If we had made it we would be living there, most likely. My clothes would be cramped into a guest room closet with an old comforter and our diplomas, down the hall from the bedroom. The house decorated like you, just you. With my ideas, tastes, and tokens of the past 27 years stored in the other guest bedroom, the one where your brother lived. You would still be attached to your parents, using their house for gym equipment and meals. Your after work routine. Not mine. I have to create my own, like it always had been. It would be unaltered by my presence or our seriousness. I would be a guest, but not welcomed. Your mother cannot handle the competition. So I would eventually avoid it and make excuses about work, my family and personal time. Which is the way they wanted it anyway. Despite that they would be just a mile away. I would see her at Publix as I am now the one buying you a toothbrush and diet coke and she will resent me because that was her role for thirty years and some how my choice in diet coke is wrong. Because everything I do will be wrong. When in reality it was us that was wrong. And it felt wrong. I hated your small toes. I sat nightly on the worn brown leather couch, watching terrible action movies, and wondered if those were feet I could look at forever. You later handled that inquiry and cut us off at the knees.
If we made it, would the linen covered table clothes have turned? Would the good start to out number the bad. When we were together, the bad was there living amongst us hanging in your closet next to the ties and dress shirts aligned neatly. It should not have been bad, not in the beginning, not like it was. There were moments of glimpses of good. Where I sought happiness and reveled in the gaps. I believed that would be what we would be. When it fell together coherently lined neatly like the books stacked on the shelf. I truly thought it would do that someday. I was wrong.
If we made it would you continue to bring me orange juice in bed while I lounged. Offering to make coffee and instructing I stay put. Sleeping in the bed you initially invited me into our first night. At that time I declined. Thereafter, it was the best sleep I got on the soft comfortable expensive sheets, next to you. I took it as a sign of us. But the bed was the only thing inviting in that relationship and the only time you let me in. I would relax in that bed until I have to tip toe through the kitchen to the bathroom and sneak a moment by the coffee pot. The day started with us laughing and embracing. Would it remain like that? Or would the relationship slide as the day progressed, as it always did. By night, we sat in silence, tired from the strain of the day and our burdens. I thought this too would get better. But we never made it that far, we lived in the strain, our waking hours spent spooning it out. We never got past that. Really, how could we?
If we made it would the small tokens continue; remembering the pearls and roses. Each a small gift that brought smiles and false promises. An innuendo that was not there, though I believed and willed it to be so. Carrying the gift and an image with me. Thinking that would be us when it all worked out. At times you meant it and expressed it as you could. The phone calls and text messages, "I am so proud of you" and teasing me about my quirks. But not really getting them right, since they weren't my quirks, since you never really knew me. You could not know me. To know me would mean to let me in. When it was your world all the time. You, you, you. And you never bothered to make room for me.
So, would we have made it? Would there have been an us, if we got the chance I wanted us to have. Would I have been given space in the guest closet next to the old musical equipment, when I was never given room in your life or your heart?
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Accidentally Me said:
This is a game you can never get to the end of..."Where would I be if I had done X instead of Y?". It can be interesting, but it is a frustrating and fruitless excercise. It would probably have been worse than you imagine it to be, and even if it weren't, you can't go back and re-do what you have done. But...it is still interesting to think about.
Oh, and "I hated your little toes" is priceless.- 6:32 AM
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megabrooke said:
Magoo is the lucky guy- sounds like he loves and appreciates you, and lets you in.
"There were moments of glimpses of good. Where I sought happiness and reveled in the gaps. I believed that would be what we would be."--this sounds very, very familiar.
I really enjoyed this.- 12:52 PM
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anne said:
Thank you.
I think it is sometimes nice to consider the what if, especially to see what good things you have now that would have never been in the "if" world.- 1:36 PM
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Runner Girl FL said:
What if's can be fun.
But is sounds like the right thing worked out. I think that rather than hoping more and more times to click will happen you have to click more at the begining. Like puzzle pieces...you just fit.- 1:47 PM
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anne said:
I think you are so right. We get lost and caught up in trying to force something when it really is/should not be that hard. Nothing should be forced. The beginning is as good as it is going to get. So it should be working magically at that point.
- 2:07 PM
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JustRun said:
What a great reminder that nothing, no matter how badly we may want it to be, can be forced. Now you can see that as one of those "I'd rather be alone than that situation" type of things. Ahhh, perspective. :)
- 4:16 PM
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Ally said:
It's amazing how we'll hold on to things like gifts or texts to keep us going in a relationship, refusing to acknowledget that it's not worth staying in.
Oh, your first paragraph reminds me of something my friends were told in marriage counseling--that most marital problems result from one spouse not cleaving to his spouse and leaving his parents.- 8:57 PM
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megabrooke said:
I firmly agree and believe, that things in the beginning should be easy. I remember when I ended my relationship with my ex, that the final straw was that I realized it was getting to be too much work, to make things work. I never had that easygoing, carefree feeling. And that should always be there in the beginning, especially.
I like your new pic btw, and hope you enjoy the Josh Radin songs!- 8:29 AM
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anne said:
It was a fairly constant anxiety riddled year with many nights spent in tears on my friend's couch. Really should I have been there? In hindsight it is so so easy to see how wrong it was, but at the time no one was going to convince me.
- 8:32 AM
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Ryane said:
I agree w/the other posters. If it is a lot of work at the beginning, that's a bad presage. However, I am guiltyguiltyguilty of thinking that "oh, it'll all work itself out. look--this circle really. Does. FIT! inside of this square."!!
- 6:06 PM
