The Road Not Taken
This afternoon I was standing in the chill of the fish cooler in the grocery store, checking calorie counts of fish sticks, when a voice from my past said “Hi.”
It was David, my one and only authentic ex. He looked about the same and except for having a little thinner hair he could have stepped out of my grade 10 diary. A wave of guilt snuck past the fish and slapped me in the face as I gave a way too cheery “Hi!” I made silly chit chat for a few minutes, the kind of vacant Q and A you make with distant relatives or faded friends, but I could barely look at him. The older I’ve gotten the more I realize how cruel I was to him and I felt a little sick to my stomach to have to face him over a box of haddock. A moment or two of awkward silence, we said goodbye, and the first man to ever say he loved me drifted off into the cereal isle.
Like any self-respecting coward, I avoided any additional encounters and quickly finished up my shopping so I could flee to the safety of my car.
The whole way home I ran over our relationship with the kind of 20/20 retro-vision that makes you glad you’re not that person you were back then. It was a long and sordid story that makes me both ashamed and strangely nostalgic.
David and I met at church the year I turned 14. He was handsome and smart and almost 5 years older then I was. He could play the piano and drive, and when I talked, he acted like he was really listening. Besides, my best church friend Patti thought he was perfect for me. So every Sunday and youth group event, I let him pay attention to me and hold my hand while I imagined our terribly mundane “relationship” into a storybook romance.
About a month later, I started high school and on the first day fell into a massive crush on Adam. He too was handsome and smart, he could play saxophone and although he was a couple of months younger than me, he was counting down the days until he could get his drivers license. The fact that he didn’t know I was alive was a minor detail that I immediately set out to fix. We became friends and I worked very hard to become a bigger part of his life - even semi-sabotaging his relationship with his first girlfriend.
Oh the drama! As manipulative as I was, I never meant to mislead David or play games with Adam, but my life at church and my life at school seemed completely separate. At church I was a respected youth leader, held up as an example for my peers. At school I was an anonymous freak desperate to both make friends and be too cool to need them. Naively, I thought the situation would never change and I could have the best of both worlds.
For a year this went well and my two lives managed to miss an earth shattering collision. I fell more and more in love with Adam while my uneasiness with David and our supposed relationship grew. Then the predictable happened. No lightening bolt, no epiphany on a bridge in the rain, only the normal conclusion to a highly untenable situation - David broke up with me. He was far more upset about it than I was. In fact, I I remember patting him on the back and telling him he would be OK without me.
You’d think the story would end there…but you know what they say about the course of true love…
Throughout high school Adam was very conflicted…he loved me, but he wished that I were cooler, prettier and far more brunette. We went in and out of teen togetherness for a few years. Meanwhile David was still attentive and we were good friends. I even set him up with a mutual friend, but when they broke up, and Adam and I were in one of those off again phases…I make a stupid mistake.
I wanted to take ballroom dancing lessons. Adam flatly refused (I think a square dancing experience on an exchange trip scarred him for life,) so I asked David to be my partner. Every Wednesday night I got dressed up and met David at his apartment where we walked over to our class at the local community centre. As self-absorbed as I was at 18, it never occurred to me that it would be hard for David to hold me in his arms for a few hours a week. I knew David still cared for me and he had sent lots of signals that he would be more than happy to be more than friends. But I convinced myself that his feelings were just friendship. I wanted to believe that nothing was going on. I would let go of his hand quickly after each spin around the floor and lie to myself that it was just because my hands were sweaty. I couldn’t look him in the eye while we were waltzing, but I made excuses to myself about why. Still, even though I knew I was behaving badly, I continued to go back to his apartment after class to laugh, dance and hang-out.
Then the moment I had both been dreading and anticipating happened. One night he tried to kiss me. I felt my cheek burning as I turned it to avoid the kiss. But, like a car accident you can see coming but can’t swerve away from, he looked into my eyes and told me that he loved me and wanted to marry me. I felt mortified, I was horrified and flattered and as miserable as I had ever felt in my short life. I finally had to face how shamefully I had treated him, how willfully blind I had been to the entire situation and how little I had taken his feelings into account. My eyes on his shoes, I told him no I couldn’t marry him because I couldn’t love him back. I apologized for making him think otherwise and just to make sure that I killed any hope, I confessed that I was really in love with Adam. David’s eyes were too bright and he turned away and the room got very, very silent. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I grabbed my purse and sweater and let myself out. I walked home in a daze of shame and shock.
After that we found a strange new normal. Of course I found an excuse not to continue dancing and he didn’t call me anymore. If we ran into each other at church he’d ask about school and I’d ask about his parents and smile a rictus grin until I could find an excuse to slink away. Eventually I moved in with Adam and stopped going to church, Adam and I got married and life moved on. I still send a Christmas card to David (nothing evokes guilt and self-loathing like the holidays,) but generally I ignore how foolish and thoughtless I was back then.
Until today over the fish sticks.
All evening I have revisited the recriminations of my past. Adam is out of town for the weekend so I have been able to brood a bit deeper than usual. I dug up some old bones and poked some old wounds and even wondered for a few idle moments about what my life would have been like if I had married David. Ultimately I have no startling conclusions and no greater insight into the life that I chose for myself. I’m proud that I’m brave enough to at least take a hard look at myself. I’m definately a flawed person - a work in progress to say the least, but mostly I’m happy. And with apologies to Mr. Frost, that has made all the difference.
It was David, my one and only authentic ex. He looked about the same and except for having a little thinner hair he could have stepped out of my grade 10 diary. A wave of guilt snuck past the fish and slapped me in the face as I gave a way too cheery “Hi!” I made silly chit chat for a few minutes, the kind of vacant Q and A you make with distant relatives or faded friends, but I could barely look at him. The older I’ve gotten the more I realize how cruel I was to him and I felt a little sick to my stomach to have to face him over a box of haddock. A moment or two of awkward silence, we said goodbye, and the first man to ever say he loved me drifted off into the cereal isle.
Like any self-respecting coward, I avoided any additional encounters and quickly finished up my shopping so I could flee to the safety of my car.
The whole way home I ran over our relationship with the kind of 20/20 retro-vision that makes you glad you’re not that person you were back then. It was a long and sordid story that makes me both ashamed and strangely nostalgic.
David and I met at church the year I turned 14. He was handsome and smart and almost 5 years older then I was. He could play the piano and drive, and when I talked, he acted like he was really listening. Besides, my best church friend Patti thought he was perfect for me. So every Sunday and youth group event, I let him pay attention to me and hold my hand while I imagined our terribly mundane “relationship” into a storybook romance.
About a month later, I started high school and on the first day fell into a massive crush on Adam. He too was handsome and smart, he could play saxophone and although he was a couple of months younger than me, he was counting down the days until he could get his drivers license. The fact that he didn’t know I was alive was a minor detail that I immediately set out to fix. We became friends and I worked very hard to become a bigger part of his life - even semi-sabotaging his relationship with his first girlfriend.
Oh the drama! As manipulative as I was, I never meant to mislead David or play games with Adam, but my life at church and my life at school seemed completely separate. At church I was a respected youth leader, held up as an example for my peers. At school I was an anonymous freak desperate to both make friends and be too cool to need them. Naively, I thought the situation would never change and I could have the best of both worlds.
For a year this went well and my two lives managed to miss an earth shattering collision. I fell more and more in love with Adam while my uneasiness with David and our supposed relationship grew. Then the predictable happened. No lightening bolt, no epiphany on a bridge in the rain, only the normal conclusion to a highly untenable situation - David broke up with me. He was far more upset about it than I was. In fact, I I remember patting him on the back and telling him he would be OK without me.
You’d think the story would end there…but you know what they say about the course of true love…
Throughout high school Adam was very conflicted…he loved me, but he wished that I were cooler, prettier and far more brunette. We went in and out of teen togetherness for a few years. Meanwhile David was still attentive and we were good friends. I even set him up with a mutual friend, but when they broke up, and Adam and I were in one of those off again phases…I make a stupid mistake.
I wanted to take ballroom dancing lessons. Adam flatly refused (I think a square dancing experience on an exchange trip scarred him for life,) so I asked David to be my partner. Every Wednesday night I got dressed up and met David at his apartment where we walked over to our class at the local community centre. As self-absorbed as I was at 18, it never occurred to me that it would be hard for David to hold me in his arms for a few hours a week. I knew David still cared for me and he had sent lots of signals that he would be more than happy to be more than friends. But I convinced myself that his feelings were just friendship. I wanted to believe that nothing was going on. I would let go of his hand quickly after each spin around the floor and lie to myself that it was just because my hands were sweaty. I couldn’t look him in the eye while we were waltzing, but I made excuses to myself about why. Still, even though I knew I was behaving badly, I continued to go back to his apartment after class to laugh, dance and hang-out.
Then the moment I had both been dreading and anticipating happened. One night he tried to kiss me. I felt my cheek burning as I turned it to avoid the kiss. But, like a car accident you can see coming but can’t swerve away from, he looked into my eyes and told me that he loved me and wanted to marry me. I felt mortified, I was horrified and flattered and as miserable as I had ever felt in my short life. I finally had to face how shamefully I had treated him, how willfully blind I had been to the entire situation and how little I had taken his feelings into account. My eyes on his shoes, I told him no I couldn’t marry him because I couldn’t love him back. I apologized for making him think otherwise and just to make sure that I killed any hope, I confessed that I was really in love with Adam. David’s eyes were too bright and he turned away and the room got very, very silent. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I grabbed my purse and sweater and let myself out. I walked home in a daze of shame and shock.
After that we found a strange new normal. Of course I found an excuse not to continue dancing and he didn’t call me anymore. If we ran into each other at church he’d ask about school and I’d ask about his parents and smile a rictus grin until I could find an excuse to slink away. Eventually I moved in with Adam and stopped going to church, Adam and I got married and life moved on. I still send a Christmas card to David (nothing evokes guilt and self-loathing like the holidays,) but generally I ignore how foolish and thoughtless I was back then.
Until today over the fish sticks.
All evening I have revisited the recriminations of my past. Adam is out of town for the weekend so I have been able to brood a bit deeper than usual. I dug up some old bones and poked some old wounds and even wondered for a few idle moments about what my life would have been like if I had married David. Ultimately I have no startling conclusions and no greater insight into the life that I chose for myself. I’m proud that I’m brave enough to at least take a hard look at myself. I’m definately a flawed person - a work in progress to say the least, but mostly I’m happy. And with apologies to Mr. Frost, that has made all the difference.