2:00 AM
It’s 2:00 AM after a long Saturday night. I should feel relieved because the thing I’ve been dreading has passed. I reality, I am acutely aware of why I was dreading it. It’s 2:00 AM after a five month relationship, and I just broke her heart. I, ironically, am now crying in the arms of my roommate. It would seem that I should be the one who chalks it up to bad luck or makes some other weak excuse, pulls the covers up, and goes to sleep. Instead I have tears streaming down my face, as no doubt she does. It’s 2:00 AM after a half hour of telling her everything she needed to hear and nothing she wanted to. I wish like hell that there were something else I could have done and still had any self-respect on which to hang my pride, but there just wasn’t. What started as curiosity and became love has taken a turn for me, and I just can’t bring myself to fake my way through and let her fall deeper in love while I remain static. I just couldn’t break down and cry and say, “Baby, I’m sorry, I take it all back. Come back over.” I just couldn’t drag her along for weeks or months more and hurt her a little more each day until I had completely ruined anything we ever had because I didn’t have what it took to tell her that I’ll never be the man she needs. I just couldn’t take the easy way out. I just couldn’t tell her I was still in love and that it wasn’t over.
These were the words that tore both of us open until we each bled from that most vulnerable place.
“Do you love me?”
“Not like you need me to.”
She hung up. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Pain like that travels silently across the human experience and hits with a sickening thud. I knew that with those words I had shattered every ounce of trust she had to give. In a moment the memory of how it felt to be told that the love is gone came rushing back, and my tears came rushing forth. I cried because I know that pain. I cried because I just put that pain on her. I cried because I had to choose what the best time was to hurt her so that it turned out the best for her in the end. I also knew that I owed it to her. I couldn’t let her believe that somehow this was all a riddle that needed only the right words to be solved. I couldn’t do to her what was done to me. For that matter, I couldn’t do to her what I’d done in the past. Across those months she had given me her trust, and now the only thing I could do to honor that was to tear down her world in the name of honesty.
As I wipe away my tears, my roommate tells me that someday I’ll have her respect for having been honest with her. My roommate tells me she respects me for “doing the right thing.” From somewhere inside me, that idealistic child wants to scream out that I deserve no respect, because I used to have love and now it’s gone. There is nothing to be respected about that. If I could have taken adversity and turned it into greater love, that deserves respect. If I could have embraced every moment of pain and tension and used it to understand more and battle less, that deserves respect. If I weren’t one of two people crying at 2:00 AM because a compromise couldn’t be reached, if I still felt on top of the world and if I were still making her feel like the luckiest girl in the world, that would deserve respect. Right now I just feel like the inconsolable kid on the soccer field after a tough loss. Hand me my orange slice and give me the condescending hair tossle and “you’ll get ‘em next time”, but I still just wish we could have won. From somewhere, the frustration starts to seep in. What went wrong this time? Why couldn’t I have fallen hopelessly in love and stayed that way until death did us part? What is it about two people that makes them irreconcilably different when everyone is so remarkably similar to begin with? Why does “doing the right thing” hurt so deeply?
These were the words that tore both of us open until we each bled from that most vulnerable place.
“Do you love me?”
“Not like you need me to.”
She hung up. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Pain like that travels silently across the human experience and hits with a sickening thud. I knew that with those words I had shattered every ounce of trust she had to give. In a moment the memory of how it felt to be told that the love is gone came rushing back, and my tears came rushing forth. I cried because I know that pain. I cried because I just put that pain on her. I cried because I had to choose what the best time was to hurt her so that it turned out the best for her in the end. I also knew that I owed it to her. I couldn’t let her believe that somehow this was all a riddle that needed only the right words to be solved. I couldn’t do to her what was done to me. For that matter, I couldn’t do to her what I’d done in the past. Across those months she had given me her trust, and now the only thing I could do to honor that was to tear down her world in the name of honesty.
As I wipe away my tears, my roommate tells me that someday I’ll have her respect for having been honest with her. My roommate tells me she respects me for “doing the right thing.” From somewhere inside me, that idealistic child wants to scream out that I deserve no respect, because I used to have love and now it’s gone. There is nothing to be respected about that. If I could have taken adversity and turned it into greater love, that deserves respect. If I could have embraced every moment of pain and tension and used it to understand more and battle less, that deserves respect. If I weren’t one of two people crying at 2:00 AM because a compromise couldn’t be reached, if I still felt on top of the world and if I were still making her feel like the luckiest girl in the world, that would deserve respect. Right now I just feel like the inconsolable kid on the soccer field after a tough loss. Hand me my orange slice and give me the condescending hair tossle and “you’ll get ‘em next time”, but I still just wish we could have won. From somewhere, the frustration starts to seep in. What went wrong this time? Why couldn’t I have fallen hopelessly in love and stayed that way until death did us part? What is it about two people that makes them irreconcilably different when everyone is so remarkably similar to begin with? Why does “doing the right thing” hurt so deeply?
posted by Beav at 3:21 AM
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