Over

"I gave your blog address to my friend...And she gave it to her friend, and he gave it to his son, because we were thinking we could fix you guys up. So he read your blog - all of it - and he said 'I don't think she's over her ex.'"

"And...What? He doesn't want to be fixed up with me?"

"Well, my friend said it would all go out the window once he met you, but...Yeah."

Hmmmm.

Fair enough, I guess. I couldn't fill up pages and pages of cyberspace with memories of him if I weren't thinking about him in some respect. But I'm not sitting in front of my keyboard, trying to conjure up ways to get us back together. I know exactly where we stand, and I'm happy with it. I don't want to squeeze myself back into the painful shoes I was in before. I have no delusions of "Maybe this time...: or "Maybe if we try again..." I understand O-V-E-R. Over certainly is the best thing for me. There is no question about our status. There will be no reunion, there will be no white dress or wedding bells.

But am I over him? I don't know.

Do you ever get over someone that you love?

Do you ever stop thinking of someone with whom you spent all of your time? When do they gradually work themselves out of your stories, your memories? When do eschew them from your thoughts? When do you stop wanting to call them as soon as something blissfully wonderful or terrifyingly sad happens? When does anyone ever actually wash their hands of someone else, when there was no cheating, no beating...When the reason you can't be together has nothing to do with being in love or out of it - when it has everything to do with loving each other, just not being able to love each other the right way?

The unfortunate part of this blog is that the only part of my ex that I have exposed is the part that hurt me. I only showed his talons, his jagged teeth, his weapons. But I'm not entirely a masochist. I didn't stay around for that long because I enjoyed being hurt. There was far more to him than what I've written thus far. In truth, I adored him. I woke up every morning thinking about him. I thought of him every night before I slept. And not in some mutant sort of way. In a God-I-Wish-He-Were-Here-With-Me-Right-This-Very-Moment sort of way. I wanted to be around him all the time. I made myself completely available and utterly vulnerable because I thought that's what he wanted. I didn't want to run the risk of the chase - He might get tired of running after me and give up. So I bared my chest and lay before him, hoping that he would take all of me, and keep me, protect me, and love me forever.

But of course he made me cry. There's no doubt about it. Everything I've written about him has been true. I shed more tears over him than I thought myself capable of producing. But he also made me laugh. And he felt like home. Yes, he was an intolerable ass at times. Yes, I feel that I deserve someone who will treat me better than he did. Or maybe more fairly, how I would like to be treated. Yes, he hurt me. And to say that he broke my heart doesn't even cover the damage I've felt. But I loved him. And part of me always will. I loved lying with him watching horrible movies and making fun of them. I loved when he called me "Lar." I loved when he kissed the top of my head for no reason at all. I loved just being around him. I loved how his skin smelled hot when he would come inside from the sun. I loved the smell of his worn shirts. I loved that he let me call him Tommy, despite how much he hated the moniker. I loved it when he would take my car and change my tires or fix my brakes or change my oil, because that was a small way he told me he loved me. I loved the surprise party he threw for my 21st birthday. I love the feeling I get when I recall the moment he told me he loved me - The total fulfillment, the butterflies in my belly; I'd wanted to hear him say the words for what felt like ages. I loved kissing him, I loved being held by him. I loved the idea of the future we planned together. Until I was no longer allowed to believe in it.

I write about the bad things, the horrible moments, the most disgusting and loathsome events in our past, but that's not all there was to him. He was, at the base of it all, a good man. He loved me, the only way he knew how. And that just wasn't enough for me. I don't wish that he die alone, or that he miss me so terribly that he comes crawling back. I hope he finds someone who can give him what he wants: Freedom. I'm sure there are girls who require less of their boyfriends than I do. I'm sure there are women who never want to get married. Maybe he'll find one of them. I hope so.

So in the meantime, I spill my memories, my thoughts, my heartbreak into the text box of Blogger just to get it out of me. I don't want those moments inside me anymore, eating me alive. My intent wasn't to crucify him with words instead of nails, but it was my intent to exorcise my demons. Exposing my bloody wounds, my battle scars, my shattered heart provides the catharsis I need. I heave my most painful memories out of my mind so that I don't have to carry them around. I write it out and I feel lighter, freed. And the written word serves as a reminder of why being together was just not right for us. And maybe I'm yet not over the man I wanted him to be, the relationship I wanted us to have. But I am over the notion that there is anything thing left in the wreckage to salvage.