The Discovery

I thought I could take it. Seeing her smile brought on by his face. Her laugh, a reaction to his voice. Her happiness a reflection of his presence. And after months of solid speculation, I thought I could stomach the day I heard him say “I’m with somebody.” But he refused. Deflecting queries of his relationship with reassuring words that suggested we still had a chance. And so instead of the truth coming from his lips to my ears, I had to accept that what I saw in countless pictures and recorded moments was not simply a figment of my imagination or a fabricated story I had created to protect my heart, but actually the truth he never could bring himself to tell me.

My feelings raw, I tried to escape the anxiety building in my body the day my assumptions became reality, but in that moment my heart tingled with brokenness and I hated him in a way I never had before. Seething with the confirmation that everything I wanted he gave to somebody else. Overwhelmed by his blatant disregard for how I’d feel, or deal with the evidence that lay before me.

I guess he thought I was blind. That I hadn’t noticed the flowers he gave her just days after our October meeting or the Christmas tree they decorated together. Maybe I had missed the fact that his “new hobby” – floral arranging – always found a place on her kitchen table, directly under a sign that read, “what I love most about my home is who I share it with.” I guess he thought I overlooked the fact that his friends were slowly becoming hers, that he supported her in a way that I had only dreamed, spent time with her like I had always wished and loved her in a way that I had only hoped for.

In his eyes, my heart was created for his sport, solely existing for his entertainment. And I reaffirmed that with silent tears and unvoiced sentiments. Verbally keeping him at a distance while still remaining hopeful that he would one day find his way back to me, the woman he had met two years prior in a dimly lit bar in Brooklyn, but childishly ran away from with excuses, broken promises and misguided actions. Maybe he was my BIG, and I, like Carrie, had to see our Sex and the City storyline out to the very end. Knowing that when the closing credits rolled we would be together, both confirming that from the very start, “It was always you.”

I’d loved him for two long years. In the beginning accepting his inconsistencies for “busy” and his flakiness for character flaws too far out of his control. Foolishly longing for the day that he would get it together, wake up from his youthful slumber and realize that in this life, even though we fail, it’s okay to try again. I was nothing like his ex-wife. At least that’s what I told myself, while naively reassuring my heart that we could make this love “thing” work.

In the end I was forced to accept that our union was never meant to be. That his inconsistencies were flagrant, his lies deliberate and his actions a direct reflection of how he felt about me. Seeing the flashing videos of his smile matched with hers confirmed that.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll always love him. If ten years from now I’ll still ask myself “what if.” In my next relationship if I’ll wonder how he’s doing or if in this next chapter – the one that excludes him –  there will ever come a time where he’ll pick up the phone to say “I’m sorry,” with no motive other than to offer up a genuine apology for the way he so brazenly betrayed my heart.

All the times he hurt me with ignored texts, missed engagements, missed birthdays, weeks of absence, and lofty tales of “us” actually becoming an “us” couldn’t prepare me for the final nail in the coffin; a weekend trip to the Caribbean – with her. I had tried and prayed tirelessly for well over a year to put this unrequited romance to bed, but I guess seeing her there on an island with him when just last year he was on an island with me made “the end” all too real.

This love thing is hard work. It’s complicated. At times it’s deceitful and down-right infuriating. And it’s not that I ever saw it as anything different, but I just thought by now I would have gotten it right. That I had kissed all the frogs I needed to kiss and I, the Jersey girl with a heart of gold, was ready for “The One.”

My father always said “God gives us free will. But when we choose, choose life. And choose life more abundantly.” So that’s what I choose to do. To move forward from this disillusioned past, live fully in the present and be hopeful for the future. In this life we’ll all have heartbreak. But there’s a point where we must accept, as I have, that these things happen.