A Fall Back

I know to the few blog readers that I have, this might be a challenge but connect with what you can. You all remember that love. The one that was so great that sometimes you couldn't remember how you ever did without it. About a month ago, my boyfriend and I broke up. We had a wonderful story. We met in college through a mutual friend. I remember the first time that I saw him. He stood in the open door and looked so......perfect. I couldn't take my eyes off of him all night and apparently the feeling was somewhat mutual. We couldn't be together at the time because I was still in the closet, Vice President of my fraternity and too proud to admit to myself or anyone else for that matter, whom I really was. I was my own worst enemy. On paper, my life was what a lot of people wished for but, for me, it was hard. It was hard to live the life that my southern family wanted me to be or what I felt they wanted me to be.

What I kept coming back to was that never ending feeling that sneaked its way into my heart almost everyday. I would get up and go to class and hope to see him on campus. I never did. He moved away shortly after we met and I talked to him a couple of times and it was ALWAYS there. That nervous stomach, sweaty palms, and that frustrating wall that blocked the words and the emotions that you wanted so desperatley to express but never could. I moved on, as did he, but I never forgot, because I don't think that we ever do.

Three years almost to the date, I got an unexpected email. It was from him. He had, somehow, tracked me down and was anxious to see me. I was nervous all over again and my stomach could have qualified for the gymnastics. All of those old feelings came flooding back.

We spent a wonderful nine months together, he had the one quality in a man that is so precious. He made me laugh. A wonderful honest to god heart shaking laugh. His arms were always like a warm blanket when they wrapped around me. Safety, security, and the mind numbing love that goes along with being with a person that you are so incredibly in love with, that you would cross the world or an ocean to get to.

It ended well, we were in two different places at two different times, once again. It was a mutual decision to walk away. I didn't eat for a week. I smoked a carton of cigarettes and drank a vineyard of wine. I do well for the most part, the days come and go without fail. But when I am at home alone, snuggled into my bed, I wish for that smell of his cologne or his laundry detergent. Simple things really but so meaningful to me that it can bring this strong, concrete pillar of a man, who has dealt with so much in his short 23 years to tears.

Its a set back in my journey to recovery. I know that this post is somewhat different than the rest. It is not happy, funny or jovial but it expresses the most real and raw emotion that there ever will be, pain.