#57 How did it end?

me & my patron saint

How did it end?

We met that day on a Sunday and lying in bed that evening I told you I was dating you. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to feel like I was asking permission to be more, to play a more solid role in your life. Mostly because it felt like I already did, after a stint back home for two months doesn’t shake you off from my life, after coming back and alternating summer holidays don’t make it easier for us to lose touch or to lose grasp of each other. In the heat, dying down in August, the first day of September, I remember telling you it’s been six months since we met and you were surprised, said in six more months it’d have been a year. You had mentioned a conversation in two years about marriage and paperwork and passports, and I didn’t want to take you seriously. Mostly because people say things they don’t really mean all the time — not personal, just a habit. I hang onto every word you say anyway, because I like you, because that’s what you do when you hope something is going to last.

We sat on the couch after that and then I ask you what you’re looking for, the question always at the tip of my tongue but the moment feeling right only now, as I sit across from you after eating takeout. Your eyes widen and you look nervous. I tell you you can take time to think about it if that’s what you need. I was curious, and I figured I would be better at this this time around, I would be a bit smarter in giving myself away — at least give myself time before I decided to jump in with both feet. But of course, feelings have their way of swimming along before you know it and you’re in the water. you’ve been there for a while. 

I started talking about needs and attachment styles and it was my way of intellectualising my feelings and not get overwhelmed with the uncertainty of where I stood with you. Funny, you were always one foot out, one foot in, now that I think about it. Always so close but for a few, crucial centimetres. I could feel you and I could touch you but I wasn’t where your heart was. I was always close, so close, but never quite there. It wasn’t intentional.

What I was trying to say back then is I love you, even if it feels like it would’ve been early to say or maybe more just scary to say, what I was trying to say about my needs and consistency is I like you, even if you felt that you should’ve done better, it was good for me, it was a good thing, I was trying to say. I wanted to try and most importantly — I wanted to try with you.

That is what it is about in the end, isn’t it? To be willing to try. To be willing to learn. Love is a beautiful thing because you just learn and learn and learn about each other and how to love each other better - in every sense of it, platonic, familiar, romantic. In the end it’s a choice that lets you run with it and see where it goes. And I understand. it’s not for everyone and it’s not always the best time for it, is it? You said it was a red flag once, how I’d never been in a relationship. I hate to say it, but it’s probably because I keep falling for guys like you. 

Which isn’t the worst thing! Guys like you are mostly kind and always sweet and have always shown me a degree of consideration. Guys like you have always done me the kindness of letting me know they’re not fully in it when they notice that I am. Guys like you have always decided it’s best to bow out before I continue feeling the way that I do. Guys like you recognize the look in my eye before I do. 

So it ended two weeks after that, maybe not quite but just about, and it was unceremonious, during a walk in a park I hadn’t been to yet — and don’t plan to go to in a long time or ever again, to be fair. The weather’s changing and the days are getting dull and short, wet, brown and muddied and the park doesn’t seem so inviting anymore. I remember the light had been golden and it was the first day I wore a thicker coat this year, admitting defeat to the gods of the seasons. And it wasn’t concrete and it wasn’t closure, it didn’t feel like closure at all. It felt like bowing out from something that was real, for the time that it was, for however long it was supposed to be real. And it was! It was for me. 

I’ve treated it as such since then — just something that was real and that I wanted and that made me very happy for a while. I really thought we would make it. But as a friend tells me, sometimes it’s just been ordained, this is just how it is, you just have to roll with the punches. I think that’s easier, isn’t it? The pressure spreads across the body instead of taking a solid strike, one single hit, and then your body distributes the weight of it. The impact of it. Rolling with the punches ensures you can recover quicker and keep going. It doesn’t matter what I want I tell myself one night, ruminating on what it all means, on whether this break means I will never see you again, not even by happenstance. 

I don’t entertain things like what if’s and scenarios and probabilities, because I’ve been down this road before, and age does make you a little wiser in helping you prevent imaginary pain. You get better at it, at living in stride, at compartmentalising, and keeping busy. You get a lot better at rationalising things. Putting them in perspective. It could’ve been a lot worse! Even if it could’ve been a lot better. Most importantly, it is what it is. And you know I love that turn of phrase.

I also think it’s sociopathic to feel the equivalence of an alleyway shanking and to have to get up and pretend like you didn’t just fall victim to a stabbing. Oh, me? Don’t worry about that! The bandages around my chest? Routine procedure, honestly, to get your heart broken in a park or a train station or a café on a cloudy afternoon - happens all the time, far more than we think, more often than not. My patron saint of heartbreak Taylor Swift is right there as she laments, how did it end? I tell her I know but I don’t know, really, and closure is this brilliant imaginary thing that sounds cooler in theory but is just as heartbreaking, if not more. The finality of it won’t make it sting less. So I wake up and I get ready and I get a haircut, and I book a flight to Budapest, and I send emails and I call my friends. Life continues as it does. It used to be devastating to realize, but that’s the other thing - when you get older and the gut punch arrives, it’s more of a relief.