Versions of Goodbye

From the positive varnish to a bare truth

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Versions of Goodbye

Another path of becoming me has been through failed romantic love experiences. I guess I have a whole storage room of insights, learnings, and ethereal adieu letters to the one who was getting off the ride.

Below is one of the more recent such paths. I’ve tried to reconstruct it here, from A to B, like a hiking tour.

Version 1: pass or fail

So here it is, again: meeting him was merely a test to pass. An instrument to help me learn and shed the damaging traces of the past. But learn and shed I must for my own sake alone, being left alone again, once the challenge is over.

I thought the challenge was there as a gate in. And yet again, it turned out, I was given the right to enter, but the other pulled back.

“Stephen.” I would have loved to have his name in my life. But he didn't guess my name, as in the old tales. And not having guessed it, he chose "to leave it at that."

Even on me telling him my door stays open for who knows, he repeats, no, I'll leave it at that.

Well — let's leave it at that, then. Nothing else left to leave it at, anyway.

Version 2: better sooner than later

I made mistakes, too.

Terrible, come to think of it. Acted like a fifteen-year-old.

Of course he won’t go through the gate: he wasn’t brave enough all right, but I didn’t make it easy on him either. He took a good look at me, and the alarm siren went blaring: this woman’s trouble, beware!

I acted like one.

But then, better sooner than later. If I acted that way, it must be because we weren’t right. Or else I wouldn’t have acted in a way that now makes my skin crawl. So yes, mistakes I made a few, the song goes, but on the grand scale, so much the better. The flaw would have come out later, with much more pain.

Version 3: how about wrong choices?

So here's a thought experiment, because I keep assuming that he wasn’t up to it. Alternatively, I keep assuming that it was good, after all, that I made mistakes, before things got entangled, and so, hurrah, I did it again. You know, like, okay, I blew it, but I didn't after all, because it was all for the best.

And that would be all right, maybe. Except I still get pangs of discomfort, embarrassment, no, shame!, recalling how I acted, so unlike myself.

What do I do with this discomfort running on in the background like a computer protocol that got stuck? Which won’t vanish if I say, well, it was all for the best, and obviously, this relationship was flawed deep down.

What’s even worse, this buzzing discomfort nudges me to think of ways of going back to make it right again. When I know, deep inside, that if anything, it would only make it worse.

But, consider: what if this relationship could have been good, and you really, truly put your both feet in it, just plain as daylight blew it?

You blew it three times. First, you pulled out abruptly and then regretted it. Two weeks later, you chattered like a self-centred attention-needy woman, incomprehensibly, you being you, self-aware and versed in conversation strategies and all that theory. The third time, by sounding so ambiguously clingy, that he simply had to set things straight.

Although, maybe this last one was not entirely my mistake. Maybe he also constructed something out of what I said, but looking back on it, yes, my statement was open to misinterpretation.

The first time: a panic reaction of a frightened creature. The second time: I was not present, but locked out of the interaction. And the third time, I didn’t consider my words to anticipate misunderstandings.

So what does this thought experiment do to me? Does it crush me with the guilt? Am I bashing myself?

Actually, no. No shaming, no blaming.

It just punches me in the face. Not putting it down again to it wasn’t meant to be, and it’s all for the best.

What if it's not always for the best? What if you get a chance and you blow it, that's it?

I'll just put it bluntly for full disclosure:

I had a chance with a (potentially) great guy, and I put my both feet in it, repeatedly. There's nothing I can do about it now. Forget it, and move on: be thankful for each day that cushions you ever further apart from that memory.

There.

It's eerily quiet. No more buzzing. The wrong is out there, in the room, gazing at me, me gazing at it. Face to face. It's no longer at the back of my mind. Acknowledging that there’s nothing left to be done, the buzzing computer protocol has shut itself down.

I think you might call it empowered surrender.

Version 4: the last step

So here I am, Stephen, one more time, whispering through the ether, typing on the keyboard.

I wish I had consistently been myself. I wish I hadn't said or done a few things that I find it hard now to account for.

I wish we'd had the chance to explore getting close.

I might have been the one for you. You might have been the one for me. Who knows?

I said you weren't able to guess my name. But no. I wasn't able to remember it myself. I was in a roller coaster, whizzing past the stage set, past you. Past the fork in the road we should have taken.

I'm sure it takes two for a misunderstanding. But I just feel it might have been avoidable. If only I'd been more present, more deliberate.

Or maybe I'm wrong about this altogether, and we wouldn't have been right at all.

We'll never know.

Take care.

After writing:

What Can I Do? (by Smokey). Dancing and fooling around.

More songs, more dancing, light, funny, partying.

Set free.

Forgiving for not having made it. Me, not him, for a change.

Some learnings hold truth. For a while. Until we feel they no longer do.

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Have you ever been at a point where wise learnings you had gathered with diligence suddenly were no longer adequate, and required recycling?

The learning beyond learning.