i didn't even drunk dial but then against all reason there was his voice on the line. the man that i would change everything for. the one that got... wait... perhaps went willingly, happily, with good reason... anyway he's gone. except for that voice across the miles. the lilt in his tone and the happiness at his new life unmasked in his trust and love of our new friendship. a friendship built on hope on my part that perhaps one day we'll be different. that difference will be that we are a solid unit. it's not a daily hope, a goal or a certainty it's an abstract idea like finding a first edition book signed by the author at a garage sale. like winning the lottery. i'm happy to leave it as a fantasy. i'm happy to leave it where it is but each time he calls or reappears there is that glimmer that flash of emotion and of regret. oh the regret. the urge to find a time machine and right those wrongs. the urge to erase what stands between us and what holds us from each other. the urge to beg him to discard his new found love and happiness for a bed of old times and fading memories with me. even i know that it's a ridiculous hope and so i cover it convincingly with a smile and mirrored joy at his happiness. i'm so good at it sometimes i even believe myself.
once we fell in love in connecticut during a cold winter that kept us moving from the side of a fire to blankets on the couch to glasses of jameson or wine to a bed where we found each other for the first time. we created hope and silly little jokes only we could understand and told each other secrets in the cold night that we hadn't revealed to most people. once we spent two days in new orleans. we made love in a hotel bed tangled in each other. laughing about private jokes and our secrets. once we spent a days in north carolina hiding from cool air and enjoying the fresh air of the balcony as it silently stood above the river. we had sex there in a more purposeful and needy way. we used the intimacy to cover what doubts and uncertainties we held between us. we laughed about the old private jokes and the secrets that were so long past they no longer held weight. once after we were finished i fished our love out of the dark green murky ocean in alaska on the back deck of a bar everyone loves. i touched where he had carved his name into a table and felt the curve of the letter press into my palm. i smiled about the private jokes and thought about the secrets that we had both gone on to share with others.
he says that he couldn't have found what he has without me. that our years together have given him a perspective and understanding of what he needs to be in order to honour another.
he quotes emerson to me...
" The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it." then he goes on to say that what i've given him in my patience and my love and my friendship is the chance to use that truth for love. he doesn't need to mention that the love... the one he's using my truth to build and nurture is with another girl... one is apparently perfect and nice and i'll "think she's great".... he doesn't need to. there are still things that we know about each other without saying them.
he used to read emerson aloud to me and then quote it to me when we were saying goodbye or goodnight. once when we first met and we were deciding what we would be to each other i bought him a book of writings by emerson on nature. i had no idea that he already had the same book and it was one of his most treasured possessions. he unwrapped it from it's brown paper cover and his face lit up. he smiled fully right into my heart and then set it down so gently that it seemed as if it were glass. we just sat so still for a few seconds both looking at the cover and then he said quietly... i think you might be the most amazing person i've ever met.
and now here we are. he probably quotes emerson to the new girl. great. just fucking great. he tells me how much he loves me. he tells me how much he is grateful and how over the next few weeks he may need me - just in case they have problems or issues can i please talk him off the ledge.... after all he thinks she may be the one. of course i say. i'm always here. i'll always answer the phone night or day and give you anything you want. ugh. really i say these things and tell him his happiness is my happiness. that if he loves her i will love her. part of it is true and part is lies because i'm too chicken shit to say what i really think. i don't know which part is which.
here is the thing about love lost... here is the thing about loving a distant shadow of someone. you cannot force them to still be the old loved version of themselves. you cannot force them to fully fit into what used to be anymore than you are what you used to be. you simply go forward without thinking because it's what people do. you quote emerson to others and you remember fondly. you treasure the lost moments but let them pass you like old correspondence blowing haphazardly down a highway.... you pass them at 70 and wonder who would dare leave something so precious where it could be destroyed.
the only thing i can say at the closing is fiona apple - paper bag is the song i'm listening to right now and this quote is the one i can't get out of my tired head.
" Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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