moving on

I wrote this a while ago. I won't say when. Don't want to give away who I'm talking about. Respect. It was cathartic at the time. Yeah, it's dark and depressing, but it's also incredibly introspective. What say you?

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Why is it that no matter what you say or do, certain things creep back into your mind? After months or years of trying to get over feelings of love or hurt or sadness, a little event brings them all flooding back.

You hear from a long-ago ex. She’s getting married next month. That’s sweet. Short relationship between the two of you, no contact for years. Some sense of longing for what she has, if only because you only remember the fond memories or insignificant feelings of hope for that with her lingering from way back when.

You see your first love for the first time in a year. Rarely speaking in the interim, you both want to catch up. Last time, you’re dating someone, she’s not. This time, the tables are turned. At least that’s what you anticipate. She plays it off, they’re just “seeing” each other, she’s really “not that into him.” Here it is, a year later, and you know they’re still together. The same shell game. The evasive responses. Though the distance between you is great, you still occasionally hope for fate to intervene and bring you back together.

You manage to maintain a friendship with another. Finally convinced of your true intentions for the friendship, she begins dating again. The time you speak and spend with her dwindles. Though it could never work, you wonder if there will ever be another chance to be with her. If this new guy she’s seeing on the sly is going to be the One. The One you hoped to be, strongly months ago; only occasionally now and with much less urgency. You wonder why the word friend somehow rings hollow coming from her, now that she’s openly moving on, though she hasn’t broached the subject with you just yet. I guess I’m a hypocrite in a way because I pretended to move on, and killed a friendship along the way. Keeping secrets from friends is tricky when that friend is also an ex. An ex that already got pissed about a date you went on a week after you broke up because you truly weren’t over it.

It’s strange, even the ones you won’t ever speak to again for fear of inducing psychosis creep back randomly. How lately you wonder how she’s doing. If the guy she’s supposedly seeing has tamed her insanity, or if he just manages to overlook it. Hell, her insanity may abate just because he wants to be the One for her.

Literally ran into one a month ago. Married, pregnant, happy. Unlike when I left her apartment, red-faced and crying. Her, not me. Me, weight off my chest, cell phone out, wanting to get a beer with a friend. Glad it was over. Nothing like finally ending a 3 week fling that was mostly spent concocting a way out. Maybe that’s what these exes felt like with me. When they move on, and I stop calling, I stop hoping. I guess I’ll never know. They certainly won’t bring it up, and doubt they’d have much to say if I did. One thing’s for certain, friendships might end.