....and just like that, it was over for Styles at Isis High.
i have been begging for this moment, hunting it down, sniffing it out, waiting impatiently for it's arrival. and now it's here. my last girlfriend just completed the last thing that we needed to do to finally sever all ties. in typical new millenium style, that would be the transfer of all her data from my computer onto an external hard drive.
i cannot lie, with every fiber of me i wanted things to go differently today... last summer... last year. they did not and so here i am. or rather, there i was, sitting quietly with this woman that i used to know, a long time ago, last winter when we were together. i wanted today to be the shot at redemption that i'd hoped for, i wanted her to dash all those doubts that i had that she didn't care for me against the rocks, and if nothing else leave a little entré into something more, brighter, in the future. that didn't happen. instead, i got an awkward visit from a stranger, who seemed familiar only because i saw glimpses of it then and know even better now, that this is the person she always wanted to be. not my girl, not my partner, not my friend not my wife. i could barely look, at what was definitely not an apparition, she was there self actualized, quietly smoldering, warm to the touch of a new life without me. it was my greatest fear realized, and exactly what i needed.
but let me stop lying, gentle reader; i needed something else a little more, i needed that shot at redemption. that cinematic ending that i have never had, when against all odds, and when you least expect it, the impossible is possible. i needed her to come back to me, or rather, i needed to be the man that she came back to. it cuts me to the core that i am not that man, not for her, or for anyone that i have ever dated for that matter. but especially for her, that was all i wanted to be, for 3 years. somewhere between my bullshit and hers i was never able to find that, i only found the same me that i always am. i am the one you leave and you never look back, she definitely didn't look back, and made sure to close the door behind her.
and now? well, that moment that i was stuck in, i can finally see that it's gone now. and i am grateful, but oh this sadness, this deep mournful tug that i feel? that was not the expected outcome. so here i am, at the keyboard letting it wash all over me, there won't be any redemption, not the kind i had hoped for, only the realization that i am the same man that she left in april, for all intents and purposes, and she is something else. so i again, go back to learning: learning to forgive myself for the things i couldn't say, and didn't do, the wrong things i felt i had to do. i have to look these things in the face and be at peace with the person that i am. and to think i thought i already did that. oh no, sir, there are still many miles to go before i sleep.
