There's always that one, isn't there?
The one who changed the world.
The one who set your life on an entirely different path.
The one who can never be forgotten.
The one who even when you're determined to say no, even when he's not asking, his name on an email or the caller ID puts you right back where you used to be and you can't help going to pieces, no matter how adamantly you refuse to.
He doesn't ask, and you thank God because you know, you just know, that despite your two tons of resolve if he did you'd crumble and you couldn't tell him no. Some part of your mind realizes that not too long ago it would have hurt that he didn't ask, but now you're just glad. That same part of you wonders how that can be considering the emotional turmoil you're in at just the sight of his name, but the rest of you is too busy falling apart to worry about it at the moment.
No, he didn't ask, but the wistfulness is there and behind it you hear the same plaintive refrain, "if things were different." Well things aren't different, and we must deal with things as they are not as we wish they could be.
But telling yourself that doesn't work this time. The Leann Rimes doesn't work. The Sarah Teasdale poems don't work. The Jimmy Wayne video you turned into a talisman to guard your heart and keep the rest of you together doesn't work. None of it is any good and soon you're tumbling away again. Everything you felt--strike that, everything you still feel for this person is swirling around you and you can't help drowning in it.
And despite all of that, you still have to keep up your end of the exchange, answer the email, participate in the conversation. Just what are you supposed to say? I still think of you every single day? I'm still keeping the things you left with me? I still get a small pang of regret when I do something with someone else that I had always wanted to do with you? There's a part of me that will wait for you forever, even though I wish it wouldn't? Even if the exchange is brief, even if you simply choose not to have it, the damage is done. You are sitting there torn apart and lost and you aren't coming back any time soon.
You can't stop the questions. How did it we get here? Did any of it matter? If he felt anything how could things go the way they did? But you know he did, and that they went that way anyway and sometimes that's just how things are. And that doesn't help at all. You're haunted by the "could have been"s. Suddenly you are Tricia McMillan, looking over every shoulder for a guy with two heads and a birdcage. You can't help thinking of another you out there somewhere where things worked out "right".
So you decide it's time for some fresh air, and lots of fat, sugar, salt, and lots of other things that are very bad for you while you're at it. On the way you spot a familiar brand of pick up truck and cringe a little when you can't help checking the driver's seat.
You'll be fine, you know you'll be fine. Tomorrow or the next day you'll be yourself again but right now you just need to get through the next few hours. Somehow you do, but you can't help wondering how one person can affect you that way even after all this time. And wondering just what's going to happen next time he rolls around.
And yes, it does.
Ms. Betty
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