The Anticipation is Worse than the Impact
4/16/08
I’ve known this was coming for longer than I’ve been willing to admit to myself, let alone to her. I knew it was coming, but somehow all the knowledge in the world doesn’t soften the blow when bad news arrives. Nobody has to spell it out for me. I can say it to myself, loud and clear. “Bad news, sport, you’ve failed.” I’ve failed. I’ve failed myself and worse yet I’ve failed her. My inability to classify yet another phenomenal woman as “girl of my dreams” has subjected her to months of the sinking feeling that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with a man who, when asked if he felt the same, could eventually muster no better than, “I don’t know.”
Those three words spit at me as I read them now. “I don’t know.” I stammered like a scolded child when she finally asked me to stand up and speak like a man. I flash back to every time I did something profoundly stupid as a kid and had some adult question my motive.
“Why did you steal that candy bar?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want?”
“…I don’t know.”
Coward. You did too know, and you didn’t have the stones to tell her. You want to leave. You want to go to Chicago. You want to live the big life in the big city, you want to perform, and you want to do it alone. That sound about right? You’re not ready to settle down. You’re not ready to have a routine, a career, a dog, two cars in one garage, two people in one bed, and two souls in one life every day for the rest of your life. Not yet, not her, not now. No matter how amazing she is, how worthy, how sweet or how beautiful she is day in and day out, it’s just not enough for you for some reason. Are we hitting the nail on the head?
At once I am ashamed. The sick realization that I’ve hurt her settles in. I remember why I kept my silence…it’s because I do love her. I truly do love her, I’d lay down my life for hers, and I wanted to be able to do anything else if it meant I wouldn’t have to make her cry. The last thing I want is to make her cry, to make her face the kind of hurt I’ve faced before. I begin to wonder how many hours I’ll spend with The Barenaked Ladies’ “Break Your Heart” cycling over and over in my mind. What else was I supposed to do? She lives with me in my tiny apartment which is located in a town where neither of us has anything more than casual friends and a shitty job. The only difference was that I finished college a semester sooner than she did. She needed to be here, she needed to be safe and she needed to finish school. I couldn’t just throw her out. She had nowhere to go. Certain future or no, I can’t do that to somebody I care about.
Sure enough, here come the lyrics:
…the weakest thing I’ve ever done was to stay right by your side, just like this time…
Before last night I had been excited about the promise of things to come. Spring in Nebraska affects everyone tangibly. People become restless. The streets and sidewalks flood with kids, dogs, and people who you can bet wouldn’t be out running if it were 65 degrees outside every day. Students get distracted, skip glass, and manage to graduate anyhow. You can literally feel everything around you coming back to life after another long, Nebraska winter. Flowers bloom, and then the population of Lincoln plummets in May as scores of college kids leave their college town to do things like farm, lifeguard, or get a “real” job. For the first time in four years, I was going to be one of those kids. I wasn’t going to spend another boring summer in Lincoln. I’d have my diploma, and it would finally be time to get out. As I looked east to greet a sun that rose ever earlier in the April morning, I could imagine the Sears Tower dominating a Chicago skyline and begging me to come get a taste of the constant electricity and opportunity of the big city. The countdown had been on. I had been excited.
Now, a new countdown is on, and it makes every minute feel like 20 and every hour feel like at least two days. If you fancy math, that multiplication is all wrong. If you’ve ever dealt with anything that deserves to be called “heart wrenching” then it makes perfect sense. Our relationship as we know it ends in three weeks when she finishes class and leaves. Truthfully, it ended yesterday with a text message I received at work. All it said was, “FYI, we need to talk.” Just like that, I had drinks to fetch, food to serve, and when I got home, a heart to break. I fetched the drinks, served the food, and broke her heart. We crawled into bed and lamented our inability to fall asleep. Eventually that segued into me lamenting my inability to be for her the perfect man she deserves. How do you tell a great girl who would gladly keep trying that you’re just not perfect for each other?
God love her, she accepted everything with a cool head and an open heart. What an incredible thing to do. What a show of class and maturity from a classy, mature girl. What more could I ask than her calm understanding and unconditional love? What more could I possibly need? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?!?
Frustration washes over me in waves, and each time it crashes down and soaks me in tears, she wipes them away and tells me that I’m going to find somebody who is perfect for me. She kisses me and tells me it’s going to be o.k., which makes me feel even worse because she’s being absolutely amazing and she deserves the very best life has to offer. It makes me feel like a failure because I wanted to be the very best life had to offer her and I couldn’t. I tried to do everything that one is supposed to do to make a relationship work. Anytime things got tough, we talked it out and we worked on it. I didn’t stay out late, I didn’t get drunk, I didn’t fool around with other girls and I didn’t put other aspects of my life ahead of our relationship. I spent time with her, I told her I loved her, I brought her flowers and I scratched her back until she fell asleep. I was a great man to her and she was a great woman to me. Mathematically, it was all correct. Meanwhile, back in the real world, it all adds up to two hearts that are decidedly wrenched.
I suppose some updating is in order. After my last tearful, whiney, self-piteous post, she stayed. She stayed for me. She stayed with me. Although it would have been tough last May to call the whole thing off, we’d have both been fine in very little time at all. As it was, she scrapped whatever plans and agreements she’d made, and she stayed with me to see what we could become. She made a brief trip to take her best friend to the airport, and then returned to move in with me. At first it was a little odd to have a bathroom full of beauty supplies and more shampoos and soaps than my shower could hold, but in time I bought a shower caddy and came to find comfort in the tangible fullness of my apartment. It went well with the tangible fullness of my heart. We went to sporting events together, we cooked meals, we did laundry and we made plans to move out of Nebraska together after she graduated.
Over time, though, something went wrong with me. A full apartment turned to a crowded one in my mind. My full heart sprung a leak somewhere, and despite my best efforts I just couldn’t get it to stop and fill back up again with the unconditional, tireless love I once had for her. At some point the awful realization crept in that it would be a mistake to move away together, and every time I noticed it, it became harder to ignore it again. That Goddamn inner voice that lives only to smash my routines would pipe up:
“This isn’t working.”
“Shut up.”
“She’s not the one.”
“Shut UP! You don’t know that.”
“You’re being selfish because you're comfortable, and it’s not fair to her.”
“…b-but…where would she go?”
Smart girls don’t need to hear your inner routine-smasher to know when something is amiss in a relationship, and strong girls don’t need your pity or your cowardice. We both sensed that something had changed. We both knew our relationship was cracking under the immense pressure generated by two lives with absolutely no direction. Eventually she called me out for avoiding my future—our future, and burying myself in the routine. Eventually, in the heat of an argument, she asked me the question that I needed to have asked and that she needed to have answered.
“Do you even want to move together? What do you want?”
My insides were churning. My mind was racing. My sense of stability and love of all things safe and familiar were screaming at me to say something that would fix us and make it so that she’d never have to worry or feel bad about anything ever again for as long as she lived. My cowardly side begged me to find a cop out, to get mad, to skirt the question, to lie my ass off, or do anything that would prevent me from dealing with that horrifying question. My conscience wouldn’t let me do anything but answer honestly.
"I don’t know.”
She simultaneously hit the floor and the ceiling. Three words had gotten her to stay a year ago. A different three words told her that soon enough she’d be leaving and that it would be for her own good. I watched the weakest three words I could have uttered shatter her already fragile faith in me. She yelled, she cried, I yelled, I cried, and neither of us knew what to do. I tried to settle back down for a few weeks and tried even harder to convince myself that I was making a mistake and this was all repairable, but it couldn’t be done. She tried to settle back down and tried even harder to pretend that she still had a reason to be here if I couldn’t do any better than “I don’t know”, but it couldn’t be done.
As upset as I was that the words, “FYI wee need to talk” came fully three weeks before the outcome of that talk could be finalized, I understood. It was killing her to carry around the doubt and uncertainty. At some point, each of us needs to know that what we’re doing is eventually going to bear some metaphorical fruit. When it came time to talk, she told me what we both already knew; she was going to finish her class and move out. If I couldn’t be her good reason to be in Nebraska and school couldn’t either, that was it. She was out of reasons. I was shocked at how calmly I accepted the news. To be honest, I wanted her to tell me precisely what she had. I just wasn’t ready for the next step.
The next step is where I presently find not only myself, but her as well. We basically broke up two nights ago, but we’re still going to stay together in this little apartment for three weeks. I’ve never done this before. This isn’t how breakups go. We’re not supposed to see the part where the other wakes up in the morning and isn’t sure whether it would be better to spend the day openly crying or trying not to cry, or whether it would hurt more to see the other person or not see them. We’re both sick with cold and fever, and on top if it we’re heartsick. On top of that, we’ve got to watch the other person suffer. She asked me if it would be better for her to stay with somebody else for the final few weeks. I nearly threw up.
The only thing worse than already missing somebody who isn’t gone is already missing somebody who isn’t gone and not being able to see her. I know that there is no "good time" for things like this. I know I'll never be prepared to feel the loss. I’ll never be ready to wake up alone and stumble into my half-empty bathroom. I’ll never be ready to feel the suffocating sensation in my chest every time I find another one of her hairs, or see another car like hers on the street. I’ll never be ready to want to call her and not know if hearing her voice would help more or hurt more. While I still have a choice, I won’t do it. Hey, we already established that I’m a coward. More than any of the above reasons, I won’t let her go through this while she tries to politely camp out on some quasi-friend’s couch for three weeks. She may not be perfect for me, but she still deserves to be cared for and to receive the best I can offer until we part ways...and I’ll always love her, no matter what.
I’ve known this was coming for longer than I’ve been willing to admit to myself, let alone to her. I knew it was coming, but somehow all the knowledge in the world doesn’t soften the blow when bad news arrives. Nobody has to spell it out for me. I can say it to myself, loud and clear. “Bad news, sport, you’ve failed.” I’ve failed. I’ve failed myself and worse yet I’ve failed her. My inability to classify yet another phenomenal woman as “girl of my dreams” has subjected her to months of the sinking feeling that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with a man who, when asked if he felt the same, could eventually muster no better than, “I don’t know.”
Those three words spit at me as I read them now. “I don’t know.” I stammered like a scolded child when she finally asked me to stand up and speak like a man. I flash back to every time I did something profoundly stupid as a kid and had some adult question my motive.
“Why did you steal that candy bar?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want?”
“…I don’t know.”
Coward. You did too know, and you didn’t have the stones to tell her. You want to leave. You want to go to Chicago. You want to live the big life in the big city, you want to perform, and you want to do it alone. That sound about right? You’re not ready to settle down. You’re not ready to have a routine, a career, a dog, two cars in one garage, two people in one bed, and two souls in one life every day for the rest of your life. Not yet, not her, not now. No matter how amazing she is, how worthy, how sweet or how beautiful she is day in and day out, it’s just not enough for you for some reason. Are we hitting the nail on the head?
At once I am ashamed. The sick realization that I’ve hurt her settles in. I remember why I kept my silence…it’s because I do love her. I truly do love her, I’d lay down my life for hers, and I wanted to be able to do anything else if it meant I wouldn’t have to make her cry. The last thing I want is to make her cry, to make her face the kind of hurt I’ve faced before. I begin to wonder how many hours I’ll spend with The Barenaked Ladies’ “Break Your Heart” cycling over and over in my mind. What else was I supposed to do? She lives with me in my tiny apartment which is located in a town where neither of us has anything more than casual friends and a shitty job. The only difference was that I finished college a semester sooner than she did. She needed to be here, she needed to be safe and she needed to finish school. I couldn’t just throw her out. She had nowhere to go. Certain future or no, I can’t do that to somebody I care about.
Sure enough, here come the lyrics:
…the weakest thing I’ve ever done was to stay right by your side, just like this time…
Before last night I had been excited about the promise of things to come. Spring in Nebraska affects everyone tangibly. People become restless. The streets and sidewalks flood with kids, dogs, and people who you can bet wouldn’t be out running if it were 65 degrees outside every day. Students get distracted, skip glass, and manage to graduate anyhow. You can literally feel everything around you coming back to life after another long, Nebraska winter. Flowers bloom, and then the population of Lincoln plummets in May as scores of college kids leave their college town to do things like farm, lifeguard, or get a “real” job. For the first time in four years, I was going to be one of those kids. I wasn’t going to spend another boring summer in Lincoln. I’d have my diploma, and it would finally be time to get out. As I looked east to greet a sun that rose ever earlier in the April morning, I could imagine the Sears Tower dominating a Chicago skyline and begging me to come get a taste of the constant electricity and opportunity of the big city. The countdown had been on. I had been excited.
Now, a new countdown is on, and it makes every minute feel like 20 and every hour feel like at least two days. If you fancy math, that multiplication is all wrong. If you’ve ever dealt with anything that deserves to be called “heart wrenching” then it makes perfect sense. Our relationship as we know it ends in three weeks when she finishes class and leaves. Truthfully, it ended yesterday with a text message I received at work. All it said was, “FYI, we need to talk.” Just like that, I had drinks to fetch, food to serve, and when I got home, a heart to break. I fetched the drinks, served the food, and broke her heart. We crawled into bed and lamented our inability to fall asleep. Eventually that segued into me lamenting my inability to be for her the perfect man she deserves. How do you tell a great girl who would gladly keep trying that you’re just not perfect for each other?
God love her, she accepted everything with a cool head and an open heart. What an incredible thing to do. What a show of class and maturity from a classy, mature girl. What more could I ask than her calm understanding and unconditional love? What more could I possibly need? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?!?
Frustration washes over me in waves, and each time it crashes down and soaks me in tears, she wipes them away and tells me that I’m going to find somebody who is perfect for me. She kisses me and tells me it’s going to be o.k., which makes me feel even worse because she’s being absolutely amazing and she deserves the very best life has to offer. It makes me feel like a failure because I wanted to be the very best life had to offer her and I couldn’t. I tried to do everything that one is supposed to do to make a relationship work. Anytime things got tough, we talked it out and we worked on it. I didn’t stay out late, I didn’t get drunk, I didn’t fool around with other girls and I didn’t put other aspects of my life ahead of our relationship. I spent time with her, I told her I loved her, I brought her flowers and I scratched her back until she fell asleep. I was a great man to her and she was a great woman to me. Mathematically, it was all correct. Meanwhile, back in the real world, it all adds up to two hearts that are decidedly wrenched.
I suppose some updating is in order. After my last tearful, whiney, self-piteous post, she stayed. She stayed for me. She stayed with me. Although it would have been tough last May to call the whole thing off, we’d have both been fine in very little time at all. As it was, she scrapped whatever plans and agreements she’d made, and she stayed with me to see what we could become. She made a brief trip to take her best friend to the airport, and then returned to move in with me. At first it was a little odd to have a bathroom full of beauty supplies and more shampoos and soaps than my shower could hold, but in time I bought a shower caddy and came to find comfort in the tangible fullness of my apartment. It went well with the tangible fullness of my heart. We went to sporting events together, we cooked meals, we did laundry and we made plans to move out of Nebraska together after she graduated.
Over time, though, something went wrong with me. A full apartment turned to a crowded one in my mind. My full heart sprung a leak somewhere, and despite my best efforts I just couldn’t get it to stop and fill back up again with the unconditional, tireless love I once had for her. At some point the awful realization crept in that it would be a mistake to move away together, and every time I noticed it, it became harder to ignore it again. That Goddamn inner voice that lives only to smash my routines would pipe up:
“This isn’t working.”
“Shut up.”
“She’s not the one.”
“Shut UP! You don’t know that.”
“You’re being selfish because you're comfortable, and it’s not fair to her.”
“…b-but…where would she go?”
Smart girls don’t need to hear your inner routine-smasher to know when something is amiss in a relationship, and strong girls don’t need your pity or your cowardice. We both sensed that something had changed. We both knew our relationship was cracking under the immense pressure generated by two lives with absolutely no direction. Eventually she called me out for avoiding my future—our future, and burying myself in the routine. Eventually, in the heat of an argument, she asked me the question that I needed to have asked and that she needed to have answered.
“Do you even want to move together? What do you want?”
My insides were churning. My mind was racing. My sense of stability and love of all things safe and familiar were screaming at me to say something that would fix us and make it so that she’d never have to worry or feel bad about anything ever again for as long as she lived. My cowardly side begged me to find a cop out, to get mad, to skirt the question, to lie my ass off, or do anything that would prevent me from dealing with that horrifying question. My conscience wouldn’t let me do anything but answer honestly.
"I don’t know.”
She simultaneously hit the floor and the ceiling. Three words had gotten her to stay a year ago. A different three words told her that soon enough she’d be leaving and that it would be for her own good. I watched the weakest three words I could have uttered shatter her already fragile faith in me. She yelled, she cried, I yelled, I cried, and neither of us knew what to do. I tried to settle back down for a few weeks and tried even harder to convince myself that I was making a mistake and this was all repairable, but it couldn’t be done. She tried to settle back down and tried even harder to pretend that she still had a reason to be here if I couldn’t do any better than “I don’t know”, but it couldn’t be done.
As upset as I was that the words, “FYI wee need to talk” came fully three weeks before the outcome of that talk could be finalized, I understood. It was killing her to carry around the doubt and uncertainty. At some point, each of us needs to know that what we’re doing is eventually going to bear some metaphorical fruit. When it came time to talk, she told me what we both already knew; she was going to finish her class and move out. If I couldn’t be her good reason to be in Nebraska and school couldn’t either, that was it. She was out of reasons. I was shocked at how calmly I accepted the news. To be honest, I wanted her to tell me precisely what she had. I just wasn’t ready for the next step.
The next step is where I presently find not only myself, but her as well. We basically broke up two nights ago, but we’re still going to stay together in this little apartment for three weeks. I’ve never done this before. This isn’t how breakups go. We’re not supposed to see the part where the other wakes up in the morning and isn’t sure whether it would be better to spend the day openly crying or trying not to cry, or whether it would hurt more to see the other person or not see them. We’re both sick with cold and fever, and on top if it we’re heartsick. On top of that, we’ve got to watch the other person suffer. She asked me if it would be better for her to stay with somebody else for the final few weeks. I nearly threw up.
The only thing worse than already missing somebody who isn’t gone is already missing somebody who isn’t gone and not being able to see her. I know that there is no "good time" for things like this. I know I'll never be prepared to feel the loss. I’ll never be ready to wake up alone and stumble into my half-empty bathroom. I’ll never be ready to feel the suffocating sensation in my chest every time I find another one of her hairs, or see another car like hers on the street. I’ll never be ready to want to call her and not know if hearing her voice would help more or hurt more. While I still have a choice, I won’t do it. Hey, we already established that I’m a coward. More than any of the above reasons, I won’t let her go through this while she tries to politely camp out on some quasi-friend’s couch for three weeks. She may not be perfect for me, but she still deserves to be cared for and to receive the best I can offer until we part ways...and I’ll always love her, no matter what.
posted by Beav at 8:06 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home