houses
The winter had finally arrived in full, icy breezes forcing me to abandon my habit of keeping the bedroom window open and lofting brown and yellow leaves onto the carpet. With it came the holiday season and a welcome break from increasingly chaotic weeks as I geared up for my finals. I had spent most of the nearly two weeks with her, at claustrophobic Atlanta parties to the top of granite mountains and the quiet spaces in between. She confessed the resolution of her confusion to me while waiting for a flight to arrive and as I feared, I am not a part of her future.
As such things go, I have spent far too much time contemplating it all and getting wound up in the emotions that held me to her for these past few weeks. Being honest with myself, I knew going into this that she had only recently ended the longest and most meaningful relationship she had ever been in. To her credit, she never once tried to hide it - she was forthcoming in all respects and made it clear that she wasn’t trying to replace that connection. Am I to blame, then? Did I create the confusion she had grappled with by trying to be something she did not want?
Or perhaps the feelings are genuine, but she knows that rushing into something new would only trouble everyone involved; this is not a sentiment I would disagree with, as hard as it may be to accept. Having been without meaningful, intimate companionship for so long, it is difficult to remember that I too was once freshly single and afraid to commit so soon after.
In any event, there is no one to blame. As I have come to see in the smoking cinders of the past, some things are simply not meant to be. Despite the furtive glances and bashful smiles, the quiet nights and the things that went unsaid as she placed herself in my arms, it all lacked the missing element of fate. Maybe if we’d met a year from now, things would have been different - and not necessarily for the better. But such as it is - the things that are meant to be always work out in the end. My life overall has been far brighter since she became a part of it, and if I do not gain a lover, I am gifted a priceless friend instead.
Maybe on a cold, dark night some time from now she’ll hold me again. Maybe we’ll have those same feelings, the kind that excite and frighten as they start to well up in our chest. Maybe we’ll press our lips together and say those things that we can’t say to each other now. But if that is not what’s fated to be - and even if I could do it all over - I know that I wouldn’t change a thing.
