Tuesday, December 27, 2011

one year ago today

One year ago today, I was sitting at work and got a message from my girlfriend telling me that she didn't want to by my girlfriend anymore.  I suppose it should not have been that big of a surprise to me.  To be honest, we'd had some trouble.  She wasn't living with me, wasn't in the same state as me even.  But we had very recently been on vacation together.  We were still talking about things in a long-term way.  I never once believed it was over, that it was almost over, or anything like that.  I suppose that means I was stupid.  I suppose it means that i should have not taken certain things for granted.  I'm not sure that it would have mattered.  I know that it doesn't now.

I have hardly moved from that moment.  I cannot seem to let go of her.  Even now.  A life has passed between us, and I still cling to her.  Her warmth, her smile, her laugh.  The promise of a future. 

She's had no obvious issues moving on.  She's married now.  She's having his baby.  She's a happy, happy person.  And I'm what she had to let go of in order to be happy.

I have an exquisitely clear memory of a particular moment.  We were in my car.  We were driving around a curve in the road in my city.  The day that it became our city.  The day that you moved to be with me forever.  It was sunny.  It was azure and light.  I asked her if she was here to stay.

"Yes."

She grabbed my hand as I steered the car around the sharp curve behind these government buildings that we were passing.  I looked into her face, I saw her perfect smile.  I believed her.  I believed her like I'd never believed anything in my life.  I believed that one word more than I'd ever believed in Jesus or the Resurection.  The gigantic truth of that word filled me like a mug of coffee in my hands on a cold day.  The sure comfort of her in my life erased everything bad that had ever happened to me. 

So warm.  So alive.  Like I never was on my own.  This was the moment I had been waiting on.  This was when my life started.  That was when everything started counting, starting meaning something.  Everything had fallen into place. 

Life happened. 

Things I said must have seemed to strange, so alien.  Things I did were stupid.  She didn't understand me quite as well as she needed to.  No, that isn't all there is to it.  It wasn't just her who didn't understand things.  I was oblivious.  I was utterly and totally oblivious and ignorant of things that were bothering her.  I would have done so much differently.  If only I'd known. 

I was depressed.  I've always been depressed.  I was happier than I've been, and yet I was still depressed.  People tell you they understand depression, they tell you they have been depressed.  They don't understand it.  They think they do, but they still think that your depression has something to do with them.  That it has something to do with what's going on with you.  It's not like that.  Hell, it's not even about whatever I think it's about if someone asks me.  It's just about me.  I was born this way; I can't be really happy.

She didn't even know how happy I was.  She didn't understand how good she was for me.  All she heard were the stupid depressed things that I say all the time.  And she took each and every one of them to heart.

She left a little after Christmas, after only being with me a few months. 

Before she was even home, we were talking a little bit again.  In a few weeks we wanted to see each other again.  She still loved me.  She came to visit me.  I went to see her.  We talked and talked.  We planned.  We named our children for the thousandth time.  Everything was fine.  Everything was going to be fine. 

And then it wasn't ok.

I'm sitting in the chair she sat in when I begged her not to go.  This chair is sitting in the room that we lived in.  The room we fought in the day she left.  The apartment that I brought her home to that first day, when she promised she'd never leave.  When I believed her, that it would be her and me, from that point forward. 

I'm still here.

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