It’s a familiar pattern. Something has been weighing on me. I’ve been holding it inside. And it’s grown too heavy. So finally I just break down and ask him.
“How can you be so relaxed? Why aren’t you scared? How are you able to trust me when I’ve broken your heart once before?”
CC smiles. “We talked about this already. We both know what happened. And how we’ve changed in the couple of years since we dated the first time.”
I nod. “It’s very different.”
“Well, and setting all that aside, we’ve broken up once before. We know we can break up well. We were both good to one another, even then. So what’s to fear? What is there even to worry about?”
He’s right of course. We’ve lived through the worst case scenario. The end of something that we both held high hopes for. A brief separation and then the growth of a friendship that endured through the self-imposed emotional and spatial distance. An isolation that I thought would protect his feelings. Followed by miscommunication that led to more distance.
Until working on writing projects brought us back into one another’s orbits. The sudden shocking realization that somehow we’d both become people who clicked with one another.
Well, I’m sure he has his own version of events. That’s mine anyway.
In any event, he’s right. We’ve already experienced the failure state. So why would we dread it?
But even though every word he’s saying makes absolute sense, I’m holding on to my deepest fear.
I smile outwardly. But all of me is thinking I don’t want to be your ex again.
I Don’t Want to Be Your Ex Again #
I don’t want to be your ex again. And it’s not the losing you that I fear.
It’s that I never want to show you my dark side. My claws. My petty nature.
I only want you to know me as you’ve seen me. Noble. Mature.
The girl who is a little too good to be true.
I want you to always know and remember me as virtuous. Patient.
The woman with love in her eyes.
Not as I am when I’m wounded.
If this does end, the worst part won’t be losing you. Not at all. The biggest shame of all will be that you lose me. Not only as I am but also the memory of me as I was.
*
My book is out!