes & Dreams fading in the wind and the rain, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s out-of-sight completely.
Am I mad at her? No, not in the least.
Am I frustrated with her? Not even that.
I’m mad at myself, frustrated at my own foolishness. I just don’t seem to learn. While acknowledging the sad state of reality with my mind, my heart continues investing itself in fairy-tales and illusions. Heart versus Head, which is stronger? Certainly the heart, for in my intoxication with love—or, rather, the idea of love—all logic is thrown to the wayside as my heart twists and contorts reality to justify what I want as genuine and logical. The cold wilderness of cynicism melts under the warm glow of hope; but extinguish the candle, and the darkness crawls back without skipping a beat. My dream—a quiet life in a quiet town with a wife and kids and pursuing my dream of writing—is so engrained into the muscular fibers of my heart that logic and rational thought become mere peripheral trimmings to be discarded when they don’t match the carpet or the drapes. I believed in a fairy-tale—us—and invested so much (too much!) into that, denying what I knew to be true, that she & I, we were too good to be true. Ours was a good story, and perhaps by virtue of being that it was rendered fiction rather than reality. Denial can last only so long, and now that time’s up. The candle’s been snuffed out, the lighthouse is growing dim, and the wind howls and 100-foot waves of God’s good ocean gone wrong threaten to put an end to all this right quick.
And how do I deal with all this? The classic monsters have been all but put to rest. There’s no self-blaming, telling myself that I fucked it up. No, for once I did things right, and I’m proud of that. Call it wisdom, but I’ve made the same mistakes enough times to know how to navigate these treacherous waters with a bit of skill. Perhaps we were too honest, too Real & Authentic; maybe such honesty came too fast, and maybe a bit of deception is required to make these things work. Hell, the more everyone knows, the greater the chance of mutiny. Nor must I deal with any sort of self-loathing, that I wasn’t good enough or cute enough or anything like that. I have my faults and flaws and failures, but overall, I like to think I’m a decent (or, at least, semi-decent) human being. And she told me with unfettered honesty that I’m simply amazing, and that I’ve given her hope, because she knows guys like me exist (never-mind that I don’t want her to want a guy like me but ME, but these things tend to fall apart). Nor must I fight all the religious baggage of my youth, thinking that God dangled all I wanted in front of me only to snatch it away because I wasn’t a “good enough” Christian. I used to think like that, and such thinking drove me to the brink. But I’m wiser now, more rational (or at least I try to be), and I don’t use God—or myself—as a scapegoat for all of life’s unfortunate events. And that’s all this is: an unfortunate event, another lesson learned (or, I should say, another lesson reinforced).
I dared to believe that this was my cynicism breaking, my stoicism crumbling, my perception of the world being tweaked—no, turned upside-down—as I stumbled onto something I’d never known. I felt like I was emerging from Plato’s cave, seeing the world differently, light piercing the darkness in my heart and uncovering things never before seen or experienced. But it was all just in my head, my heart bloated like a water-logged corpse, and after a brief hiatus, a sort of vacation, the cynicism has returned, refreshed and rejuvenated. And now all that we had—or, rather, what I thought we had—has become a haunting specter, like a panther crouched at the doorway, a spike thrust into my heart in the quieter moments. I can still feel her hand in mind, but it’s just a phantom memory, drunk neurons firing as they seek to dispel reality, holding onto the bits of hope left in the onslaught.
Honestly, I’m honored to have held her hand in mine and to have shared my life with her if but for a moment. There’s no bitterness, anger, or resentment. Sadness? Yes. Nostalgic echoes giving birth to numbing pain? Sure. But there’s no hostility or malice, and my perception of her remains unchanged, and I think that says something, but I don’t know what. Usually in these situations, my first instinct is to get a strange sort of revenge, to show the heartbreaker what she’s done, to make her face it for all its gruesome ugliness, to make her hurt like she’s made me hurt. But my only concern is her well-being, that she doesn’t hurt anymore than she has to, that in all this she remains strong and does what’s best for her. Maybe it’s because I care about HER more than I care about “us”, and I think that, too, says something. But, again, I’m not sure what.
She said she wanted a feeling, that she wanted this to “feel right,” but that she doesn’t know what that’d be like, or even how she’d know it when (or, rather, if) it happened. And as much as we know love is a choice, it can also be a chore; and I can’t try and talk her out of this conviction because what she wants but doesn’t have is what I have but don’t want, at least not now. I can’t tell her that what she’s looking for is an idealized fairy-tale concept, because it’s what I feel in my heart towards her. Trying to convince her of some folly in her desires would just be manipulation, and if we’ve sought to be real and authentic from the get-go, why stop now? She can’t force herself to “feel” anymore than I can force myself not to “feel.” Wisconsin proved my desires for her, for us, to be genuine, and my doubts broke in her presence. But it had the opposite effect on her, simply elevating the doubts and making her question the authenticity of her feelings. C’est la vie.
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