I Lost Someone Important to Me
I expected to feel differently when I saw the girl who gave me her heart post a picture with her new boyfriend.
I expected to feel jealous.
I expected to watch the seams burst open across my freshly mended heart.
But I didn't feel that. I felt curious.
For the first time I could see the guy she left me for, abandoned me for... not just our love, but something I thought was much more sacred.
Something I thought mattered to her as much as it did to me, our friendship.
She traded everything we had for her hope in her brand new lover, because apparently I threatened that, even though we were tidally locked in a firmly founded friendship. And it could have lasted our entire lives.
But that "could" was built from both our words, and when she said I was one-of-a-kind, I thought that meant I couldn't be replaced.
My curiosity clicked on her profile one more time. I wanted to know.
Who was her prince charming?
Who had dwarfed me?
Why did she choose him?
The face in the picture told me everything I needed to know.
The girl in the picture is a lover.
The things that love her back are the things she grows to love. And truth be told, I was the one who fell in love with her. I was the one who told her. And she told me right back like she meant it, and I felt like somebody could love me, all of me, and I'd never felt that before.
But what I didn't know is that I was under the same psychological mind trance as her.
The love I was giving was the love I thought I was feeling.
The face in the picture I was staring at, though, was his.
He is nothing like me, and that is so clear just from a glance.
I once told her how the day would come when I didn't look like the man she spoke so highly of.
I once told her I someday wouldn't look like much of a man at all. But she denied that before she even considered it, the same way she swallows her faith in religion. The only difference is that this statement was testable... and it turned out to be just as void as the faith that carries her through everyday, except this couldn't hide unto her death in the shadow of plausible undeniability like her faith can (and will), but she will never have to deal with either of those lies.
When I realized it was over and tried to say goodbye, all she said was how she'd see me again one day. And my atheism is something I'll never flaunt, nor did I, but her final words were a dagger across my chest.
She said goodbye like it was nothing to her. She had a new lover and a new future, and she believed she would see her old lover in a heaven of paradise. Everything was beautiful to her.
I had none of those things.
I was saying goodbye... she was saying see you later.
She refused to acknowledge my pain at all.
She just vanished so she could hurry up and get back to her own life.
She didn't care about my pain and she doesn't care about my closure.
I wish her the best but when someone's half of your soul... if you wake up and they're gone it's like being ripped in half.
I have to put myself back together on my own. I have to find a way to do that.
So I'd wish her well for her own sake... but our worlds are forever split so it's a paradox where I can feel so much resentment for a soul I still love.
To speak of her now is an injustice to the heart I once had for her. But I am worlds apart from that now; after receiving the closure of seeing my replacement with his arm around her, ...a ring around her finger.
I came to see his face, and his face was all I needed to see to know that his girl was never mine. We never really fit together, our love just filled in all the gaps between us.
I saw more than that though. I saw that engagement ring on her finger like a banner across her wall. And when I saw that, I realized how little her love meant. Exactly how little I meant.
You see, I didn't care that she moved on or is finding her happiness with someone else. I didn't care she could be more happy than she's ever been, but without me. And I didn't even care when I saw her eyes turn black when she looked at me and knowing it was because she was still staring at him within her mind. She did used to look at me that way, but it is the memory of my hope that has hurt so much.
But in this moment of curiosity, of wanting so bad to know "what happened?" I found my peace.
Our love wasn't real, but what is real love? Can fake love be real if it maintains the mask of being genuine until death? What if the individual never admits to theirself that their love is fake? How can we tell the difference if we cannot unless it ends?
What we had was a house of cards, but the reason it went up so easily was because we were both playing from the same emotional deck.
I thought this was "love at first write," because we made a connection with our first few words. But it was not.
Love at first sight may not be what we all think. Love is emotion, and emotion is beautiful, but it's induced by our environments and having met this girl on a different day, when she was feeling less affectionate (or if I was), we never would have started anything.
And that's when I realize I'm glad I don't have her. I'm glad I didn't end up with someone whom I fell for just because her love was the biggest gravity well around. I'm glad I didn't build a future with someone who appreciated me for someone who I wasn't and would never be.
It started out as seeing that boy's face. I almost felt myself crumble back into pieces when I first realized her new profile picture was her in the arms of another guy. But I wanted to know the truth because she left me in the dark.
She left me with nothing.
She made me believe I was the one she was looking for, which I thought meant she had standards and I fatefully fit into them. My lifestyle since childhood has left me so far out of sync with most people, and so I felt amazing when someone finally saw something in me.
But she did not see me.
If she saw me, she would plainly see how loosely she chooses her future. If she ever knew me, she would see how little her words mean as she speaks them all over again to someone who's nothing like me. If she had a damn clue about the person behind these words, she would have seen straight off that I'm a decision that you only get to make once.
You'll never meet another me nor will you meet a replacement. You don't choose me out of the crowd, you see me on the side and you know straight away if I'm the one you want, or if you want to keep searching for someone who walks in with the crowd, or to find someone else on the side.
She made me believe she was looking for me, but really, she was just scared she'd never find what she was looking for in the mass of people around her, so she made herself believe she could love me. She made me believe she could love me.
Now I see everything.
She got over me in a heartbeat, because her heart found a new beat. She let me go, but she set the value of her words at the same time.
I was pushed to the outside, and from the outside I can see how little it took for her to find a new flame. And within 2 months of starting that, she's engaged to be married. How quickly she decides the rest of her future... She has permanently decided to be with her new man while still bobbing in the wake of the broken promises she made to me. And it's made her question nothing.
The boy in the picture was just the outside of a face, but he showed me more about the inside of the girl I once loved than she herself ever did.
I love the inside of that girl. I always will. But that girl isn't the girl in the picture. And now.. now I'm afraid she isn't even the girl in my memories. Her words have all turned to ash like a pickup line that's been used a thousand times. But the ashes are never ending embers.
Her words meant nothing. She let them die.
My future is bright I think, even though I walk in the darkness of my lonesomeness. I hope too that her future is bright, but her future is set and she's chosen a normal life, and a normal life will only lead you to the same mediocre results as the rest of the planet.
I hope she finds her happiness, but I'm searching for more.
I won't give in and I won't give up, and I'll fight every second of my life keeping myself from being a normal person who can forget about everyone else and just live for the next reward. I don't care if it makes me sound proud, there's nothing to be proud of, I have to force myself to be this way and I don't care if you hate me for it. I believe there's nothing better I can do than make another mind brighter, even for just a moment ...to make as many of them shine brightly as I can.
I haven't figured out how to show love to the world, but I intend to because that's the person I am, that's the person I've always been.
I could have never been this with the girl in the picture. My girl's still out there. But even if I don't meet her... maybe I can leave something behind.
Here's to getting over you, my imaginary friend. Time to let you die along with the girl who died in January.
I expected to feel jealous.
I expected to watch the seams burst open across my freshly mended heart.
But I didn't feel that. I felt curious.
For the first time I could see the guy she left me for, abandoned me for... not just our love, but something I thought was much more sacred.
Something I thought mattered to her as much as it did to me, our friendship.
She traded everything we had for her hope in her brand new lover, because apparently I threatened that, even though we were tidally locked in a firmly founded friendship. And it could have lasted our entire lives.
But that "could" was built from both our words, and when she said I was one-of-a-kind, I thought that meant I couldn't be replaced.
My curiosity clicked on her profile one more time. I wanted to know.
Who was her prince charming?
Who had dwarfed me?
Why did she choose him?
The face in the picture told me everything I needed to know.
The girl in the picture is a lover.
The things that love her back are the things she grows to love. And truth be told, I was the one who fell in love with her. I was the one who told her. And she told me right back like she meant it, and I felt like somebody could love me, all of me, and I'd never felt that before.
But what I didn't know is that I was under the same psychological mind trance as her.
The love I was giving was the love I thought I was feeling.
The face in the picture I was staring at, though, was his.
He is nothing like me, and that is so clear just from a glance.
I once told her how the day would come when I didn't look like the man she spoke so highly of.
I once told her I someday wouldn't look like much of a man at all. But she denied that before she even considered it, the same way she swallows her faith in religion. The only difference is that this statement was testable... and it turned out to be just as void as the faith that carries her through everyday, except this couldn't hide unto her death in the shadow of plausible undeniability like her faith can (and will), but she will never have to deal with either of those lies.
When I realized it was over and tried to say goodbye, all she said was how she'd see me again one day. And my atheism is something I'll never flaunt, nor did I, but her final words were a dagger across my chest.
She said goodbye like it was nothing to her. She had a new lover and a new future, and she believed she would see her old lover in a heaven of paradise. Everything was beautiful to her.
I had none of those things.
I was saying goodbye... she was saying see you later.
She refused to acknowledge my pain at all.
She just vanished so she could hurry up and get back to her own life.
She didn't care about my pain and she doesn't care about my closure.
I wish her the best but when someone's half of your soul... if you wake up and they're gone it's like being ripped in half.
I have to put myself back together on my own. I have to find a way to do that.
So I'd wish her well for her own sake... but our worlds are forever split so it's a paradox where I can feel so much resentment for a soul I still love.
To speak of her now is an injustice to the heart I once had for her. But I am worlds apart from that now; after receiving the closure of seeing my replacement with his arm around her, ...a ring around her finger.
I came to see his face, and his face was all I needed to see to know that his girl was never mine. We never really fit together, our love just filled in all the gaps between us.
I saw more than that though. I saw that engagement ring on her finger like a banner across her wall. And when I saw that, I realized how little her love meant. Exactly how little I meant.
You see, I didn't care that she moved on or is finding her happiness with someone else. I didn't care she could be more happy than she's ever been, but without me. And I didn't even care when I saw her eyes turn black when she looked at me and knowing it was because she was still staring at him within her mind. She did used to look at me that way, but it is the memory of my hope that has hurt so much.
But in this moment of curiosity, of wanting so bad to know "what happened?" I found my peace.
Our love wasn't real, but what is real love? Can fake love be real if it maintains the mask of being genuine until death? What if the individual never admits to theirself that their love is fake? How can we tell the difference if we cannot unless it ends?
What we had was a house of cards, but the reason it went up so easily was because we were both playing from the same emotional deck.
I thought this was "love at first write," because we made a connection with our first few words. But it was not.
Love at first sight may not be what we all think. Love is emotion, and emotion is beautiful, but it's induced by our environments and having met this girl on a different day, when she was feeling less affectionate (or if I was), we never would have started anything.
And that's when I realize I'm glad I don't have her. I'm glad I didn't end up with someone whom I fell for just because her love was the biggest gravity well around. I'm glad I didn't build a future with someone who appreciated me for someone who I wasn't and would never be.
It started out as seeing that boy's face. I almost felt myself crumble back into pieces when I first realized her new profile picture was her in the arms of another guy. But I wanted to know the truth because she left me in the dark.
She left me with nothing.
She made me believe I was the one she was looking for, which I thought meant she had standards and I fatefully fit into them. My lifestyle since childhood has left me so far out of sync with most people, and so I felt amazing when someone finally saw something in me.
But she did not see me.
If she saw me, she would plainly see how loosely she chooses her future. If she ever knew me, she would see how little her words mean as she speaks them all over again to someone who's nothing like me. If she had a damn clue about the person behind these words, she would have seen straight off that I'm a decision that you only get to make once.
You'll never meet another me nor will you meet a replacement. You don't choose me out of the crowd, you see me on the side and you know straight away if I'm the one you want, or if you want to keep searching for someone who walks in with the crowd, or to find someone else on the side.
She made me believe she was looking for me, but really, she was just scared she'd never find what she was looking for in the mass of people around her, so she made herself believe she could love me. She made me believe she could love me.
Now I see everything.
She got over me in a heartbeat, because her heart found a new beat. She let me go, but she set the value of her words at the same time.
I was pushed to the outside, and from the outside I can see how little it took for her to find a new flame. And within 2 months of starting that, she's engaged to be married. How quickly she decides the rest of her future... She has permanently decided to be with her new man while still bobbing in the wake of the broken promises she made to me. And it's made her question nothing.
The boy in the picture was just the outside of a face, but he showed me more about the inside of the girl I once loved than she herself ever did.
I love the inside of that girl. I always will. But that girl isn't the girl in the picture. And now.. now I'm afraid she isn't even the girl in my memories. Her words have all turned to ash like a pickup line that's been used a thousand times. But the ashes are never ending embers.
Her words meant nothing. She let them die.
My future is bright I think, even though I walk in the darkness of my lonesomeness. I hope too that her future is bright, but her future is set and she's chosen a normal life, and a normal life will only lead you to the same mediocre results as the rest of the planet.
I hope she finds her happiness, but I'm searching for more.
I won't give in and I won't give up, and I'll fight every second of my life keeping myself from being a normal person who can forget about everyone else and just live for the next reward. I don't care if it makes me sound proud, there's nothing to be proud of, I have to force myself to be this way and I don't care if you hate me for it. I believe there's nothing better I can do than make another mind brighter, even for just a moment ...to make as many of them shine brightly as I can.
I haven't figured out how to show love to the world, but I intend to because that's the person I am, that's the person I've always been.
I could have never been this with the girl in the picture. My girl's still out there. But even if I don't meet her... maybe I can leave something behind.
Here's to getting over you, my imaginary friend. Time to let you die along with the girl who died in January.
26-30, M
