Well, it finally happened. Saw Lane at lunch yesterday. He was at The Honor Bar - I think with a business lunch. He didn’t say hi. I didn’t go over and say hi either. I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be: the ex-girlfriend with an easy smile, that walks over and says hi, the ex-girlfriend that wholly ignores him or someone in between. In the end, I picked ignoring, he walked out of my life without even saying goodbye - two years of our lives entangled - and he just stopped talking to me this was after he walked back into my life, got help with his domestic situation then poof just never heard from again. I decided that that kind of treatment didn't warrant a friendly hello. He lost that privilege when he ghosted me.
After the initial reaction wore off, I was struck by how much I didn’t feel. He is just a man. A man that had the love of a woman but didn’t want it. That is all. His leaving was just the universe’s way of telling me, “he is not right for you.” I couldn’t see it for a very long time. But I get it now. He is not the man for me.
I am not sure there is one. Seems like there isn’t.
That is not an entirely bad thing. I pick men like him...
I think that my relationship with Lane broke me. It made that whole life long fear of loving someone with all that you have and they leave you - real.
It has made it hard to go on, where do you go when you get your worst case scenario? It isn't even really about him, it is about me and why I would pick someone who would profess love but then treat in a manner completely inconsistent with the concept of love.
Having said that, I am not sorry to have loved him anymore than I am sorry that I lost him. I think he could see more clearly that as much love as there was between us - it was not enough to sustain us.
I can see that now. I could not or would not see that for a long time.
I want to be in a place where I have no hard feelings, but that just isn't true. I do have hard feelings. A lot less than I used to have and I am very clear that I do not want him in my life. But I do not think that I have the capacity to not have hard feelings about him after the way he walked out. Not anger, not blame and not at him. The hard feelings come from me allowing myself to participate in something so unloving and call it love. I have come to realize that love should not be tortuous, gut wrenchingly painful but something much lighter and positive. Novel concept.
I can’t believe it took me this long to get here. But it did. I am so incredibly grateful to be done. When I left my ex-husband I remarked to a girlfriend...”I want to feel passion, excitement and deep love. I will not settle for less than this going forward.” What I failed to include was that this passion, excitement and deep love would also be lasting. Like for the rest of my life. Somehow I believed that I could get the above online dating...My online profiles was always the same: one photo and an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote. When Lane and I met, I had the following quote on my online profile:
"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they would never recover."
How true and prophetic that quote proved to be!
Our relationship included a brisk beginning. It was intimate. And I haven’t recovered. Loving him changed me. I am different. I am altered for the better. I am more capable of loving than I once was. I have learned a lot. I have grieved a lot. I have learned how to handle myself differently.
Funny that I saw him at the HONOR bar. I guess that is what is supposed to happen now...honor each other by allowing there to be space to move forward with our lives. But I think it is more about honoring myself. I didn't say anything to him yesterday because I honored myself. He did not behave in an honorable fashion at the end. He honored himself to my detriment. While I can respect that on some level. It is not who I am or want to be. But I can also see how my lack of honor for myself landed me into this whole mess to begin with...
So with more self honor, dignity and respect, the Lane book is closed. The last chapter written and read and now ready to be shelved.
Time for a new F. Scott quote minus an online profile. I like this one:
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."
Bring It On.
