So This Is What Is Meant By Things Change

He may have your money, used to buy a house, but I have your heart.

Or at least it was so on a sunny July day just a few months ago, on my back deck, when in tears you plainly, clearly said the following:

- I have made a big mistake.
- I'm not happy.
- I regret I didn't trust, I didn't wait.
- I don't have a crystal ball .... (which has significant meaning for the two of us)

Words have meaning. For two years you said "move on, move forward." It took two years, but slowly I was doing that. And then this? Come back in and turn my life upside down? You yelled at me in stunned disbelief that I had travelled to Iowa to meet a friend, to see if there was something there. "You really did that?" "You're really looking for someone else?" you asked. I jettisoned "Jack and Coke" fairly soon after that. Other "opportunities" were ignored. For the chance, for the possibility you held out to me that very day.....

Why did you ask those questions? Why did you so cruelly make that overture? I say cruel today, as the year is nearly over. Not cruel when you said it. Uplifting. Hopeful. But now? The effect is devastating.

Why? The disappearing act once more. I have been the one this time this summer and fall and early winter to reach out REPEATEDLY through email, text and a handful of non-answered, non-returned telephone calls. Nothing.

I have your heart. You just can't say it. Or are too embarrassed. And instead of CHANGING something because you're not happy (your famous words to many), your beg me a couple months ago in a phone call not to settle, not to make the same mistake you did.

If you have made a mistake, then do what you counsel everyone else. Fix it. The woman I fell in love with claimed she would never settle again.

Well guess what? Somehow, I won't. I don't know what shape that will take. I'll likely be alone. I had my shot at happiness. You could have changed things for you for the better. You could have gotten out and been happy.... CHOICES. What would Glasser say?  I made a monumental mistake a little over three years ago. And we both have been tortured.

In the past two years, all you did was complain to me about him. He's a racist, he smokes, he's controlling. He doesn't appreciate that you're smart. He's NOT very smart. He hates guns. He's not very good in bed, he makes fun of your vocabulary. All he does is watch TV, he's judgmental. Once, you urgently asked me to pick you up after the incident. Where you had been brutalized.  The second time he piled your stuff on the floor, the obvious non-verbal meaning, "get out." You told me I'm the only one you can talk to.  More than once in the past couple years you told me when you fall into my arms that everything feels right, like it is supposed to be. You said you cried when you reached out to me on a Friday night in August by text, and I replied saying I was sitting next to the wrong person. You said you were also. In July you said yes you are deep in double-standard land. No, my dear, it was something you and I both detest -- hypocrisy.

I made one monumental mistake for which I can never forgive myself. But one of these days I have to, if I am to survive. You have compounded my mistake it over and over and over with your own. Particularly in the past year.

Maybe you are happy with a guy who is broken, vs someone with their head on (relatively) straight. Your friend Elizabeth once told me I am the most stable person in your life.

And screaming at me on the phone and in text when I was enroute back from the south, tied up by storms at airports. Vile accusations. Accusations that were in blaring contradiction to what you have repeatedly told me for some two years and counting, were confusing. And all the while, YOU, several months before, had made a life-altering choice. And still you screamed what you screamed. And after the tears in your sunglasses covered eyes, and the repeated "I made a mistake" and "I regret not waiting" language, then the yelling at me about seeking someone so I won't be alone. Yes you yelled. Asking me why. Screaming "so you're really doing it!?!" ....... and THEN you tell me you had already bought a house with HIM?  What the fuck?

What was I.... what AM I .... supposed to do with that???

You once asked yourself, and me, why you were pushing the very person away whom you claimed was ..... is... most important in your life. Just a few months ago, you repeated I am the most important person in your life. You should ask yourself again.

You are very, very near to losing me....

Like the A Great Big World song says, I'm Giving Up On You.

And yet, nothing but silence. The ball is in your court. Don't Lose Me....