Charlotte’s Got Nothing on Me

It happened sometime after that. Sometime after the night on the balcony when I could have fled right then and there with him and never looked back. He never looked so amazing as he did at that moment. I remember looking over his shoulder while I kissed him to watch the smoldering party below to make sure no one was watching. It seems I never want anyone to see.

Maybe if everything hadn’t changed at once things could have been different. I was facing so many unexpected events that it was hard to really pinpoint how I felt about myself much less anyone else. But in true fashion I fell just as fast after that as I ever have in the past, so what had I been looking forward to? A chance, an opportunity, something I OWED to myself but in turn never paid. The prospect of being single. I said no- I made that 2nd life changing decision- because of the simple prospect of being single for the first time in 10 years.

But in reality, how could I have said yes? He wrecked me. He took everything I thought I knew about myself and threw it out the window. I’ve never had to second guess that I was the only one. He threw it right out into the open. In this case I didn’t have to second guess that I WASN’T the only one. So why should I have said yes? The decision to forsake all others was just as monumental for him as it was for me, yet he was the one to abandon blind faith. Easily, I should have never been able to trust him, not the other way around, and yet it all crumbled because of me.

So yes, it was sometime after the night on the balcony when he begged me to stay, begged me to give us a (3rd, 4th, 5th?) chance. And all I could think of was the same crossroads, several years earlier. James looked into my eyes and took me back. He caved. And I imagine if you asked him now, he might politely (or not so) tell you that decision was an ultimate mistake of his. It turned out to be one for both of us. Although on a tangent, I would never take our love back. I would never miss that part of my life. The part where I can undeniably say that I felt a glimmer of love for another human being. He taught me more than I ever could have learned if he had let me go that day. But at that moment, fast forward with me again, I wasn’t thinking about the lessons I learned. I was thinking about the heartache I would avoid. So I said no. I said it wouldn’t work, our relationship was too tumultuous to even fathom the idea of another go round. Only because I went left at the last crossroads, I decided to go right at this one.

And Good God, I wish I could do both of them over again. Of course, I’m sure somehow the first led to the second. I’m sure that is the way it went down, and most pain is worth the price, or insert your choice of proverb or cliché here. So if the first led the to the second, and the only way to undo the second would be to keep the first, so be it. Hell, up until a year following the divorce, it wasn’t all that bad. I married my childhood sweetheart after all, and he once wrote me a novel. Since burned and discarded I’m sure, and truly I hope his life has brought him undeniable happiness, and perhaps he even thanks me for opening up a crossroads for him as well.

So say somehow I get to go back in time to have the chance to say yes…and I do say yes with wild abandon and fall into his arms and make mad passionate crazy love to him (which was the only kind I was accustomed to with him) instead of saying no and subsequently falling into my second marriage. What then? I fall, and realize he never would have been there to catch me?

The what ifs have plagued me the last few days. More than I could ever explain or really ever eloquently write about. All I can do is open the pages of an old friend and muddle through the thousands of thoughts that need release from my mind. Trying to still keep some paradoxical anonymity because the truth is to wicked to spew. All in chopped thoughts because they are coming too fast to piece together in some logical sort of prose. Maybe if I look back to this in a while I will be able to decipher it- but it is you, poor reader, that I feel for. I’ve led you down a road with no real climax or denouement to speak of. Perhaps if you’ve come this far, you’ll come a little farther? Let’s get through this together, you and I. Perhaps another time, and another entry to untangle the web I’ve woven. That I just don’t know how not to weave.