Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Lessons Learned

It's been over a year since Goatboy and I decided to stop seeing each other.  Up until April, there wasn't a day that went by where I didn't think of him without missing him, longing for what we had, and wondering if we would ever be together in the future.  I wound up finding him on Facebook and we had a couple of chats through texts but we haven't seen each other in a long time.  It was like we didn't have to try.  We still had that casual banter I missed so much and I was happy to have him back in my life and hoped that maybe, just maybe, we might get a second chance at being together.

I was talking to my guy friend about it - let's call him Lawyer - and he made me realize something: What I missed wasn't what we had but what I thought it might be if we had more time.  In other words, the reason I stayed with him for so long and why I continued to miss him when he was gone was because I was waiting for what could have been rather than seeing what we were.  Because what we were was fun, but not enough.  And that's okay.  That wasn't his fault or my fault.  It just was what we were.

It took me a day to let the words sink in, but when they did, I was immediately over Goatboy.  I can now look at it with fondness and I won't ever say I didn't love him - I loved him as much as I could with what was given to me - but I can't long for what I never had.  I can appreciate it for what it was: two people who liked spending time together, who cared about each other, who had fun being in each other's company.

Just because he wasn't The One, just because I never met his friends or family, just because he never told me he loved me (if he ever did) doesn't mean the time I spent with him was wasted or inconsequential.  Thinking about us now makes me smile because he taught me what I want in a guy, what I want in a relationship, and more about myself.  I feel lucky that I learned these lessons with someone like him, and even though my heart was smashed into a thousand pieces, I've managed to put it all back together.

Except I couldn't find a piece.  It's small but it's still a piece of my heart that will always belong to him.  Not because he took it from me, but because I gave it to him.  The small hole left will remind me of him, of our time together, and that's enough for me.

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