Looking back, looking forward

Wow, I’ve spent six months obsessing on him. At first, it was just a simple crush, a simple exploration of interest. I like him, does he like me? And I think he did – for a while. Then maybe it waned on his part. All I know is that I went back through some journals tonight and read my pathetic whimperings about him. Why doesn’t he tell me how he feels? Does he feel the same way I do? Will he? Did he? Does he? Oh, look, he brought another girl with him, gee, I wonder what that means, and on and on and on.

It means I’m so fucking stupid. I keep asking for signs and I keep getting them but they’re not the signs I want so I ignore them. Oh, that makes sense. I did it for 16 years in my marriage, why not out here in the real world?

Epiphany hurts. He gave me something, he gave me feelings, he gave me praise, he gave me pleasure. I gave him my heart. He didn’t take it. I kept trying to stuff my heart into his hands, even though they were behind his back, not wanting to take it. And I saw it, I just ignored it.

It’s not because he’s a terrible person or a bad man. I think he’s not ready for anything like this, whether with me or with anybody else. Watching him, I can see this avoidance of intimacy, the avoidance of anything that could lead to something serious, something more that would disrupt the solitary life he has worked so hard to create. I see the confused young man he must have been, I see the hurt young man he must have been. I see his insecurity and his fear and his need for something more, just like mine, but he’s not ready to let his out yet. I see the wall he has carefully built around his heart, whether he realizes it or not, and I see that I’m not ready to scale that. I’m not sure he is ready for anybody to scale it.

So maybe these months of obsessing and wondering and confusion and lack of clarity have been to lead me to this place. I love him, I always will. He gave me so much when I needed it but he is not the one to give me more. And I’m not the one to give him what he wants. The walls around us and between us are too high, too slick, too difficult to climb. And we’re both so tired of trying to climb walls. We’re both so tired of wanting, needing, aching. We’ve both closed off to that – him a long time ago, I think, and me much more recently.

I wish I were the one he is seeking. I so wanted to be because it would be so easy. He’s there, I’m here, we’re both here. I know him, he knows me. We’re so comfortable together that it’s scary. But comfort isn’t enough, I guess.

This has been a hard journey, a journey that actually started almost a year ago with a fascination with someone else, someone else who made me feel important and beautiful and interesting. Someone else who made me think that there could be something, even though there was no possibility of it. Someone who ended up hurting me so badly, wounding me so to the core that I can’t talk about it even now. Someone I let in and didn’t learn from. My journal echoes the things I have been saying recently – I pushed him too hard, I crossed the line, I misread things, I’m so stupid.

I just hope I’ve learned this time before he can hurt me as the other one did. I don’t think he’s capable of that kind of wounding. The other one seems to be an expert at that kind of hurt. I don’t think this one is. The hurt that exists is hurt I’ve created myself by letting myself blindly love, blindly care, blindly reach out to one who isn’t reaching back.

So I’ll leave him there, with his hands behind his back, understand that he is not capable of what I want, no matter how much I want to force him to be. Understand that he will always be important to me and he will (hopefully) be in my life for a long time and that we can enjoy each other and be close and be intimate to a point as the good friends I hope that we are. Understand that there is a line drawn in the sand – whether it’s by him or by me – and I have to learn to, first of all, see that line and, secondly, respect it. And maybe with leaving that part of us behind, it will free both of us to find what we are looking for, if we can both be open to it. I want nothing but the best for him and, if it ain’t me, then I hope it’s someone amazing because he deserves that, as do I.