May 26, 2008
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I almost stopped.
“You have to write it down,” I told myself. You have to write it down because it won’t stop hurting. There is this pain that I’ve kept hidden in the pits of my stomach all this time. Tonight it has spread through my fingers and my head. It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I’ve just finished watching a movie about two lovers that never got back together again because of war and circumstance; not without want… just without luck.
I’m a coward. It’s been too long and I thought that these feelings would go away, rot, or be forgotten. But they haven’t. And now they’ve resurfaced with a certain kind of defiance.. or desperation. He is leaving, or actually, he has just left. He’s starting a new life in Maine after being disenchanted in the year he spent here. The last year that I barely talked to him for fear that he would know and my significant other would know, or I would know, that I still love him. Will I finally let him go? Or is the proper question, should I let him go? If only there was some looking glass into others’ motivations, true desires, and the future. Then I would have the courage, equipped with the beyondness of a reasonable doubt, that I will have made the right decisions; whether it be enduring passivity or undertaking a most vulnerable admonition. It really means that if I knew what he really felt then I would continue letting him go or I would go after him. That’s what makes me a coward, my need of certainty. I cannot take risks any longer with this situation and I think I’m allowed to blame him. He was the one who let me go.
But I never told you diary what happened a little more than a year ago, before I settled with my current man. I gave you a summary, a one liner actually, but it was a most intense day of decisions. It was last last thanksgiving and that was the first time I’d gone home for the holidays. I’d been living in LA already, the first real time I’d lived away from my family and I was returning. I was currently starting to date Tiernan but still had feelings for the one I left behind, Nick. And on that Thanksgiving, we reunited at the familiar bar.
I didn’t know how much I really missed him until I saw him walk through the front door. And all of a sudden, this gush of happiness overwhelmed me and I forced myself to hide them. The great actress’s role that night was the best friend who didn’t think of him as anything more. All the other UNLV alumni wandered in and out and said hi and goodbye and we waved and hugged each of them, but all the while, making sure to keep each other close. It was almost a blessing when my best friend Jen asked him to give her a ride to her then beau’s house. She was at that inebriated but responsible point when she knew she couldn’t drive. And so he agreed and I agreed to go with him.
We couldn’t wait to drop her off and be done with the 10 minute short conversation that accompanied goodbyes. And we ate a late night dinner and we had a late night conversation and we had a late night laugh. And when there was little night left, we drove back to the bar. He parked next to my car and got in with me. We reclined our seats, listened to music, had small chatter, and wondered why we couldn’t leave each other. Much of the air was filled with unspokens and I closed my eyes and forced a short sleep.
He said he liked sunsets more than sunrises. I argued that sunrises were more beautiful. When the streets slowly fill with people and cars and the warmth of the sun touches your hands and your face, it’s like feeling life breathe after it has waned. So he stayed with me to wait for the sunrise. I listened to his breath and glanced sideways at his closed eyes and the hands on his chest. How I longed to touch his hands.
Hours passed and the silence that was too comfortable. And then, the first rays of sunlight. We stepped out and looked at it. The sunrise is not just a vision but also a feeling. It is definitely an experience. We stood there in a few minutes of silence and then he turned at me and smiled. We decided to finally part ways and go home.
Reading and writing this makes me hate him. If he loves me, why doesn’t he tell me? It’s because he doesn’t love me. I need to stop deluding myself.
That weekend was my ultimatum. I decided that if he didn’t confess his feelings for me then and there, then I would go home and let myself fall in love with Tiernan. I waited. That was a long weekend of unreturned calls and disappointment.
He moved to LA in less than a year. I was glad but afraid. Without him around, I was finally starting to ease him out of my mind. How dare he come back?
And now, how dare he leave again? Is this for the best? I think we will meet again in Albany in a week. It is the coincidence of Tiernan and I attending his friends wedding the same week Nick is driving to Maine, the same day he will pass through where we will arrive. It is my last day to decide.
Chances are, I will remain a coward.
