Sometimes the truth weighs heavier

It was a late afternoon when she received a text from one of her best friends to meet up for dinner. It’d been a long day at work. And she needed a bit of distracting. So they met up for sushi. The waitress had just finished handing them their menu’s when her phone rang and her other best friend was on the other line. She smiled and said “Oh look who it is” showing the phone to her friend across the table.

“Hello Sunshine!” She said in her usual cheery voice.

What followed were a multitude of pleasantries, and there was an eerie sense of worry that came over her. She knew in her heart that, that conversation had much more to do with something important than what the weather was this time a year. She could hear the nervousness in her friend’s voice so she finally said

 “So what’s up? What can I help you with?”

“Well, I don’t know how to say this.”

And her heart sank

“Well just say it.” She squirmed in her chair.

“I received an invitation in the mail.”

“And?” She still couldn’t put things together

“He’s getting married.”

“Oh, god” she gasped.

That moment felt like being at the end of a mountain when the snow separates from the ice caps, and an avalanche rushes down. And you gulp and close your eyes like if that will be enough to help you escape its wrath.

That moment felt like being in the middle of a frozen lake skating and feeling carefree. Till the ice beneath you cracks, and gives, and the freezing waters begin to devour you. And you throw your hands up in the air. Like if reaching for the surface will keep you from drowning.

That moment felt like being in the middle of a concrete city surrounded by buildings when a magnitude earthquake hits and the walls start to cave in. And no matter what you do you can’t weave fast enough before another wall comes crashing down. And you flail your limbs as though it will be enough to stop the earth from swallowing you whole.

Her friend continued on and she asked a flurry of questions. Who was she? Had they dated a long time? Why hadn’t she ever seen her? Had he loved her long? A thousand questions to make sense of one undeniable truth. He wasn’t hers to keep anymore.

Her friends did their best to comfort her. The one on the phone lived in another state and could not be there physically so she arranged with the other to tell her this way. So she wouldn’t be alone. So she’d have someone to shed the tears with. Once she was done asking a million questions she got off the phone and the tears began.

She did her best to wipe them but every time she did another quickly followed. It was a type of sadness unimagined. A thousand emotions came to surface. So many she’d tried for years to suffocate.

Their love had been the kind of love that stays with you a lifetime. He was the boy that taught her what love was. She was the girl who brought him joy beyond compare. And though that love was young, it was pure. It was everlasting. They grew in years together. But she was broken. And he could never see that. He so direly believed in her that he didn’t see her jagged edges. He saw so much potential in her and that was enough for him to keep on loving her through many years. But the brokenness in her made her push him away time and time again.

The years went on, and their unwavering love caved inevitably. She loved him so much she couldn’t drag him down with her. He never understood that sacrifice. So she did her best to move on, dated, and in crowds of men she searched for his face. In hearts of others she called his name. And after every breakup she suffered, her heart longed even more for him. But it was too long, too late, too wrong.

6 years passed and she saw him rare and few. She heard of no other in his life, so to hear that he was now getting married not only shook her, it left her breathless.

“It’s the end of an era” she said to her friend

“Yes, it really, really is.”

She began explaining things to her best friend as if she didn’t already know.

“I never wanted to hurt him. I just wanted to save him from myself.”

“I know.”

“It’s silly isn’t it? To cry over someone who hasn’t been a part of your life in so long? I have no right to be such a mess.”

“NO, it’s not silly. It is normal. It is expected, believe me I know.” And she did know. It’d happen to her too. “Everyone’s favorite unrequited love story is really over. It really is the end of an era. Not only for you, but for so many others as well. It is sad, it is heart wrenching sad. And you have every right to cry over it.”

So she did, as quietly as she could in the middle of an uptown sushi place. Surrounded by people and lovers, and stories that were beginning. As hers was direly ending.

Dinner was over and she walked to her car. She barely made it inside when the weeping broke through. Like a dam that gives, obliterating everything in its path. She went home and pulled from the back of her closet a box she kept well hidden. Every physical part she had left of him was in that box. Pictures, and CD’s he burned for her, stuffed animals, a collection of snow globes from every city he went to, a music box with two little porcelain Chihuahua’s inside. T-shirts, and hats, and post cards, letters and cards. And in one wooden box, two wilting roses. The first he ever gave her.

And with every object, a memory appeared. And the memorabilia of their love story played their silent movie in her mind and heart, as she cried uncontrollably.

She crawled into bed that night and put Michael Buble’s song “You were always on my mind” on a loop. She laid back and faced the empty side of the bed and she wrapped her arms around his absence one very last time.

Sometimes the truth weighs heavier than all the castles you painted, than all the dreams you created, than all the endings you thought were fated.