Haunted by my past.

He appears as quickly as he vanished from my life, nearly four years ago. I still remember the actions that eventually caused me walk away. You see, we met under circumstances that were not ideal but whether it was intoxication or the whirlwind of newness that brought him into my life, the point is that he would become my boyfriend.

The relationship was lived rather shortly. In that time, he drank too much and I did not have the patience to be tied down. Unbeknownst to him, I was having a fling with a person who did not take me serious, but I would have given it all for him.

It happens to me all the time. When I find someone I can see myself with, I go and meet someone else who distracts me.

I called this man my boyfriend, but to him I was property. Short of having a GPS embedded in my skin, he needed to know where I was at all times. Personally, he says that he was intuitive and felt that someone else was winning me over. While I never confirmed it, he was right.

In the words of Jewel, “the heart can hallucinate when it is starved for love.” Four years later, he would come back into my life, asking to rekindle what was once a fire.

I just do not know how to let him back in. I have built walls so thick that no one would consider breaking through and now this man is asking for a piece of my heart and I just don’t know how to undo all of this work.

I said that I would be willing to get to know this version of him. The man I knew him to be was dark and hurt, and fragile. I too was damaged goods. I have changed from the person I used to be. He claims to have done the same. Now, he is asking me to get to know him all over again.

I just feel like I cannot allow myself to be invested this time around because I do not want to feel like I have become desperate for a relationship. I feel the emptiness and in my mind, I think that he is trying to exploit that in me. However, I will allow myself to get to know him and I will reintroduce myself to him. It always felt like our story was never complete. And while I do not expect to have a happy ending, I do expect to end this chapter.

I used to call her friend...

I do not know why I decided to do a name search for her... It has been so many years that I have put it behind me. I put all those unresolved issues far behind... where I would not be predisposed to stumble upon it. 

Nevertheless, you see... It was never my intention to look her up. It happened when my mind decided to play a trick on me and brought up a feeling that I once felt, long ago in the land of far away. 

I used to call her friend. She was such a big part of me that I could not muster the thought to do something without her. There is medical terminology for the type of relationship we had... it is called "co-dependent." Well, during our best of times, that is what our relationship was reduced to, co-dependency. However, towards the end, our relationship was virtually non-existent. I hated coming home because a part of me knew that she would be there. Therefore, I would rush home and run to my room and locked the door.  I really do not know what it was that made our friendship morph into something other than that. 

It has been many years since I locked out every part of her that remained. However, when I tell the story of my youth, I find that I have to edit her involvement in my story.  I do not hate her, not one bit. It just hurts me that our ending was so ugly. It had to be done. All things that begin must end.  The reality is that I stopped serving her purpose and she stopped serving mine. The only reason why we continued was that it was habit.  Living together made it harder to walk away.

Let us be clear. It is not my intention to depict a horrible friendship. However, like I said, we stopped serving each other’s purpose and we went our separate ways.

So eight years later, the name of her business came to mind and I wondered if she ever launched her business. This made me curious to look it up.  However, the name of her pseudo-business did not bring up any successful matches; I decided to look up her name.  

This brought up an article of her immigrant story on a social project blogspot. The entry was a few years old.

While, I do not miss her, I sincerely wish her a good life and continued blessings.

Respectfully,

Robert