on the eve (of november)

Jessie and Tony were in town this weekend for Thanksgiving, and on Friday morning Jessie and I met up at The Anchor for coffee and catching up (it's our jam). She could tell a lot has been on my mind. "Your eyes look unhappy," she told me. We ended up talking for a long time about the conflict in my heart between Ashley and Mandy. "It's only been six months since Mandy left you, Anthony. It isn't crazy for you to feel the things you do. It's normal." I've certainly felt crazy, regardless; crazy, and shitty, because Ashley doesn't deserve someone with divided desires and conflicted interests. "You aren't lying to her about anything, Anthony. You're not doing anything wrong. You have no reason to feel guilty." Jessie helped put things into perspective, and I breathed a little easier when we parted ways.

I drove up to Mason to see Dylan (who's in town from D.C.), and on the drive up I thought about how I still identify as the man who lost Mandy, and that identity makes new things, even good things, feel uneasy and out-of-place. My identity is not wrapped up in Mandy's decision. I'm far more than my status (existent or not) with her. She was part of my life and no longer is, but life goes on. She has her trajectory, and I have mine; and for my eyes to be on her trajectory rather than on my own, or for my eyes to be focused on the hypothetical trajectory of "us" that was never given its chance to blossom, or if I deduce the value of my trajectory based on the value of hers, then I'm just being foolish. But because I poured so much of my heart and life into her and into us, and because this was my life's greatest dream come true with the woman I've loved with a fierce and unparalleled love, it isn't easy or fast to disengage from that. It takes a lot of time and patience to come to terms with the loss, to recover from the pain so that you can be a good partner to someone else.

And that is what scares me: I'm with Ashley, but my heart still belongs to Mandy. It shouldn't, and I wish I could control it (it's what I've prayed and fought for), but you can't plan on the heart. The heart, it just can't be trusted. I feel super shitty about it, like I'm being an awful boyfriend who's just using Ashley to try and numb the pain, or to accelerate recovery, or even to capture what I lost with Mandy through a surrogate. None of those things are true, of course: the reason I'm with Ashley is because I genuinely care for her. And that's precisely why I feel so shitty about all this. If I were just using her, I wouldn't be feeling shitty. Meeting her helped me see beyond Mandy, and I didn't think about Mandy so much. Perhaps because Ashley's so great, the flood of issues (or the fact of my relentless love for Mandy) was pushed back; but now in the midst of stress and drama, the suppression techniques are failing and the ship's threatening to sink.