Part Five: The End of Endings.

Our plans were set in motion. I believed, I was lead to believe, that if I just held out a little longer, just waited a few more months, those plans would turn into the life I lived.
We talked. I helped him write his grocery list over the phone and he helped me with the causes of war. He told me he missed me, that he was tired all the time and that he missed me. I held on to his secrets. I thought about every moment we had spent together, they were the last thing I thought of before drifting to sleep. He told me he’d do everything he could in a few months to move closer to me. It was exactly what I wanted to hear.

“Darlin’,” he said to me on the phone one night, “I miss you. I’m coming to see you. Just one more week.” We agreed we’d be alone without each other. I told him that I didn’t need anyone else. That I didn’t want anyone else. I told him I was flying solo without him and he said he was the same without me. He asked me to not make promises that I didn’t intend to keep. I promised that I wouldn’t hurt him. I tried to reassure him. “Okay,” he said, “One week, darlin’.”

And then nothing.

My life then became something like a sweater. Slowly, it was being unraveled all around me but by the time I finally noticed, the sweater was in shambles.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realized he wasn’t coming to San Francisco. But I knew that every day I woke up more depressed and broken than the day before because it was one more day of silence. I couldn’t call him. I felt taken advantage of. I didn’t have any real answers, anything tangible I could explain to anyone. I had nothing but a memory. Like cigarette smoke; now you see it, now you don’t; only a cigarette butt to prove anything was there in the first place.
There was nothing left but questions: what about our plans? What about what I wanted? What was I supposed to do now? I had put him first. I had explained to my friends that I was waiting for someone. I believed that there would be a future. I just looked like a fool. There was nothing. No phone calls, no letters, no explanations, texts, apologies, nothing.

Even without an explanation, I knew where he went, who he went to. Perhaps it would have been better to hear it from the horse’s mouth, but why ask when you know the answer? He went back to her. She was safe, a girl who would wait. She hadn’t given anything to anyone else, she had proved herself. She was undamaged, innocent, familiar. I had been replaced. It didn’t matter what I felt. It didn’t seem fair and it didn’t seem right, but that is what it was.
Eventually, he may become bored again. His mind might wander to me. He might ask himself what if? Maybe he’ll think about the times we had that summer in the heat and smoke. Eventually, I’ll get tired of waking up every morning sad and disappointed. I would be happy again. When I decided that, someone new would walk in.

Until then, I had to live my life. When I finally did settled in to my old life, I still didn’t feel like me. It was as if I had walked out of a hurricane, barely alive, but a hurricane everyone else had missed. All my friends, they had little or no idea of what happened. They hadn’t seen me cry myself to sleep or heard the sound of his voice when he told me all those things I wanted to hear. I guess you could say I was back from a war, trying to assimilate back into the same old life as a different person. Just like him. Everything and everyone else was the same, why wasn’t I? That hurricane, that war, beat me up and broke me down, but I had no one to turn to who had experienced it like I did. I didn’t even have him. There was nothing I could do but try to be happy, try to be normal.

My friends told me I wasn’t the same. They expressed their concerns, “You’re not as funny anymore. You don’t laugh as much. What happened?” I struggled to find the words to tell them. But how do you compact three months of love and sadness into a few sentences? How does a woman put everything she is into an envelope and send it through the mail? How does someone say goodbye to the person they love, perhaps for the last time? How does one break another’s heart? I didn’t have answers for any of my questions, let alone theirs.

Instead of answering, I shrugged it off. I resented them. My friends had a wonderful summer running through the city, having adventures, while I worked in the sun and let someone break my heart every way they could. I was angry and so I retreated into myself further. I became the part of him that I detested most; the part that couldn’t be reached, whose spark was gone. Sometimes I would lie in bed reliving everything that had happened this summer. I would dream about him, but with a happy ending. I would dream of him telling me everything was ok, that he was there for me. I could almost feel him there. I wouldn’t get out of bed, I would just hit snooze over and over until the day could wait no more. I still loved him; that much was clear. But it was all over and I couldn’t go back.

One day I did wake up. I woke up from the sadness, the exhaustion, the hurt. The storm had passed, the war was over. Everything heavy on my shoulders was lifted up, every wound I had inside me closed. I felt remarkably whole again. Alive again, I could move on with my life. I made more friends. Friends that had no idea of who he was and wouldn’t ever unless I chose to tell them, which I would, eventually. I would tell them that this past summer I fell in love with someone who wasn’t able to love me back. That I had planned a future, that I had planned my life around someone who did not offer me the same courtesy. I had found my person; my everything. But it ended. I had unknowingly been a rebound but now I knew better. Sometimes, things fall apart.

Now he was someone else’s everything and I had everything I wanted ready for me in San Francisco. My life was there, all I had to do was live it. Their paths were predetermined, I was just the distraction in their long road to a happily ever after. A bump, if you will. In the story of his life, I will be reduced to a hushed rumor, an interruption in their otherwise perfect romance. We will be cordial at Thanksgiving and Christmas, when I am back in the Valley, but I won’t ever be back for another summer and she will probably always resent me.

In the story of my life, he will be remembered as the first person I gave my whole heart to, the summer romance that crashed and burned, a lesson I will pass on to friends and daughters. He will be the person I think back to when my mind is empty and calm, or when I meet the person I will spend the rest of my life with, someone I cannot ever forget. It may not be perfect, and it may not be what I wanted, but that is what it is.