I've been caught in a loop in my
head for the last few days. There's
nothing new about that, honestly, but my heart has been especially
unrelenting.
There's a lot going on right now. Some days there are so many balls in the air that even a well-practiced juggler would have trouble keeping track of them all. And if the actual logistics of my life weren't difficult enough, there is still my shredded heart to contend with.
Tomorrow is October 17th. That doesn't mean much, except that I have tickets for a concert. Hunter Hayes at the Fox Theatre.
Oh hell.
I have historically loathed country
music, but something with that shifted in the summer, directly because of my
relationship with Bounder. I fought the
twang as hard and long as I could, but when the man sang (quite off-key, mind
you) country songs and danced to said songs with me on my deck in the middle of
the night, it was hard not to get caught up in the emotional sap. A couple of songs in particular became stupidly
poignant—Jake Owens' "Anywhere With You" and Hunter Hayes' "I
Want Crazy"—and they always seemed to start playing at just the right moment.
When tickets went on sale for Hunter Hayes at the Fox, I bought the tickets and immediately texted Bounder:
October 17th. I have plans.
You have an invitation to join me.
You are a brat.
Apparently he was about to buy the tickets himself when the text came through. They were intended to be for our collective birthdays, which were just days apart at the end of the summer.
"I'll give you your ticket," I told him. "Just in case."
"Just in case we break up again," he replied, laughing in the dark on the deck that weekend, in the middle of the summer solstice. "We'll meet up—"
"—at the show—"
"—October seventeenth."
Oh hell.
So here we are, and I have no idea what to do. From the night we met, and then at every turn, there was a strange sense of Fate shoving us together. Typhoon Bounder collided with Hurricane Sassafras in weirdly tragic, romantic perfection. And every time we think it's over, something else happens that forces us into each other's orbit. (Fate, you really are a raging bitch.)
We seem constantly drawn back to this place of choice to make, of some junkture in our path. Is this the place of Fate (divine intervention) or fate (because of choices we've made)?
There are four primary scenarios:
- I go to the Fox, and he doesn't show. (In which case I will leave, because I can't see it with anyone but him.)
- He goes to the Fox, and I don't show up. (Like doing your homework the night before a possible snow day.)
- Neither of us shows up, and we never know if the other did.
- We both show up, which creates a whole new branch of this flow chart of possibilities.
Queen Frostine feels strongly that I should skip it completely. Her position is that I have come so far (so she says) in getting over this man, that to open myself up to even a moment of heartache again has the potential to set me back. She says I'm better, that I've shown progress in moving on, but it's hard for me to see it. A step or two forward, maybe, but mostly I feel like I've stumbled ahead and am still trying to get up from this path with a skinned knee.
No matter what I do, it will hurt. My heart will ache, and I will still miss him. I don't know that I ever won't. I can remember feeling that way about other men, and I did eventually find a way to move on, given enough time. But if the time to heal (as best as possible) is proportionate to the depth of emotion felt for another, it will take a damn long time to get over this one completely.
I loved Bounder. Deeply. Maybe more than I've ever loved anyone besides my children. I still love him and likely always will. He is never not there, whether in my heart or my thoughts or my dreams. Most days are okay, but some are hard as hell, when there's a reminder at every damn turn and I can feel him so intensely. And the nights can be brutal.
No matter how I feel, there are substantial issues with us. The perfect storm is at times decimating in its cleansing of our worlds. As beautiful as the lightning is, it sometimes strikes too close and sets the underbrush afire. Maybe it's just destructive, and maybe it was needed to clear away the dead wood and allow for new growth. Either way, neither of us will ever be the same again.
The thought of standing in that darkened theater, listening to those love songs that seemed to mimic our hearts, is terrifyingly beautiful, whether it's with or without him. Something ingrained in me can't help but love the tragic romance of it all. But love is not a love song. My heart will still be racing and aching when the three-minute swell is over. I just don't know if it'll be dancing with him in the dark.
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