November 17, 2009 | Filed under: Boys Are Dumb, I Write About My Feelings

This is when it’s the worst: two beers after work and I’m relaxed enough to want some affection, some attention, a connection to someone who wants to know how my day was and to tell me stories about his in return. Instead, I’m on my way home to an empty house where the only thing awaiting my attention is the dishwasher that needs to be unloaded.

* * * * *

We broke up two months ago. Feels like six. Or yesterday. Or a lifetime ago.

In my head, I know it was the right thing. To my family, I characterized it as “square peg, round hole,” which is accurate, but gives short shrift to the emotional intricacies of it all.

I feel sadness, to be sure, mixed in with a dash of anger and a hearty scoop of frustration/annoyance. And there’s this weird achy hangover sort of thing that I’ve never felt before. I think it’s called regret. For someone with a “no regrets” approach to life, this merely leads to more anger and more annoyance.

If I could take it all back, I would. Undo, somehow, the last four and a half years, gather it all up and shove it into the Pandora’s box from whence it came, never to see the light of day. Yep, in a heartbeat.

I hate that that’s true.

* * * * *

This is when it’s the worst: in the middle of an average day, when I’m listening to a series of boring speakers and the next one starts and I wait on the edge of my seat, counting the minutes until the panelist says those two words that he and I both know are coming. FLAGSHIP ISSUE. I look around the full room and realize that there’s no one to share the joke with.

* * * * *

Believing in me is easy. Believing in him wasn’t that hard, either. But at the end of the day, after all that was discussed, all that was promised, all that was intimated … none of it came to fruition. It was a man behind a curtain, nothing more.

I believed in us. And I was wrong, oh so wrong. That’s going to take some getting used to.

* * * * *

I miss him, sort of. More accurately, I miss us. I miss the good parts and the spectacular parts and even some of the so-so parts. I really miss the components of a stable, workable relationship that we never had.

At the risk of sounding like a song from middle school, there’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by him. And it never will be. I know this; I’m not holding out for some sort of magical twist of fate that will change that. Nor do I expect that anyone else, ever, no matter how wonderful he/she is will ever fill precisely that space. All I’m hoping for at this point is that I can turn the vase and have the blemish face the wall, thereby presenting a perfect face to the rest of the room. Flaunt the good, disguise the ugly. It’s the American way, at least according to Hollywood and Madison Avenue.

* * * * *

He had a birthday recently, and for the first time in three years I wasn’t there to take him to dinner at his current favorite restaurant. I wonder which one it is. I wonder who was there instead. And I know that no matter who it was, or is in the future, she’ll never be able to replace me.

* * * * *

This is when it’s the worst: crawling into an empty bed, wondering if I’ll ever feel that kind of closeness again, and holding out hope that maybe, just maybe, next time it will be for real.

1. Superfantastic says:
   

   I hope so too.

   November 18th, 2009 at 12:03 am