I may as well be standing in the middle of a busy intersection.
Roads forking in every direction. Cars honking and inching closer, begging for a chance to run me over.
This seems to be a running theme in my life. This image; this snapshot that acts as the movie poster for my experience as a human being.
I can’t seem to get away from it.
No matter how many times I’m told of the importance of decisiveness. No matter how many ways it’s explained to me that I am the one who shapes my reality.
…
I’ve experienced the benefits of resolute choice before. I’ve felt the clean break from apprehension after making a definitive decision.
Like when you’re moving and going through all your boxes of old cords and chargers, nick-nacks and broken tools, once-used planners and never-used art supplies, containers full of bags and bags full of things you planned on definitely using as containers for…something. After all, can’t just throw away a perfectly good jar.
I have felt the power of channeling my inner Marie Kondo while staring at an unopened package of molding clay I held onto for years, finally admitting to it, You do not spark joy within me, and I will never sculpt you into a dinosaur, and feeling both the micro-grief and macro-relief of a delusion dying as I confidently threw it into the trash.
It’s this same power of unwavering resolution that helped me finally quit my job at the end of last year, and what got me clean after spending half of my 20’s in an opiate-laced haze.
I’ve felt the weight lift. I know the feeling of walking through a door and never turning around to check if it’s still locked. Yet, I still find myself returning to the middle of that intersection, laying down, and acting as if I’m fated to be crushed under the passing pressures of unexplored options.
Slow-rolling family sedans, magic school buses full of friends and fornication, screaming supercars streaking rubber trails to the top of some bullshit industry, high school beaters running solely on high-grade nostalgia and the leftover gas from forgotten fart jokes, hybrids with a dead aesthetic and good gas mileage for the practical consumer, desert-sailing easy riders with a single ticket to nowhere, a handful of mosquito cyclists, and a long line of impatient 18-wheeled women, all passing over the man in the middle, slowing crushing him into the concrete and leaving him flattened under the weight of his own indecision.
A visceral visual, to be sure, but let’s focus on those load-bearing ladies at the end of the line.
I’ll try to make a long story as short as I can.
Afterward, I’d appreciate any and all sage advice on whether this is obviously a war reenactment, or if I’ve been given what most people never get — a silver-plattered second chance.
…
About a decade ago, I dated one of my best friends for about five years, on and off.
She loved me deeply, and I was a young idiot who always took that love for granted which caused all those “off” sections. Still, our relationship was so easy, so stress-free, and simple that there wasn’t any reason I should ever want to end it beyond my own short-sighted restlessness.
Toward the end of those years, she moved to another state. It was expected that I would be following her there in the subsequent months, and I did just that.
However, before I moved, I was having conversations with another friend of mine who I suddenly was starting to realize I might have feelings for. She was married, I was moving to live with my girlfriend, and yet we were convinced we had discovered something more real than anything either of us had ever experienced.
We began pining for each other from a distance, dismissing our current situations as a mere problem to be solved so we could be free to live out this fantasy we had constructed for ourselves.
Still, I moved to join my girlfriend and tried to put those fantasies away.
I start writing about my feelings for this friend, my girlfriend finds this writing, chaos ensues, her heart shatters, and I act as if breaking up was inevitable anyways because those new feelings felt so real.
I assumed this needed to happen, and even though I did still love and care for her very much, I moved home. I was driven by what I thought was the passion of star-crossed lovers, fated to always be just out of reach of each other. To me, this was a necessary step in bridging that cosmic gap.
This all happened within two months of moving away before I was already back home.
Here are the next ten years in a few sentences.
…
Fantasy of new life slowly reveals itself as the romanticized idea that it was, and life resumes as relatively normal for everyone.
My now heartbroken ex-girlfriend and I continue to talk and get to a place where I beg forgiveness and consider moving back.
One day, in the middle of a casual conversation, she suddenly stops responding. She doesn’t respond for weeks, which turn into months, which turn into years.
I am unbelievably distraught over this. I send messages, voice mails, and write her letter after letter begging her to say something. I never hear a word.
I realize how much I loved her and having her in my life. I miss our friendship; I miss the love we had together. I just miss her deeply.
I tell myself I deserve it for what I did.
I try to move on, pursue other women, party too much, get addicted to drugs, try to get by as best I can for a functional addict.
Eventually, she sends a few Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday texts in these subsequent years. Sometimes even a handful of sentences before going dark again.
I get clean. I decide to move to California. This is now at least three years after the big break, and still, she’s always in the back of my mind.
I start a new life on the West Coast and try to be a person with things to do.
Every few months I hear from my ex and we catch up for a minute. She has a boyfriend now.
After a few years of living on the coast, I start dating someone as well.
She checks all of the boxes anyone could want a girlfriend to check. Sometimes it feels like something is missing, but I try to ignore the feeling because, after all, no one is perfect.
It’s been two years with this person up until the present day.
…
Now, over the past few months, I’ve been growing distant and not feeling the same strong connection I had when we first met. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling and had started pulling away emotionally.
We fight and make up a few times. I think it’ll work, then I don’t. Rinse and repeat.
I never stopped chatting platonically with my ex every few months because we were always good friends and had considered our relationship an unfortunate memory. We had done what we had to do to move on. My current girlfriend knew we spoke occasionally and wasn’t the type to care too much about people being friends with their exes as long as it stayed casual.
A few weeks ago, my ex texts me saying she had a stroke and almost died. She’s only 36.
I always had it in my head that one day we would meet up again, if for nothing else than to catch up as old friends. I hear what happened and know at that moment that I would have never forgiven myself if I had never seen her again.
Old door creaks open.
We start reminiscing about the past, our friends, parties, everything we did together.
She tells me she’s forgiven me and isn’t resentful about what happened anymore. After talking to me periodically over the years, she can see that I had changed and wanted the past to stay the past.
I start thinking about my current relationship and how difficult it’s been to come to the same sort of deep understanding that I shared with my ex. I think about the fact that I had always been able to picture my ex and I getting older together, and it was that realness and vulnerable authenticity that had pushed my younger self away when I was still so afraid of commitment.
I think about how I never really had this same sort of future foresight with my current girlfriend, despite trying to be mature and realistic with my expectations of a relationship.
I eventually tell my current girlfriend about my ex and the old feelings associated with them because I want to be open and honest instead of hiding these thoughts like before.
One night, after talking and arguing and her feeling heartbroken and crying for a few hours, I see how similar this situation is to the one I caused a decade ago with my ex.
We settle on staying together but spending some time apart so I can get my shit together and work through what exactly I want without stringing her along.
…
Now, we’re all caught up, and the question still stands.
Is this really just a repeat of history? Or am I being offered a second chance to return to the person I haven’t been able to shake in all this time?
I’m sure I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve already thought that maybe it’s just nostalgia, maybe it’s just the guilt about what I did back then still lingering around, maybe it’s just me trying to redeem my mistake so I can finally move on, maybe I’m just drawn to the idea of finally having closure.
I understand how it looks.
I’m with someone I claimed to love, and now there’s someone else pulling me away. Just like the first time.
The difference though is that this time it’s not based on a fantasy. I’m not projecting an unlived life onto this person and romanticizing what could be. I’ve already lived it and I know what it is I gave up. It’s not just a story I’m telling myself like the first time. This time it’s her. The one that slipped away due to immaturity and wanderlust.
To me, that matters. It makes a world of difference because I am not the person I was then. But I do know how strikingly similar this situation is to the one back then, and I know that I shouldn’t necessarily trust my feelings without question.
All I know is that I never wanted my ex out of my life, and still don’t want that now. If for nothing else than to at least be friends. I had forgotten how much I missed having her in my life, but I know the emotions woven into our friendship will never really go away.
…
If you’ve read this far, I salute you.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of how it feels to be the man in the middle of that busy intersection, never feeling as if the road I pick is the right one.
I’ve grown a lot since those old days, but I can’t help the fact that in all this time, she’s always been in the back of my mind. A skeleton in my closet I had assumed was becoming buried under a growing layer of dust, only to hear a knocking coming from inside.
I don’t want to repeat the past, I know that. I don’t want to leave my current girlfriend in broken pieces because of my dishonesty and reluctance to commit to a relationship I’ve been questioning. But it feels as if I’m not going to ever be able to truly settle into a new life while I still have these unresolved feelings.
It also feels like if I end my current relationship and fly out to visit my ex to find a “resolution,” it’s inevitable that we’ll find a way to get back together.
It feels like a second chance at reviving a connection that always cut deeper than anything and anyone else ever has. It’s undeniable.
It also feels like I’m right back where it all started, making things harder than they need to be.
You call it, heads or tails?
Whichever lands face up, I’m sure I’ll do the opposite.
Thanks for listening to me vent.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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