It’s easier, sometimes, when loneliness isn’t a choice. When it’s just something you survive, endure. When you don’t get the choice to come out from the cold, when you don’t have to become the person who makes that choice.
Over and over, because the real choices, the big choices, are the ones you make every day.
She’s cute, in a way that’s always been a bit problematic. She’s had a crush on me for most of the time I’ve known her. She asks me the kind of questions you wish someone would ask, the ones that make it obvious they’re thinking about you and how you’re doing.
On paper, those things are not all that much. They’re not love, they’re not even affection. But it’s so much, when otherwise you have nothing.
This is all in reference to my ex, by the way. Who, about a year ago, I got myself entangled with again. It’s messy, getting back in touch, both with the person and the feelings and memories they’re connected to. But there was a lot of fallout from the relationship that was never really handled. And that stuff’s radioactive, with a pretty long half-life. It doesn’t fix itself, you understand.
Unfortunately, the consequences of dredging up the past are that they become part of the present. For a little while there I got lost, I think we both did. More than that… I don’t know, so much changes. At some point it became apparent that if we wanted to give it another shot, we could. The way things happened was brutal, horrifically painful.
There was a line from a song, that hunted me down a few years back: ”… because love would find forgiveness… “
It’s one of those subtle nightmares, one of those things that sounds beautiful and romantic but is really terrifying. Understand: everything a person does, they do for a reason. If you can see this, see their life and choices from their perspective, see it the way you see your own, of course you can forgive them.
The challenge, is that the way people see things differs fundamentally. Sometimes these differences do not reconcile, do not resonate and integrate. There’s one or the other. Accepting the totality of another person into your own viewpoint is not easy.
I don’t know if it’s love, exactly, but that’s what I think about. How if you really want to, you can accept a person like that, and you can forgive anything. I think it means giving up part of yourself, a lot of the time. I think it means sacrificing part of your own judgement and letting someone else replace it.
I spent a while, trying to do that for her. Without losing myself. It’s a fine line. It hurt, for weeks that stretched into months. It consumed me. I was fighting, constantly, for some kind of foothold.
Eventually I gave up. We drifted apart, somewhat. There’s more to it, but it’s not important. It’s not right now.
Part of me knows it was just a mistake, that we got tangled up the way kids with no idea what the fuck they’re doing with themselves do, and because we had a certain kind of chemistry things were a lot more explosive and painful than they needed to be. Part of me knows that I don’t really want her, that I’m just scared of being alone and she’s an alternative to that. And, yeah, it’s a little worse, because things between us could actually be good after a fashion.
Because she’s not what I want, not really.
But, well. In a way that scares me worse than just being alone. Because, setting aside for a moment our past and pain, and the possibility that we gave it another try and it ends in tears - she’s a real person, who I care about and who cares about me, who I believe there’s a very real possibility I could be happy with.
Except there’s this foggy half-idea of a girl who makes rare appearances in my dreams, some abstraction that might not or ever exist.
In a way, the dream-girl was the only way I ever got over my ex in the first place. There wasn’t anyone else around at the time, certainly no one who could compare to the emotional insanity we went through together. But nothing real can compete with a dream. So I found my way to move on.
And now… now I wonder if I didn’t fuck up. Now I wonder if I reached too far, if I set my heart on something impossible. If choosing a dream over a reality just means getting your heart broken over and over, because sooner or later we have to wake up.
I’ve still got scars running deep from the first time, and I wonder if I’ve lost the nerve to face the kind of relationship that can leave those again. Because even when it’s right, it’s hard - even when it’s right, there’s so many fears to face and overcome, so many ways in which the simple fact of being close to someone else can be painful.
But no, a dream is safe in it’s unreality. Even if I tell myself that’s not why I chose it, the frightening truth is I’ve been alone a long time.
I’m good at it. The silence is comfortable, my life is unencumbered by responsibilities to other people. I don’t have to worry about how my day-to-day, private decisions will affect anyone’s feelings. I don’t have to hear criticism, judgement. I’m safe.
Sometimes I even stop feeling like there’s something missing, sometimes I even feel like I could go on like this forever, and I’m happy.
But is it enough? Did I make a mistake?
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