A Better Ending

I can’t wait for the day when, with no hesitation or reluctance, a woman at long last, chooses me. Fully and completely. Picks me and decides to stick with me, choosing and wanting to take on life together. But “someday” seems like it slips further away from me every day. On Monday I’ll be 28. And my track record of slow, selective pursuits and twice choosing to go “all in” and give of myself in love has left me in ruins. 

The sorry thing about loss is it’s not the pain that beats me, but the fear the pain will pass. That sooner or later, I will pull myself together and move on. That’s truly the killing blow. To know that someday, no matter how hard I fight it, I will forget how it felt to love. Already I forget the feeling of physical intimacy. I have these vague visions of it and foggy memories of the not so distant past, but they become more shrouded each day, and I wonder if I’ll forget altogether. I sometimes question whether or not any of it even happened, if that whole chapter of my life was even real, because it seems too profound, it seems like something me of all people, would be far too lucky to have ever experienced. For me it was so permanent, and for her it was temporal and fleeting, and she quickly moved on to another, something that, while I was with her, could never imagine happening because of how sincere and meaningful I was under the impression our love was. I had chosen her, fully and completely.

Some nights, like last night, I wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. in a pool of sweat after another haunting nightmare that rips me apart and messes up my mind. The dreams always involve her and her friends, and I’m never more sad than when I’m in them. Images of gaunt clouds over a cold parking lot in a creepy city stalk my mind and replay as I watch her car drive away, again and again, never to see her again. Nothing will ever be right about that. It was no way to leave me. I know at the very least, my heart and feelings were worth considering, and that I deserved a better ending.