You Were Never Really Here...

It was a cool crisp autumn morning when I awakened from the rough night’s sleep I had so desperately sought after for hours the night before.

My mind replayed the visions that danced through my head over and over again, but in slow motion so the essence of you could linger on and on throughout the entire day.

It was so clear and serene that moment when we first met. You had caught my eye from a distance. I was immediately drawn to you. It was as if we were soulmates destined to be together.

You had your son sitting on top of your shoulders as you carried him through the crowd. We were all exiting the building trying to leave and carry on with our lives.

I was so nervous I had dropped the last of the uneaten nachos I had been carrying over to the garbage in my hand. I bent down to pick them up and right as I stood back up our eyes had met once more.

It was as if everything in the building had stopped moving a moment in time that paused all around me. I think for a moment I even stopped breathing as I could not feel my own breath within my chest.

It reminded me of the Forces of Nature movie, the wedding scene at the end where there was a storm going on around the couple but all they noticed was each other. A connection so strong it could stop time.

And that is what I felt when I saw you. We would exchange numbers, and events unknown to our dismay would delay our time spent together.

It would be four more years before we were able to finally go on our first date.

When that day came we picked right back up where we had left off like the time hadn’t occurred. It was as if we knew each other for a lifetime. Everything came so easy to me. The love I felt I knew was real.

But it was short- lived. The day came when you were telling me about how you were talking to someone else. Someone you had been talking to for a while.

How was I supposed to feel… I thought what we had was real.

I guess it was a delusion in my mind. What I felt we must not have shared. How could we feel the same about each other? Here I am with only you on my mind, and well you… you were thinking of her and then you were thinking of me.

It is not the same. You asked me if you could be in love with two people at the same time.

My answer to you then was the same way I feel about it today… You can’t love two people at the same time. You can have love for two people, but not be in love with two people. Everyone knows you will love one more than the other.

My heart slowly sank as the memories flooded my mind. The concert we went to, the grocery store visits, the dancing in the kitchen as you made me dinner. The times we spent together when it felt like it was just the two of us and no one else existed.

I thought often to myself this is the man I am going to marry. Unbeknownst to me, I would not be the woman that you would spend the rest of your life with.

Years went by after I told you to go be with the other woman, and you did, you went. I don’t regret telling you to go. If you had truly loved me, it would have been me you had stayed with and never wanted to leave.

That is the crazy thing about love. It isn’t something that is easy, it isn’t something that is predictable. It’s messy, and it’s chaotic, and in the end I’ve learned someone usually gets hurt, and that someone is usually me.

Every now and then I would run into your cousin and he would tell me you were thinking about me. If you were thinking about me then why were you engaged to someone else with my name. A huge detail you seemed to have left out when you stopped by my home and left a note on my door.

It read how you were thinking of me and there beneath your words of hope placed in my heart was your telephone number.

We talked, we reminisced, we even made plans to meet up and see each other. And then I got the news that you were engaged. Not from you, but of all people my ex.

It’s funny how the people you least expect in your life end up being the one who in the end protects your heart, but of course, the same heart that they themselves had destroyed decades before.

Oh how I long for something that I can never find.

Over the years we connected for a brief moment in time. You brought me joy, and happiness. A smile smeared from side to side across my face. A bright light glistening as it shimmered and sparkled in my eyes.

I thought we would spend a lifetime together, but I never know when you will come or when you will go.

Love, if only you knew how much I needed you! A lifetime of memories only captured in photos of me and my family during happy and joyous occasions.

But even if we weren’t hand in hand you were always lingering in the back of my mind. Something I have always wanted but never quite fully had in my heart.

Love, it was always you I was searching for… within each new relationship, sometime even within myself.

Even at times when I thought we had finally come together, but then you would slip away just out of my reach.

As I sit here by myself and think back over the years… Love, you were never really here!