“Now we’re worse than exes. We’re friends.” -Anne Elliot 

I thought I was ready to hear from him. It’s been five months, or six months since we ended things and we went our separate ways. I don’t know when exactly things started unraveling. Maybe it was in October 2022 when we had our first conversation and I expressed doubts to him. But since we came together again after Christmas for our COVID quarantine, I would use March 2022 as a fairly good midpoint as our approximate end date. We kind of slid into the break up phase and had one really long and tortuous slow breakdown.

And so I thought I was ready. But I’m not. Reading that he was seeing someone and that it was a committed relationship was hard. I laid in bed after reading it first thing when I woke up. I should have waited. I let the information sink in. As I laid there, I felt the pressure slowly move across my chest. If there was an infrared picture that could be taken, I swear there would have been a shade of red spreading across my heart. Sadness and disappointment.

“Have a little pride in myself!”, my inner lioness whispered (it is after all morning and the household is still asleep). Who is this woman who’s claimed his heart or at least his attention? Knowing him, he’s already full on head over heels for her. I don’t really want to know, maybe not ever. Of course, I want him to be happy…with me. If not with me, then happy in a parallel universe.

In consoling me a few months ago, my cousin theorized that the conditions were not met for us to stay together. I loved him and I still do. Of course, love wasn’t the problem. It was the first adult relationship where I felt I could be myself, totally and honestly and I felt so loved and heard and understood until things started unraveling. The end was confusing and sad. We couldn’t decide who could have given more and didn’t, there were my growing pains away from my sister, and we were keeping mental tabs on all the deficiencies. I say “we” to be charitable but I don’t feel like I did. That was one of many problems afflicting us.

If life could be like Jane Austen’s Persuasion, we’d meet again in 8 years, and have a confusing reunion, realize that neither of us were truly happy without the other, and we’d make the commitment to be together against all odds. We’d make it work because we had to be together. There wouldn’t be question of if but how.

Life is not a book, sadly. Otherwise, I’d rewrite the ending of this relationship or rewrite it altogether and make it a romantic comedy. I’m tired of being sad and melancholy. The only thing I can do now is to let go of the past and see what we can build now from here. Wow, that sounds so grown up!