216. Impossible
OOC: First of all, HUGE spoilers for 4x13 Glow in the Dark. Secondly, this was ridiculously difficult to write and I'm still processing in my head a lot of the ramifications of last night's episode, so bear with me. Also, while the entry is locked, OOC comments/feedback are MUCH appreciated.
I had convinced myself I wouldn’t be a third wheel if I joined them at the Bailey. At the least, I could follow up on that schoolgirl gasp she’d given at the sight of him. I could find out if it really was just shock, or if there was something more.
And then as I neared the bar, I glanced up, through the window, and I had my answer.
Something more.
The look of adoration she gave him was different than the looks she gives me. It was much like the time I saw her with Denny on the couch.
She needs more than me. If dangerously self-confident, cartoonish is what she wants, well then she can have it. And in being honest with myself, I know that I need more than her.
The bottom line is, I don’t want to be her safety net, her “rock” as she called me. I’m the serious, staid one - at least, I have been for her. I am a colleague-turned-eventual-lover, the practical choice in a world where the impractical choices have broken her heart or driven her crazy. But she loves them nonetheless, or else why would she work at Crane, Poole & Schmidt? Why would she surround herself with the unwaveringly (and yet oft-laughably) confident Denny Crane and the sometimes fallaciously confident Alan Shore?
I don’t fault her for it. The heart, as the cliché goes, wants what it wants. As I told her, she wants someone to complement her life, not to be a part of it. And again, if that’s what she wants…well, I want her to be happy. I want myself to be happy
I will not apologize for being unafraid to express my concerns with our relationship, to self-doubt, or to doubt her.
The part that bothers me is that I asked her what she wanted, I gave her the opportunity to tell me, and she refused to choose.
And so I chose. I made the decision neither of us wanted to make, but that in the end, I think, will both see is the right one. The practical one.
And then…she turned on me. The woman in that room was not the same one I’d known all these years. That, more than the fact that she will never look at me the way I’ve looked at her, has left me - dare I say it - heartbroken.
The hero of a classic novel, in discovering that his lady love was not, in fact, the woman he thought she was, said, “all this together most grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination, not [her] that I had been too apt to dwell on for many months past…”
Unlike the man in the novel, however, it is not that I do not wish to have known her. I only wish it had ended differently. Seeing as how it has not, I will go forward from here, as only one can do at a juncture like this. My future at Crane, Poole & Schmidt, at least in the Boston office, is tenuous at best. I can’t say I’m overly surprised, or that I’m terribly bereft.
word count: 545
I had convinced myself I wouldn’t be a third wheel if I joined them at the Bailey. At the least, I could follow up on that schoolgirl gasp she’d given at the sight of him. I could find out if it really was just shock, or if there was something more.
And then as I neared the bar, I glanced up, through the window, and I had my answer.
Something more.
The look of adoration she gave him was different than the looks she gives me. It was much like the time I saw her with Denny on the couch.
She needs more than me. If dangerously self-confident, cartoonish is what she wants, well then she can have it. And in being honest with myself, I know that I need more than her.
The bottom line is, I don’t want to be her safety net, her “rock” as she called me. I’m the serious, staid one - at least, I have been for her. I am a colleague-turned-eventual-lover, the practical choice in a world where the impractical choices have broken her heart or driven her crazy. But she loves them nonetheless, or else why would she work at Crane, Poole & Schmidt? Why would she surround herself with the unwaveringly (and yet oft-laughably) confident Denny Crane and the sometimes fallaciously confident Alan Shore?
I don’t fault her for it. The heart, as the cliché goes, wants what it wants. As I told her, she wants someone to complement her life, not to be a part of it. And again, if that’s what she wants…well, I want her to be happy. I want myself to be happy
I will not apologize for being unafraid to express my concerns with our relationship, to self-doubt, or to doubt her.
The part that bothers me is that I asked her what she wanted, I gave her the opportunity to tell me, and she refused to choose.
And so I chose. I made the decision neither of us wanted to make, but that in the end, I think, will both see is the right one. The practical one.
And then…she turned on me. The woman in that room was not the same one I’d known all these years. That, more than the fact that she will never look at me the way I’ve looked at her, has left me - dare I say it - heartbroken.
The hero of a classic novel, in discovering that his lady love was not, in fact, the woman he thought she was, said, “all this together most grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination, not [her] that I had been too apt to dwell on for many months past…”
Unlike the man in the novel, however, it is not that I do not wish to have known her. I only wish it had ended differently. Seeing as how it has not, I will go forward from here, as only one can do at a juncture like this. My future at Crane, Poole & Schmidt, at least in the Boston office, is tenuous at best. I can’t say I’m overly surprised, or that I’m terribly bereft.
word count: 545