Jun
16
Reminiscence
June 16, 2008 | |
Life is funny. I just reread an old post, "He’s getting married" and the responses it elicited. I found myself chuckling a bit at what I, and everyone else, had to say.
I don’t know why, but nowhere in that post did I mention that the "love of my life", or whatever I called him there, was the Elf Prince. I guess I figured that any regular readers of my blog would be able to figure it out on his or her own. But that’s not what had me laughing.
I still remember how I felt that day. Yes, I was supremely happy for him. He’d had a rough deal before he and I got together, and he that our relationship had hurt me and our friendship. He’d felt terrible about that.
That day, he approached me at the copy machine — I’m pretty sure it was almost first thing in the morning. I stood there listening to him, a happy smile plastered on my face. I even teased him a little as he struggled to talk to me about it.
The whole time, my mind was racing. Why the hell is he telling me this? I wondered. I mean, why is he approaching me specially to tell me when we haven’t exactly been close friends over the past year. I mean, why Why WHY does he think it’s NECESSARY to tell me personally? Does he think I’m still in love with him?
I was, of course, still in love with him. I think I probably always will, after some fashion, love him. But, consider two things: I didn’t want him to know how I felt. And I genuinely didn’t have any hopes for the two of us to ever get back together. His decision to take me aside and tell me pretty much dashed any hope I had that he thought I was over him.
So, I stood there, grinning like an idiot and congratulated him. And when he started to explain, saying. "You know, sometimes things happen when you don’t expect them t–", I quickly cut him off with more teasing. "You mean she proposed to you?
Because, the only time during our on-and-off-and-on-and-off-and-off-and-on-and-off romance that I’d been the one to end things, I told him that I couldn’t stop loving him and he couldn’t start loving me. And he told me that it wasn’t about me — he’d spent his entire adult life in one long-term relationship after another; he didn’t want that again, he told me.
"No," I told him. "You don’t want that with me."
I was right, I knew, because if there was ever a man made to be married, to be committed to one woman forever, it was him. He just hadn’t found the right woman yet.
It wasn’t long after that conversation that we met the woman who is now his wife, and my first thought was She’s the one!.
My friends told me I was being silly. One even suggested that the woman might be engaged to someone else, but I was certain. Even though the Elf and I were back together by then.
So, all of these thoughts were crashing through my head as he told me he was getting married. That, and trying to figure out a diplomatic way to ask him if I’d guessed right about his love (she’d moved halfway across the country not long after we first met her).
In the end, I just started talking vaguely as if I knew exactly who he was marrying, ended the conversation as quickly as I could, and went back to my desk feeling a bit numb.
I was cheered, strange as it may sound, to learn that I was right about her identity. (I had to get confirmation from one of my other friends.) And that I could tell my nay-saying friends "I told you so."
But I didn’t write any of that the morning he told me. He was one of my blog readers and I’d decided he should never, ever, know just how much I loved him. I was happy for him (I didn’t fall into a mess of tears until two days later, and in the privacy of my own home.), and he didn’t need to know that the love I’d written about was still very much in evidence. No wonder so many of my readers called me "strong".
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