I Got a Second Chance with “The One That Got Away”

Many of us wonder what would happen if we got a second chance to make amends, or rekindle that old flame, with the one that got away. Few of us ever receive the opportunity to find out. Well, on June 28th, 2022,

I was lucky enough to be one of those people.

It happened after my mom read an old Medium post I wrote, expressing the deep regret I had for nearly five years over losing my best friend, Karl, and breaking his heart. After she approached me about what she read, I told her the truth.

I wished I had the chance to talk to him, to tell him everything that went unsaid. I wished I’d had the time to make things right.

She asked if I wanted her to intervene and although I was nervous about the idea of her getting involved, I asked her if she would help me.

Within an hour, me and Karl were on the phone.

I Thought This Was a New Beginning.

At first, as with most things, it started great. It was a bit awkward but it didn’t take long for the natural rhythm to flow. I spilled my apologies out of me like a fountain and he was receptive.

I told him how much I truly had always loved him and we even told each other that we still loved each other. He even told me I was the woman he always wanted to have a child with and truth be told he was the only man I could see fathering my children, as well.

We were very vulnerable. I told him he was the love of my life and he told me I was still the special girl in his. Things were flowing so naturally that we both agreed to meet that upcoming Saturday at 10 a.m.

I believed we were off to some sort of new beginning. But we would never make it to Saturday because we never made it at all.

And thank God we didn’t.

Something Was Telling Me Not to Get Comfortable.

It was hard to explain but my intuition was telling me that this beautiful reunion was not so beautiful on Karl’s end. This feeling would be proven soon, once we were face to face.

After five hours on the phone, we moved from that to a Zoom call. As soon as we did, he didn’t look the same. He looked slightly different but I’m talking about the look in his eyes. I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t know why.

But I was about to find out.

As he looked around my background, Karl started judging me. He made remarks about how I lived like I was poor and in poverty because I was using a flip phone and had a 27-inch flatscreen, compared to his two 50-inch flatscreen televisions.

I’m a minimalist.

It’s a transition I started making within the last two months of our friendship in 2017. I hardly have any furniture in my room and lined my floor with Christmas lights. He looked at it and said I was living like I was in jail.

He informed me that although I may have elevated, I needed to elevate materialistically. I forgot how materialistic I used to be. I forgot how materialistic he used to be too — and clearly still was.

He also attacked my appearance, making jokes about the headwrap I wore, and looked put off when my weight of 107 lbs casually came up. He said that I was too thin and that he needed to “fatten” me up.

I knew this was a personal jab because he had earlier mentioned how he gained a lot of weight when we initially ended our friendship, and he said it with resentment. Realistically, I was just as small when he knew me.

I’ve always been tiny.

He then asked if I ever moved to a very specific place where I always desired to live. It was clear that I didn’t because I was literally still in the same room he had been in quite a few times. He asked to be hurtful.

Karl Was Being Cruel and Playing Head Games.

We were in touch for three days and each day he grew increasingly distant. This was very telling since he told me, in our initial conversation, that what he valued more than anything is “consistency” — specifically, consistent conversation.

Yet, he was now the one becoming inconsistent and using being hurt and having a guard up as an excuse. That made sense, but why not have that energy from the start and keep that consistent? Why wait for me to open up more and more to give less and less of yourself?

I’ll tell you exactly why. He was punishing me. Karl wanted to make me feel what I made him feel. He expected me to “prove” myself to him, with my need for his forgiveness being my driving force.

I know this because in that initial phone conversation, Karl mentioned how women now have to prove themselves to him before he considers taking them seriously. Makes sense.

I’ve learned to do the same after encountering men who had no problem keeping me waiting and wasting my time with false promises and reassuring words, which is what Karl was now doing.

But there’s a difference between someone being cautious because of the past and someone who is out to make you pay a price for it.

It was so sobering to witness him go from telling me he wanted a family with me to suddenly going cold. From disappearing once he was home from work, to eventually becoming too busy to talk pretty much at all. All of this within the first two days.

I was confused but I knew I was purposefully being given mixed signals. Despite my history of putting my whole life on hold for men, that part of me died in his absence. But he didn’t know that — yet.

I’ve wasted enough of my precious time, waiting — specifically for men. And Karl knew that. He witnessed it. Now, here he was trying to recreate it my traumas because he felt I deserved it. The problem was I no longer felt like I deserved it. I felt I deserved more. I deserved better.

Better than Karl.

Karl was no longer the man I knew or respected, and sure we can blame me for it because I am accountable. But not entirely.

Karl’s Pain Is Not My Responsibility Anymore.

At the risk of sounding heartless, people get their hearts broken every single day. It doesn’t make every single one of us cold — especially not on the first go. Who we choose to be is still our choice.

Nobody else’s.

I say this because at the tail end of our friendship, I met a man who I truly did love and it ended horrifically. Despite that relationship’s traumatic end, I don’t choose to go around making innocent people pay my ex’s price. I also don’t seek revenge because I can’t become the people who hurt me.

I can make a better decision.

I can be a better person.

I was my own living example of that and because of that, I couldn’t take on that responsibility for how Karl chose to turn out anymore because that was a choice he made.

I was present to heal what was damaged if allowed to. I wasn’t allowed to. I can’t make someone let me in if they refuse. I also won’t wait around for the door to open either. Life’s too short.

Karl used this new beginning to put me in the position he was once in. He took an opportunity to heal and used it for revenge.

Guilty or not, I’m not going to let anyone else beat up on me any harder than I had already beaten myself. So I drew my line in the sand and shifted my focus toward protecting myself from the man that once made me feel safe.

I called him out on his bullshit and exposed the games he was attempting to play with me. I let him know that I was no longer interested in his forgiveness, his friendship, or anything else. I then exited his life once and for all.

I’ve never looked back and I’ve never wanted to. I finally did what I hadn’t been able to do for the past five years, I let Karl go.

After five or six years of guilt and regret, I finally forgave myself — and it was his vengeful intentions that radically gave me permission to do so.

I’m Done Playing The Villain In Both of Our Stories.

I want to be clear that I never hurt Karl on purpose, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he got hurt by me. This I understand.

However, I am also not going to live one more day guilty of transgressions I committed when I was a different version of myself.

Who I am now will not pay for the sins of a dead aspect of who I used to be. His pain is not my problem anymore — even if I am the one that caused it.

I could understand if I was maliciously targeting him and trying to trap him but I actually let him go years ago because I felt I couldn’t give him what he deserved and didn’t want to waste time he could be spending finding a better woman.

I thought I was doing what was best for him, setting him free to encounter the love he deserved. If he chooses to hate me for that, let him. But I did not break his heart intentionally.

I could have strung him along and been selfish. I could have only thought about myself and taken everything I needed in a man directly from him and moved on when I was done.

Instead, I chose to set him free and became all that I needed from him for myself. Most people will never make that decision. Most people will never be that brave. But if a villain is how he chooses to remember me, so be it. That’s on him to wage war with a ghost. As selfish as this may sound, it is what it is. Not my problem now.

I loved him enough to lose him and if that was something he refused to understand it was not my problem anymore. I no longer carry that guilt, blame, or regret. I spent the past five years punishing myself; thinking of him every single day. Keeping this image of who he used to be in my head.

Keeping the past alive.

I Was Holding onto the Idea of Him.

Karl had actually prophecized this early into our first conversation. He said he always wondered if I was in love with the idea of him, instead of him. He wondered if I loved the idea of having someone love me the way he did.

Someone, I could communicate everything with and go anywhere with. Someone, I could feel safe and secure with. Someone who would do anything for me.

He wondered if I was in love with the idea of who he was and what he offered, without being in love with him. And, after how things transpired, I realized, he was right. I was in love with the idea of him.

He represented a form of love I strongly desired and needed, but didn’t realize I would or could find again (I have found it and it has been infinitely better). But Karl also represented something very crucial — A particular era in my life where I was genuinely happy.

I have been deeply missing the past and he was the physical embodiment of a timeframe and its accompanying locations that I missed so dearly. It’s an era that I desperately want to get back to, but can’t because time won’t let me. I held onto the idea of Karl because I thought if I could get him back, I could get that time back.

Karl Was Never Going To Be “The One”.

I finally understood I really did love him but it was never romantic — and never would be. It wasn’t supposed to be.

I tried to force it when I was younger because I didn’t recognize my intuition or what it was trying to tell me; I was not falling in love with him because I was not supposed to.

This epiphany was freeing because this regret was eating me up for so long. Now, I could finally breathe again. I finally had the closure I needed to close a chapter of my life that had plagued me for half a decade.

And I didn’t need his forgiveness or his permission to get it either. All I needed was to see him for who he became and to realize I could actually do better than him — because I became a person who deserved better than him.

Finally, I can be kind to myself and give myself the closure I’ve been needing, to move on. Finally, I am free. I can let him go now. It’s over and I never have to spend another minute wondering “What if?”

Or wondering if I made a big mistake.

It wasn’t a mistake.

Karl was not “The One”.

What allowed me to finally let this go was the realization that we were not only two different people now, but had gone in two completely opposite directions. I became the version of him I held in my mind. And he became the version of me he grew to hate. Those were the choices we made.

So be it.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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