I Hope You Suffer… sometimes

Here’s the thing they never tell you about meeting your soul mate. Sometimes being soul mates is not enough. Sometimes even though you are one soul living in two bodies, split in half somewhere in some colossal cosmic screw up, you figure out that one of you is the Dark Half and you are better apart.

That sucks.

A lot.

And they don’t tell you just how much it will always suck. How much that other half of your soul will always haunt the back of your mind, always be present. It’s not necessarily a longing – sometimes it is – so much as just the knowledge that there is another part of you somewhere in the world and you are no longer connected and often that knowledge comes attached to the very powerful memory of when it all came to an end.

If you’re lucky it was a quiet, peaceful, amiable ending where you just agreed that it wasn’t meant to be and went your separate ways. If you are like me, however, that ending came in the form of the Hindenburg, a 100-ton flaming destruction, affecting everyone in its wake. I spent months in a state of numb shock. Despair would have been a relief. Instead I felt nothing.

But we’ve gone over all of that before.

Today, we are talking about today.

Today, I have moved on to a new life. I am kind of stuck in limbo between a life I’m not in love with and a life I want to live but things keep getting in the way. But none of that is your concern. The point of all of this is that most days, 99% of the time, you are merely a shadow. The ghost of a past that was on a path to be something amazing but never came to be. Most days, you are tail lights going the opposite direction.

But some days, I still harbor an intense anger for the selfishness you put me through. I might always. I don’t know. It’s been a long time and the fire is still as hot as it was then so I really don’t see it ever going out.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not consuming or anything like that. Typically it lasts the length of a song that reminds me of you and then it’s gone again until the next time. But when it does flare, I wish there was a way to tell you how much you still affect me. Years later.

Instead I’ll just share this song and let you know that there are moments – just moments, brief but intense moments – where there is more truth in these words than I could ever hope to share in my own.

The one who got away…kind of

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who could remember everything, far from home, feeling her way through a brave new world, creating a brave new self. One day, this girl met a boy but things wouldn’t get interesting in that story until some time later, when the boy confessed to another boy, who was the girl’s very best friend in the world in that minute, that he thought she was … easy on the eyes.

Four years passed and the boy and the girl developed what the girl fondly remembers to be a strange friendship.

Why was it strange, you might ask and you would be right in asking. As we mentioned earlier in this story, the boy found the girl quite attractive indeed and she did have similar thoughts about him. And while neither were willing to share these thoughts in public, they didn’t go to a lot of trouble to hide them away either. Hugs and glances were longer than they should have been, silent moments more awkward, compliments more complimentary.

Everyone in the village knew what was between the boy and the girl, still no one dared speak of the sacrifice made when two people want the last burrito and ultimately neither one gets it. Why then did not the girl and the boy cease their tomfoolery and make their romance real?

To this day there is no answer to the question. Some say it was poor timing, some say it was fear of losing a friendship that had grown into something so comfortable. The truth may never be known. For as I tell you this story, the boy and the girl have a decade gone without seeing one another’s faces. And as time grows, memories fade. Except for the girl who could remember everything about the boy who got away.

But even with that, she knows the romance is long gone. She only longs for the friend she never wanted to lose.

Years ago, more years than I care to admit and more years than many would believe anyway, I met someone who I don’t think I will ever forget.

To be fair, that statement actually describes a lot of people but right now we are focused on one. Or at least, I am and have been for a couple of days now.

Anyway, he (yeah, he, this is one of those stories) and I connected well in the early stages of our friendship. We had one of those friendships that feels like it has lasted longer than it has; when you feel like you’ve known them forever but it’s really only been months. We talked, we laughed, we joked, we flirted, we had moments when we said nothing at all and that was okay too.

Or maybe I’m remembering it the way it never was. Early on I have a few cloudy memories of the “getting to know you” process which culminated on a horrible day in a horrible month when something horrible had happened and while I was never sure and never asked, I think he may have cried on my shoulder for a minute. On my literal shoulder.

After that, my memories are clearer. Because after that I started paying closer attention to the little things that would come to mean a lot to me later on. And when I pay attention, I remember everything. I remember talking about music and about nothing at all and I remember how his bedroom was laid out and the poster on the wall that made me smile all the way to my toes and I remember the time he offered to pay me for dancing at a party because that was how we flirted and we flirted a lot and I suck at flirting. Now – or even then, really – I try to flirt and really just come off as a drunk baby giraffe with a speech impediment, sputtering out sentence fragments and lighting things on fire (bonus points if you can find me a video of David Spade saying that last part).

Since our parting of ways, I have told a couple of people this story – or a version of – and they all ask the same question at the end: So…what happened? Why didn’t you guys hook up?

Nope. There is no answer to that question. I obviously don’t know his reasons because we never talked about that and I don’t know my reasons because my reasons are all a bunch of flimsy excuses that mostly mask the real answer – I was scared he’d say no then where would we be?

For some reason I have yet to uncover, music triggers memories but not always. So sometimes you can listen to a song and nothing happens but then the next time you hear it, you remember all the things and life sucks because all the things are gone and you just really want them back. So a couple of days ago, I heard a song that reminds me of this guy for a couple of reasons and I haven’t really stopped thinking about him since. But surprisingly not in a why didn’t we date, why can’t we just get together one time and make out like teenagers kind of way. I am missing my friend.

I’ll get over it and move on but for right now there is a very obvious absence in my life that amounts to more than just one missing person but it is largely about that one missing person.