Portrait

we’re going to be together in many lifetimes to come, i can tell.

tracy leaves tonight, and even though she’s come and left like nine thousand times already, i still get choked up and ready to cry. sometimes, more in wit than anything else, i wonder how we are friends at all, leave alone soul mates. she’s headstrong but shy, she loves coldplay and there is that godawful strange fact that she just doesn’t drink. but, in moments of clarity, i know exactly how and why. for instance, neither of us have mirrors in our bedrooms. that’s just one thing in a list of millions obviously, millions that outnumber all the little things we don’t have in common. i have something to be sad about tonight, but i can be happy too, because tonight, i let trace have the one bit of real knowledge i possess regarding love.

almost three years ago, i met a boy who broke my heart. to me then, he was the one. he was wonderful and perfect and everything i had ever wanted. but he ruined me so completely that it took me a much longer time to get over him than he ever deserved. he made me weary and jaded and afraid. most of all, he made me hopeful. surely, hope should be a good thing? not when it’s the hope you harbour for years that the asshole who took away so much from you will come back and love you. i held him in the highest light, and i let him in to a space in my heart and my life that no one had ever previously occupied. he treated that space, as well as me, like shit and took it all for granted. much time down the line, even when i’d superficially moved on and fallen in ‘love’ a few times over, i found that place in my heart was still waiting for him. i didn’t let anyone else in there, keeping it empty just in case. hoping that one day he will come back to me, knowing, in some shameful, guilty subconscious, that if he did, i would readily open it’s doors to him again. i didn’t let anyone else in there, keeping everyone at a safe distance. that’s what sucked. the waiting. the hoping. the keeping that room ready, for any time he was prepared to drop in.

the only reason i got over him was that he literally disappeared from my life. i wanted it that way, and i stuck to it through thick and thin. i didn’t get over him because i was strong or because i learned to ‘rise above it’. i got over him because he simply wasn’t there anymore. nothing superhuman on my part, it was the plain and simple, yet slow, disintegration of hope. i let that expectation slowly die, i let it fizzle out and leave me empty. that expectation that he might come back. i let some light and air into that room, and made it ready for someone else. someone new. i let it go. because ultimately, i was better than him.

almost a year ago, i met A. and with A came a lot of things. great deals of happiness, lots of wonderful people, a whole lot of love and inspiration and genuine care and affection, so many good memories, many amazing relationships besides the incredibly close one that i share with him, and with it all, came contentment. he was and is the first person i let into that room since, and i just don’t know any way in which i could be happier. this contentment is in knowing that, besides having it good in every which way, i have something i can count on, no matter what.

tracy needs to let it go. she will, because she knows what she’s worth. there’s no doubt about that. there will be times, even years from now that she will think ‘if he knocks on my door right now, i will take him back’. but sometime, eventually, she will stop feeling that way. and she will instead think ‘if he knocks on my door, i will take him in, but never back. just in. in to the living room, never that room’. sure, she’ll be civil to him, a good friend even when the time is right, because she is essentially a good person. but she won’t need him anymore. because she, like me, is ultimately, better.

they say everything happens for a reason. three years ago i met this boy i don’t know at all today and loved him for a reason. well, for a few reasons.
a) so that i could sit here tonight and tell my best friend that i know where she is, and i can tell her that, ironically, in this case, only when she stops hoping will she ever really be complete again
b) so that i discovered that space in myself, in the most intimate folds of my soul, just so i could open it to up to other people who deserve to be there
c) so i can think, if he knocks on my door right now, i’ll say ‘look who i have now, look how fucking great he is. i sincerely wish you well, but even if you say you’re the happiest man in the world, you ain’t got shit on me’.