An ending

I left Boston not exactly content, but not mourning anything either.  With a lot of hope for the future, and not too terribly upset with the present.  A satisfactory ending.  Not, in fact, an ending at all.  Which is what made it satisfactory.

The hug he gave me at the T stop was not a platonic embrace.  It lasted, and his hand went to my hair as he sighed out, and he did not want to let me go.  He was going to visit in June.  I was going to visit him in July.  We were going to keep this.

When next I heard from him, it was two days later, yesterday, and he was calling to tell me that he and Claire are together.

I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming.  I knew it enough to be jealous of her, painfully, irresponsibly jealous of her.  He called me by her name once and from that moment I couldn’t stand the thought of her.  He sees her every day and she is always in his room and he talks about her all the time.  And yet, when he told me that there was no one else, I still believed him.  I believed that he did not, would not, lie to me.  You don’t ask questions like that, point-blank, and want your feelings spared.  You ask them wanting the truth.  I thought he knew me well enough to know that.

There is a sort of poetic justice to it.  I left a good man for him.  It is somehow cosmically fair that he should leave me for someone else.

How much of the month he spent with me did he spend wanting her?

Once upon a time, he left her for me.  Now he goes back to her.  What does that make me?  The mistake, the misguided interlude between phases of the real thing?  I thought he was my real thing.  Now I realize that all we ever had was one night.  One night of absolute magic, one night that was as near to perfect as a thing can come, and that was all.  Had I been with him, it might have been followed with other such nights.  But what gave it potency and reality was the strength of the moment, the strength of all our moments together, and you cannot have such moments long-distance.

I told him I was happy for him, for them.  That this would be good for her, and good for him, and ultimately good for me, too, because now I will not wait.  And he said thank you.  And he actually said, actually had the insensitivity to say, that it was good for him.  A good thing for him, to be with Claire.  It is one thing for me to say it.  Something else all together for him to agree.

How many of the truths he gave me does this make lies?

It is not such a bad thing.  Because I won’t wait anymore, and I would have.  I would have waited a whole year.  And moved right away to New York City.  And something would have happened or it wouldn’t have.  And sooner or later, I would have discovered that he is a person who does this.  That he didn’t throw away sense and other people’s feelings for me because I am just that special and he just loved me that much, but because he does this.  He hurts people like this.  First he did it to Claire, and then to me, and he’ll do it to Claire again — she’s moving to France next month, for a year.  Where in this is the person I knew, the man I trusted, to whom I gave my heart?  I can’t find him in this.

It will be a long time before I trust him again.

I had carried hope that, now that he was less busy, now that I was more available, closer, we’d get back together.  He’d come to visit next month, and we’d get caught up in the spark and he’d ask to try again and I’d consider and weigh the risk and say yes.  Not anymore.  If he and I ever get back together, it will be over a year from now, in the City, where we have a fair chance — because he is not strong enough to withstand distance and temptation.  He wasn’t for her, and he wasn’t for me.  I will not readily give him another chance to hurt me like this.

And yet what we had was perfect.  For as long as I had him, he was perfect.  I was dating a cognitive scientist from Harvard, a competative ballroom dancer, who left roses on my bed and said exactly the right things and was strong enough to carry me and sweet enough to compliment me and thoughtful enough to make me tea.  Devoted enough to call every day and write emails promising more and better to come.  The only person in years with whom it had really felt right.  The only person ever to actually physically turn me on.  Ever.  In years of fantasy, the only person to give me something real.  And for a month, everything was better, brighter, clearer.  I had something to look forward to that was grounded in the reality of talking to him every day.  The future was glorious, because he was in it.  Can you wonder that I grieve to give it up?

Where will I ever find another?

But ultimately, all it was was just another fantasy.  A fantasy we shared, briefly, but a fantasy nonetheless.  And of course it was perfect, you can make a fantasy anything you want it to be.  Lifted above all other fantasies because I actually believed it was real, not even tricking myself into believing it but given the belief of it, he placed belief in my palm and curled my fingers down around it, said keep this, keep this.  Everything else, everything since, may have been accident, but that, that he did on purpose.

Now he is off being perfect for someone else, someone who will also only have him for a month.  She will have him differently from how I had him.  She will have him in person, not over the phone, and she will have more than just one night to sleep beside him.  Maybe she’ll even be able to keep him.  Who knows.  Maybe I misjudge.  Maybe he will do right by her the way he tried so hard to do right by me.  Anything, even this, is possible.

I only met her for five minutes, maybe less.  She surprised me.  She surprised me by being calm, when I had expected her to be more vibrant.  She surprised me by being plain, so very ordinary-looking, average build, average face, glasses, nothing to pull her from the crowd unless it be her insulin pump.  Most of all she surprised me by reminding me overwhelmingly, in her energy, her movements, her reactions and her words, of myself.  On a five-minute meeting, you would not be able to remember which of us had said what, we were so similar.  I’m sure we’re very different, no two people are alike, and we only saw the briefest snaps of small elements of each other’s personalities, but I can’t get it out of my head how much we felt alike.

Poor Tyler.  No wonder he is confused.

WIth time, maybe I’ll be able to just remember how beautiful it was, dancing with him in Hyde Park in the rain, and finally, finally kissing him.  Maybe I’ll remember him carrying me to the pull-out sofa bed, and promising that it was real, it was all real.  And him making me happy, really happy, and removing for the first time the loneliness I have carried every day for almost five years.  Maybe, eventually, that is what I will remember, and what I will think of when I think of Tyler.  That it was possible

to want and be wanted back, to be wanted and to want back.  To have physical responses to the simplest of things, to finally understand the balance between love, friendship, and sex.  To trust and to believe and to have so much, so much hope.  In time.  But right now, what I remember is that he gave me magic and then took it away, with purest of intent and genuine care, betrayed another for me and then, in turn, me for her.  Caused me to betray someone else who deserved my love as perfectly as I hope I deserved Tyler’s.  Taught me that I trust too easily and love too fast.  They say that cynicism is idealism that has been burned.  I was a pure idealist once, and after years of being hurt again and again, I certainly found some cynicism, though I am still me and it flashed back and forth to idealism with wrenching frequency.  Tyler gave me back my idealism.  Perhaps now I will give genuine cynicism a try.

There is a lot I want to say to him.  A lot I want to ask.  You lied to me, I want to say.  For how long, how much, how knowingly did you lie to me?  I trusted you and you lied.  Something Ryan said, when he heard that Tyler had left me — if he gives you up this quickly, he doesn’t deserve you.  You know what, Ryan, I think you were right.  Maybe, maybe, you were right after all.

–Stephanie