The Ending

I sit here staring out the windows of my mothers’ twelfth floor apartment, pondering my latest pothole in this seemingly endless road.  I have failed, yet again, to maintain someone’s interest in me for more than six months.  I suspect he’s already moved on, I can’t imagine I meant much to him.

I love pursuing stand-up comedy but I need to take time away because seeing my ex hurts.  Hearing his comments tears me apart and sends me diving into a two six of vodka.  I hate that he has this power to with one look, all the while seemingly oblivious to my existence, gut me like a fish. It entertains me that only a few short weeks ago he confided his thoughts and desires in me.  I’m at a loss, every time I feel like I have something truly solid it turns into sand slipping through my fingers as I frantically try to grasp it.  I feel so helpless, if I really deserved good things I’d have been prepared for this, armed with a blow torch, turning the sand into glass.  I don’t like losing people from my life.  Correction, I don’t like losing people I love from my life.

I start wondering about the choices I’ve made that have brought me to this point.  The impulse to make this relationship work is no different then the one that led us to begin it.  What changed?  Did lust overpowered us and hide the realities of our situation, only to allow them to catch up with us later?  We both view ourselves as people who strive past the confinements of societal views.  Despite that, we let the very people we don’t allow to “influence” us effect our choices, stealing the spotlight away from the only two people who should be basking in its’ warm embrace.  So are we hypocrites?  Or, are we just a couple of fools still too optimistic to view the reality of our situation.  Age is a factor.  Time for each other is a factor.  Life experience is a factor.  Those three tiny factors are the very reason two people who care for each other can’t continue down the same path.  

Love, it’s an interesting idea.  I love him now.  Eventually I will have loved him, and when that happens I will be the only one who ever knew or cared about that fact.  There are so many cliches involving love, my personal favorite being “it’s better to love and have lost, then never to have loved at all.”  Statistically speaking, with my generation it’s more likely that your relationship will end then succeed.  So where does that leave you on the loved and lost part?  Is the continued ending of love worth of the pain involved with having loved them?  I haven’t decided yet.

I’m sure there are things I’m naive about right now, but I know I will move on.  I don’t hold on to the hope that we will get back together because ‘he’s the only one for me’.  It’s a great movie premise for the romantic in all of us, but I just can’t believe that.  I believe every relationship (including our friendships) teach us the lessons we need to learn so we can discover who we are.  So the question I want to answer is what did I learn?  I’m unsure if I’ll ever know all the ways being with him has affected me, but I’ve taken a few important lessons.  The first is that little things can be the end of relationships.  In fact, I think that it’s the little things that always end relationships.  I’ve also learned that you can break up on the best terms possible, but you still die inside when you see that person.  You can’t help but assume the worst from every action they do from that point forth.  It always seems my emotions can blind me and steal my logic.  Oh how I lament my irrationality.

What infuriates me is when people tell me that he wasn’t the ‘one’ and that person is still out there looking for me and when I meet him I’ll just ‘know’.  I feel everyone who watches these Disney movies should be made to watch a disclaimer informing the viewer that the movie they’re about to watch is a work of fiction.  As far as I can tell this idea of ‘happily ever after’ is one of the biggest lies we’ve spread.  I do believe that people can succeed in staying together, I just believe it takes an incredible amount of work and communication from BOTH people.  Nothing worth while in my life has come easily, so I assume this corresponds to the realm of relationships as well.  

Anger has no place in my feelings following my break up, hurt, longing, and a sense of being inadequate definitely do.  Are they reliable feelings?  I suspect not, because in reality even though I love him and wanted my future to continue onwards with him. I have a dream.  I want to achieve that dream.  Ironically, I shared the same dream with him, but from what I’ve gathered from the relationships I’ve been in, and from the ones I’ve had the ability to view with an outsiders perspective, one person in the relationship always sacrifices for the other.  I can’t give my dream up.  Neither can he, and he’s more prepared to deal with the fact that to accomplish your dreams you must sacrifice.  Truly sacrifice, in the hopes that you will achieve that seemingly impossible desire.

So here I sit, the night has swallowed the city and I look upon it and I wonder how many of the people driving past have really made the sacrifice to achieve their greatest desires.  How many people strove only to give that dream up for another challenge.  Does it really fulfill them or do they regret and resent these choices?  I don’t know, I’ll never know, the only thing I’m actually certain of is that I won’t be satisfied in life until I do.  I’ve been losing sight of that recently.  Let this be my constant reminder.