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2002-12-07 - 8:19 p.m.
I knew E. was someone I could have a meaningful and lasting relationship with the
first time he stayed over and I left him a little note in the morning when I left for work. I
had rushed home that day and found that not only had he answered my note, but he had
taken it with him. It now rests safely within a stack of other notes I have given him on
E.’s dresser 4,000 miles away.
I used to leave my ex-boyfriend little notes in the morning when I left. There was
hardly ever a reason for it, I just wanted him to wake to something that might touch his
heart, that might linger with him throughout his day, make him smile a little. For five
years I did that, for five years I would go to work and somehow in the back of my head
think that maybe he had left me a little note in response. But almost always I would rush
home only to find that my note was left sitting exactly where I had left it, no response, not
even a quick “I love you” added to it. This past spring I was cleaning out my house,
depositing large amounts of my past into a huge dumpster, getting rid of everything I
could so I was no longer working with the old but inventing the new. I had pulled my
dresser out and found in a dusty corner, an old note I had left for him. One of the many
unanswered notes from the past. I sat there for a long moment, not quite knowing what
to do with it. Throwing it away was so sad, it felt like a betrayal...but I had no need for it,
just as he has seemingly had no need for it. I don’t remember what I ultimately ended up
doing with it, I don’t know if I indeed threw it away, or if I stuck it within the folds of a
book or something and will come across it again. But what I do remember is that a few
weeks later, when I had to see him because I had locked my keys in my car and he had the
only spare set, he asked me for that note, the note that had fallen behind my dresser. He
wanted that and he wanted a picture that had also fallen behind there.
I had called him that morning, though there were other things I could have done to get
my keys, the first thing I did was call him. Perhaps I had wanted to see him, I don’t
remember. He told me to meet him at one of the stores on his sales route. My friend was
here from Iowa that day so she and I strode into the store, she was full of my stories about
him, about how irrational he had become, how he argued with me about the breakup, how
he was treating the breakup like a court battle...he would remind me, “But you said you
would never break up with me,” as though that was his winning argument, as though I
would take him back because I had once said that. I saw him at the end of the aisle,
looking forlorn, his eyes found way to me and a more crestfallen look stole whatever
remnant of life he might have had on his face. For a moment I had paused, wanting to do
whatever I could to help alleviate his pain, but I gathered my strength and purposefully
walked towards him. He gave me my keys and then asked Nicole if he could have a
minute alone with me. That’s when he asked me for the picture and the note. He said,
“there is a note that fell behind your dresser a long time ago, and a picture, I want them
since you no longer seem to care about those things, I need something to remember you
by.” It was then that it occurred to me that one of the biggest things missing in our
relationship was his acceptance of the moment. With him is was always...someday. We’ll
have a big, perfect house....someday. But he wouldn’t start anywhere, he wouldn’t get a
smaller, less perfect house to start with, he wanted it all and until he could have it all he
wouldn’t live in the moment. He is one of those people for whom TODAY isn’t good
enough. My notes, those little things I did daily to remind him how much I loved him
didn’t matter until I broke up with him, then suddenly he wanted them. Wanted
something else to remind him that TODAY sucks and will never be good enough because
his girlfriend broke up with him.
When I broke up with him he spent a year doing nothing but going to work and then
locking himself in a room for the rest of the day. He didn’t go out with his friends, he
didn’t do anything. He just wallowed. The ironic thing is that if he had grasped TODAY,
if he had taken something good out of our breakup, (because that is all you can do when
something bad happens if you have any hope of ever being happy again, you must take
something from the bad and make it good) and done something to make TODAY a good
day, I probably would have taken him back. But he didn’t. He just shut down. And I
moved on. I wanted someone in life for whom the things I do matter, I wanted someone
who would take my notes, or answer my notes, someone who would make it known that
my presence in their life matters. TODAY.
I can’t tell you how my ex is faring these days because I haven’t spoken with him
since August, it was a one sided conversation, I had called him for his birthday, he had just
sat on the other end of the line giving me one word responses to the questions I had
asked. His friends tell me he won’t date, his sister tells me that he is getting better, he
doesn’t lock himself in his room quite as much and he is becoming more open but he still
won’t date because according to him I was perfect and it had taken him 26 years to find
me and he didn’t have that kind of time any more. But he ignores my existence, he didn’t
call me on my birthday, he doesn’t even acknowledge my friends if he runs into them
someplace. He is still wallowing, after a year and a half, he has yet to place his feet in
TODAY and live. I want so much to grab him by his throat, shake him, tell him how
much of his life he has wasted by not grasping TODAY. He is thirty three years old and
he has yet to live. I look back and find that I too got sucked into that, for five years I
believed in SOMEDAY, but never TODAY. I wasted five years and I still took something
away from that. I learned lessons I never would have known....and because of those
lessons, because I allowed myself to take something good out of the bad, I ended up
happier than I ever could have believed. And he just wallows waiting for
SOMEDAY.
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