She told me once that she thought I was too obsessed with beauty to ever truly fall in love. I wanted to tell her that I loved her then, but I could not bring myself to do it. I don’t know why.
Was I afraid that she would love me too and that would be the end and I would have no chance to do better, to find a more beautiful girl? Perhaps. But that feels wrong to me.
Was I afraid that she would not love me back? No. I think she did love me, and besides, I didn’t often care what girls thought about me as long as I could get what I wanted.
Was I afraid that I had actually fallen in love and that I could never go back to living the way that I had lived before? I think that may have been it.
Love changes you. I believe that it has changed me, I don’t know if for the better. I don’t see things the way that I used to. When I meet people, I always feel like something is missing. I can’t appreciate the simple visual pleasure of a beautiful girl like I used to. All I can think about is her.
In any case, she is gone now, and I have only memories of her. I get lost in the memories of past conversations. I can still hear her saying my name, whispering it into my ear.
She cried when she left me, but I did nothing to stop her. I think she wanted me to change, and the ironic thing, perhaps, is that I never would have changed until she let me go, and now that she’s gone, I am changed and can never have her back. And she’s the only one that I want anymore.
The beautiful girl at the far end of the bar catches my eye, but then I can’t help but imagine how she will never make me feel the way that I felt before and want to feel again. Maybe she would. But I can not shake this crippling doubt, this feeling that I am a hopeless shipwreck on the shores of the sea of love, incapable of ever voyaging out again into uncharted waters.
And what is she doing now?
And if she had been prettier would I have let her go?
And if she had been prettier would I have even fallen in love with her in the first place?
I think she damaged me with her love. She stuck a knife in my ego. She hurt my feelings by letting me into her heart. What kind of person was I that would fall in love with someone like her? Was something wrong with me?
Immediately after she had left, I knew that I was wrong, but I was too proud at the time to apologize, to ask her to come back. And even if I had, would she have accepted me? I know it’s not productive to ask myself these questions without answers, these wistful hypotheticals. But my mind takes me there, and I let it. It’s all I have left of her: regret and pain.
Too much time has passed to reach out to her again. And I’m ashamed that I’m still not over her. What is she doing now? Do I even want to know?
Of course, I’ve been with other women, girls, but it’s never felt the same way. Girls whose beauty would have had me salivating, drawn in like a magnet, are now items on a checklist. These were the girls she would catch me staring at over her shoulder while we were together, grabbing a coffee at a cafe. She would never say anything, but I knew, or thought I knew, what was going through her head. It’s funny that while she must have wanted to curb my desires then and couldn’t, now she must not care and not only can but has. I am a desire-less shell. Sex to me now is like oatmeal or rice-porridge: tasteless sustenance.
But perhaps my obsession with beauty has not been resolved. Perhaps it’s still the only thing on my mind, but I’ve become the drug addict, the alcoholic, lusting after a false impression of the past, wondering why I can’t ever feel so good as I imagined I once did.
She changed me.
And I know how they say ’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but they also say ignorance is bliss, and before I knew what love was, I think I may have been happy. Perhaps.
Would I go back to before? Would I un-meet her if I could? I don’t think so. There is something beautiful about the aching, persistent pain that she has left behind in me, a memento of our troubled love.
I never understood heartbreak before in movies or film or in confessions of a friend. I thought it was weakness and naive sentimentalism. I know now how wrong I was.
I see people happy and in love. I see people who have never known love, on the prowl for the physical consummation of a deep and innate desire. I see them, and I don’t envy them, but I would be lying if I said that what I feel towards them wasn’t something akin to hate.
I see the other castaways of love, the broken souls, like myself. I see them, and all I can offer is a knowing look. Commiseration is a worthless offering, but it’s all I have to give.
She was wrong when she told me that I would never fall in love. I was in love then and perhaps didn’t even realize it at the time. I don’t think she said what she said out of malice, but I do think that she believed deep down that I was beyond any hope of salvation. She must have thought that her love was not enough to save me. I want to say that she should have known that she already had, saved me that is, but the truth is that I’m still not saved.
Leaving me must have been one of the hardest things she ever had to do because how can you walk away unscathed from someone you love in order to try to save him and yourself? She was stronger then than I ever have been in my entire life.
So, sometimes, I think of her and the times we had together. I remember, and I feel a sadness wash over me. I start out thinking of how things could have gone differently, what I could have done to make things work, but in the end, every time, I know that she was right, and I love her even more for having the courage to leave me.
She is the most beautiful person I have ever known.