12.30.2008

Long Gone

A funny new phenomenon this year has been an assertion by some folks, including my father, that my ex will one day come crawling back professing what a mistake he made... begging forgiveness... ingratiating himself to me once again... looking to recapture what he lost. I (personally) don't see it happening. For all my ex does not know about me there is one thing he does... once I'm done with something, I'm done. It may take me a long time to give up on something... on someone... it may be a slow, deliberate process but once I've made up my mind that's it... I'm over it. I may revisit it on occasion in the clandestine recesses of my mind but I won't ever tell you that... you'll never know.

Maybe that's a bad thing... a bad way to be... I'm not really sure. Maybe it has something to do with pride... I'll be the first to admit I have a tad of a prideful streak (and those of you out there who think you know me just hush, I can hear you laughing). But honestly I don't think that's it... I think it's more that I learn... I think I turn over every leaf... every stone... explore every corner and nook and cranny to find the answer... find the solution... and sometimes I discover it's just not there... sometimes there is no rhyme or reason... and so, sometimes, the only course of action is to let it go. I think that's what I do... let go. I don't just coldly and callously turn my back on someone who needs me... but there are people in this life you just can't continue to emotionally invest in... people you can't continue to waste valuable energy trying to reach.

It's painful to let go... and often times as I let the remnants of what was slip through my fingers I wonder if I'm making some mistake, wonder if I'm being too capricious... which always, always messes with my head - sets me back. But I guess my point is I never ever come to this place on a whim... it's not the result of a laundry list of wrong doings or misdeeds... I don't keep score. But there comes a point, a place of awareness, when I realize it's me or them... it's my sanity or their games... and it becomes a matter of saving myself. I think that's what my ex understood about me... that regardless of everything else I am a survivor - and I think he recognized that in me before I did in myself.

1 comment:

VSL Poltroon said...

The thing about divorce, I think, is that it achieves closure.

Of course the marriage is over long before the writ is signed by a judge, but still, divorce closes the door once and for all. There is no going back.

There is a Buck Owens song called Love's Gonna Live Here Again where he sings, with ostensible nostalgia, "things are gonna be just like they were before."

But things were crappy before, and who wants them to be like that again. And so we close those doors once and for all, and, indeed, we let go.