#makingtheworldsmaller

It was an odd evening to begin with: a weeknight in the middle of the fall, typically my busy season but suddenly quiet, and I was faced with dueling invitations with two friends I very much wanted to see.  My evening agenda fell into place: leave the office around 4:30, drop off bag at home, be downtown (DOWNtown) by 6 for invite #1, leave at 7:30 and arrive at invite #2 promptly at 8.  It was a natural progression, going from a salon opening in the Financial District to a dive bar in the East Village for my alumni club's Trivia Night.  Hell, why not, right?    

At my first destination, I enjoyed bubbly and hors d'oeuvres with my friend who worked for the salon, then poured myself into a cab and headed uptown.  The bar was decked out in full Big Midwestern School regalia in honor of our event, and they were collecting for the alumni scholarship fund at the door.  I walked in, saw my friend at the bar and we hugged as we sat back down.  As I threw my coat over my chair, I looked over my shoulder, and there he was.  

In the corner.  With some other guy.  Wearing glasses?  Funny, only because I was wearing mine too.  I had to process it in three waves.  

First, disbelief: Is that?  Christ.  Seriously, of all places?  Here??  Just sitting in the corner?  WTF.  

Secondly, mild, albeit silent and invisible panic:  Ho.  LEE.  SHIT.  

Finally, a steadfast zenlike calmness took over as I was fully absorbing what had just transpired: Walk away.  Get out of here.  No reason to stay.  Just go.  You don't need to be here, you don't have to subject yourself to this, and you don't need him.  

I calmly alerted my friend and said we'd stay for one drink, but that I wasn't interested in staying much longer.  

I thought back to the day he left. We'd just broken up on a chilly March afternoon that dropped 15 degrees as we sat outside the Museum of Natural History.

After 45 minutes, as melodramatically as possible, he handed me the set of keys to my apartment that had been his for the last two months and said, "These belong to you."

While walking to the subway, which was in the same direction as my apartment, it dawned on him he'd left all of his winter coats in my coat closet.  Where are those keys when you need 'em, I joked.  He followed me home, cleaned out the six or seven jackets and left.  

******************************************************************************************

But tonight.  Tonight was good.  It answered a lot of questions:

You're alive.

Still living in New York, I see.  

And you're still with her!  

And, yes, I'm still hurt and upset and angry.  I NEVER deserved the devastation and disappointment you caused.

But I'm so glad I'm not with someone as soulless as you.  That must be hard, and sad, and that's truly a shame.

And, it's confirmed: I don't even know what I would say to you if I ran into you, which I knew would inevitably happen eventually.  

During the silent, invisible mild panic that temporarily froze me in that bar stool, everything I've ever thought about saying to you in the last year and a half flooded my mind.  The spectrum of emotion I could have summoned on a whim ranged from genuine kindness to pure, inescapable rage that's festered in my soul and in my memory and in my apartment since the day you moved everything out and told me you were leaving, but not before you got in your parting shot:

"I still love you." 

Then you picked your coats back up and left.  And I haven't seen you since, until tonight.

Here's what I should have said then, and what you don't deserve to hear now:

No you don't.  I don't think you ever did.  You tried, and you wanted to, but you couldn't.  You were hurt, and scared, and you ran, but you're not strong enough to stay away from the pain you've become numb to.  I couldn't make you stay, and you didn't want to.  I should have let you go at New Year's, and you should have gone back then.  In a way, you're perfect together.  You don't deserve her, but you refuse to believe it.  And she doesn't deserve you, but neither of you will ever realize it.  And somehow, that's the dynamic you've settled on.  So go.  You shouldn't be there, but you shouldn't be here either.  Not with me.    

Instead, I said what I thought you needed to hear:

"I still love you too."

Because I did.  But I don't anymore.

You walked out and I closed the door behind you.  I sat down on my couch and just remember this sigh of relief leaving me, as though I knew I'd just dodged a bullet.  A steadfast, zenlike calmness took over as I fully absorbed what had just transpired.  Even so, I fell apart.  

But tonight, when I walked out of the bar and onto First Avenue, I felt it again.