I don’t know what to write. I know that I need to say something, but for once I’m speechless. The worst part is that I don’t even know what to feel. I’m not sure if I’m numb, in denial, or if my emotions have already spilled out like the yellow lego guy up above.
Chances are, if you are reading this, you are a close friend trying to find out why I’m mentioning having a broken heart on Facebook. Or you are new to my life and you are looking back through my experiences in order to get to know me. Hopefully, you aren’t the leader of some advanced alien civilization that will determine our planet’s fate based on what I write throughout my blog. ‘Cause, if that’s the case, our species is fucked.
So, yeah… my heart is broken. I can’t say that this is the first time, because it’s not. I also can’t say that I didn’t think this was a possibility, because I knew it was. But this time… this time, it’s different.
I’ve already written about Savannah (although this is the first time I have mentioned her by name). My last two blog entries are actually about her, as are my three latest poems. We had been Facebook friends for a while, but had never met until five months ago when she came to a party I was hosting at El Torito. I can still recall the moment she walked through the doorway. As if I was seeing the vision of an angel, my heart skipped a beat and I knew that there was something special about her. We clicked immediately and, by the end of the evening, I knew that I had to ask her out. Within a couple of weeks, I was in love and I thought I had finally met the woman that I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
Yes, two weeks. Just like how I said this heartbreak is different, so were my feelings of love. She genuinely made me happy in a way that no other woman ever had. Unfortunately, she chose another guy and I pushed her completely away for several weeks. During that time, I had never stopped thinking about her, nor had I stopped being in love with her.
When I found out that she was again single, I sought counsel from friends and prayed to God for him to provide a divine appointment to see her. Two days later, I emailed her and apologized. Two days after that, we randomly ran into each other at a networking event and it was as if no time had passed at all. So much so, that we went on a date exactly one week later and really enjoyed ourselves.
We took things slow. Really slow. It wasn’t my idea, even though it really was what I needed, but it was because she wasn’t sure how she felt yet. To further confuse matters, we would say that we loved each other all of the time, even though we were not yet a couple. From the outside, a handful of people commented that it seemed she was leading me on, but I know that she was genuinely trying to see if the deeper feelings would develop. She loved me, but was she in love with me?
And that’s when we arrive at yesterday. My phone rang, her beautiful face appears on the screen. I answer and she is soon confessing that those feelings still haven’t arrived. She doesn’t think we are meant to be more than friends.
I had been fearing this call. You might even say that I was prepared, except for the fact that it came as I was eating and surrounded by a group of friends at a potluck. I stepped outside for privacy, pacing around the driveway in my socks as we discussed our hearts.
There is one thing that I didn’t mention above: during the last two months of re-courting Savannah, I had fallen even more in love. I already thought it was something unique and special, but now it was more. And I can’t explain it. For the life of me, I can not tell you how this deeper level of love feels. The closest I can get is comparing these emotions to the concept of “soul mate” or “true love”. I found myself in a place where I no longer sought her to make me happy, but my joy came in bringing happiness to her. A place where I would gladly deny myself to give her life. My greatest concerns about her were about her well being, future, and salvation. I would try to imagine a future without her in it and not only was it not possible, but it was not desirable.
Yet, here I stood. In a friend’s driveway. In my socks. On the phone. Talking about my heart and my faith to the woman I loved more than anyone else in the world. And the topic on the table was that she loves me, but isn’t in love with me.
Then my phone dies at perhaps the most critical moment of our conversation. I rush back inside and borrow my friend’s phone. By the time I get online and recover her phone number, she had already retired for the evening. The conversation was over.
I sunk down against the wall, not breathing a word of the call’s contents to anyone. I only half-watched the movie that was playing as I texted a handful of close friends to let them know. And any time I thought about how I felt, a silent tear would creep down my face. I was trying not to show it, but I was numb inside and I felt like I was dying from the inside out. I simply didn’t know how to respond.
Everyone left, but I stayed behind. My friend asked about the call. He was asking about the second half of the conversation, which he knew about. I answered the questions, then told him about the first.
I couldn’t look at him as I talked, I just kept staring forward and looking at nothing in particular. I wept as I spoke, holding onto as much composure as I could muster. “I just want God’s best for her, even if it doesn’t include me.” I told him, meaning every word. In fact, I had been praying that very thing for almost two weeks, always hoping that God’s best did, in fact, include me. I just wanted God to know that I wasn’t making an idol out of a relationship with her.
God had been teaching me a lot as I waited for a relationship with her. I honestly thought that, giving her enough time, God would have changed her heart toward me. The funny thing is, even now as I stand on this side of the phone call, I still feel as strongly as I did then about her being “the one.”
I promised Savannah weeks ago that I wasn’t going to push her away again. I’m going to hold myself to that promise (if only for me, because it sucked last time not to be able to talk to her). And it’s always possible for God to change her heart, but I also know it’s healthy for me to not expect that to happen and try to move on. Yet, all I want is her. All I see is her. I don’t even know if I can trust myself to love another woman the way I love her.
So, here I stand alone. Not sure which way to go. Not sure how to act, how to feel, or what to think. All I know is that I’m in pain because I love someone very, very deeply and it turns out that it wasn’t enough.