The last time I saw him, he was standing in the cold at the Metro Station, hands in his coat pockets, staring up at the train that would take me away from him forever. His name was David and he was a beautiful soul. He was tall and thin, with gorgeous green eyes and a big fabulous smile. He had a great personality and a terrific sense of humor one that drew me to him like a moth to a flame. I met David shortly after I moved to Florida. I was 23, alone, and he was one of the first people who had been kind enough to befriend me. We quickly became the best of friends, spending time together either grabbing something to eat at Denny's or just watching movies at my apartment. We talked, we laughed, we shared secrets. We were great friends and no lines had ever been crossed to say anything otherwise.
One Saturday morning at the crack of dawn, David knocked on my apartment door. I had been sleeping up to that point, but I got up, let him in without saying a word, and groggily shuffled my way back into my cozy bed. David plopped himself on the bed next to me, put his hand under the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. He turned his head toward me and said, "Can I ask you something?"
With one eye barely opened, I mumbled, "Yeah, what?"
"How do you know if you're in love with someone?"
The question dumbfounded me. I didn't know the answer. I didn't know how to respond. I didn't know who he was talking about, but I know it made me feel very jealous and I was suddenly very awake and alert. I replied with something along the lines of, "I don't knowdo you think about her a lot?"
"I think about her all the time, from the minute I wake up until I go to sleep at night," he replied.
"Do you want to see her all the time? Spend as much time with her as possible?" I continued my questioning. He replied that he did. To end the uneasiness of the conversation, I simply said, "Then it might well be that you're in love." I was 23 what the hell did I know?!
He got up, customarily kissed me on the forehead and left to go to work, without any other discussion. He left me perplexed, confused, and wondering who his mystery woman was. He hadn't mentioned anyone to me before why was he keeping this secret? I did not like the feeling of jealousy welling up inside of me. I knew I cared for David, but did I care more than I let myself believe? Why would I feel jealous of this mystery woman if I didn't? The feeling gnawed at me all day long.
Later in the afternoon, David came back to my apartment. I asked, "What's up?"
He looked me in the eyes and said, "I told you I want to spend as much time with her as possible." Then I knew. All the anxiousness and jealousy I felt that whole day vanished in that instant. It was replaced with excitement, inexplicable joy, and relief. He, too, felt what I'd been holding in, burying somewhere deep inside me for fear of ruining a perfectly good friendship. And so it began - the relationship romantic.
It was a wonderful time in my life. It was a time where I felt truly connected to another human being on so many intimate levels levels I'd never experienced or even knew existed before David. The relationship was great and we made it work even when I took a job that would relocate me to a city more than two hours away, or as David would say, "Seven hours if one travels by U-Hell." David was finishing college and he was busy with school and holding a part time job. Our weekends together worked for both of us at the time.
David graduated from college with a Bachelors Degree in Political Science. Shortly afterward, he surprised me when he told me he had been offered a position on Capitol Hill. He asked what I thought. What was screaming through my head was, "NO! DON'T LEAVE!" but in my heart, I knew it was what he wanted. He had worked so hard for that degree and he was so intensely into the political scene. Mostly I was happy for his opportunity and told him that no matter what I wanted, I thought he should go. It would be best for him.
He did go. We talked, wrote letters, and kept in touch. I managed to see him every couple of months. We would joke about having six kids and me driving a minivan and having a house with a white picket fence. We dreamed of the future together. We hoped together. But time and distance have a way of tearing people apart of beginning the process of forgetting.
That winter, when he'd been gone about six months, I planned a trip to New York to spend Christmas with my family. After Christmas, I took the train to D.C. to spend New Year's with David. As the train pulled into the Braddock station, I was beside myself with excitement. Looking out the window of the train, there he was tall, handsome, bundled up, and waiting for me. We went to the house he shared with a couple other young people, and I started unpacking my bag. David showered as he had to go to work that day. The plan was for me to meet him at his office so he could introduce me to his co-workers, and then he and I would have lunch along the cold Potomac.
With David gone, I was alone in his room. I saw the corner of a book sticking out from between the mattresses. I pulled it out and realized it was his journal. Immediately I placed it back in its hiding place I felt wrong and guilty for even having held it in my hands. But the power it had over me was too strong. I struggled inside myself with whether or not to read it just to get a glimpse into what he was really thinking and feeling about being in Washington, but more importantly, what he was thinking about me.
As wrong as it was, I resolved only to read the last couple of entries. What I read the words that were written in David's handwriting threw me into a tailspin of pain, agony, anger, and betrayal. I got on the phone with a friend in New York and cried, yelled, and wailed. My heart had been shattered. The beautifully painted picture of my future crumbled instantly into nothingness. I had to pull myself together, my friend said. You deserve better than this, my friend said. Come home, my friend said.
I packed my bag which had just been unpacked an hour earlier. I called the train station to change my return ticket from after the New Year to the first ride out that afternoon. It was December 29. David called and asked if I was sure about which train to take to get to his office. I told him I knew the Metro stations and I would see him at noon. I tried to sound as calm as I could.
I found his car in front of the building, thankful for the broken door lock, and put my bag in it. I went into his office, forced the fakest of smiles and shook hands and made polite small talk with his friends, and then he and I left to go to a nearby deli for lunch. As we walked along the river, I could barely look at him. I felt horrible for having betrayed his trust by reading his journal, but I felt even more horrible that he betrayed my trust by breaking the rule of monogamy. All that I thought was sacred between us suddenly diminished to rubble and I felt foolish and embarrassed.
I told him I had a confession to make and that I hoped he would forgive me. He stopped walking and turned to face me. With shame, I told him I read part of his journal. His facial expression froze. His eyes became blank and as gray as the winter sky. He said nothing for what seemed like hours. I stood there, shivering in the cold, feeling dread like a child about to be punished.
I told him how sorry I was for violating his privacy, but that I was not sorry about what I found out. He asked if we could discuss this when he got home that evening, but I told him I would not be there. I told him I would be on the next train out and I needed to get to the Metro station. He asked me to please stay, to talk about it later, but I would give it no consideration. For the first time in my life, I believed my friend when she said I deserved better.
He insisted on driving me to the Metro, although I was quite capable of walking. His car passed several Metro stations, which was irritating me. The smothering silence of the drive was excruciating. Everything inside of me wanted to cry, to scream, to yell at him for hurting me so badly, but my voice could find no words, and neither could his. The silence between us could not be defeated.
He pulled up to the familiar Braddock station. Without a word, he got out of the car. I practically jumped out, grabbing my bag from the back seat. I had to get away from this person who, once so familiar and safe, now seemed like a harmful stranger. He tried to take my bag from me, to carry it up the platform, but I said no. There was nothing to say and there was no reason to delay our separation. No words we could have said would have changed anything that day. I walked up to the platform to wait on the train, which thankfully, came quite quickly. As I boarded, I looked down, and David was still standing in the same place in which I left him, hands in his pockets, looking up at the train. I wanted so badly to jump off the train and run into his arms and tell him it would all be okay that we'd work it out I'll go back to the house and we would talk later. But my body wouldn't move I felt paralyzed by anger and betrayal, and that quiet little voice in the back of my head saying I did deserve better. There was nothing I could do except watch him standing there, knowing he was holding a huge piece of my heart, as the train slowly pulled away.
To occupy my mind, I decided to open my daily meditation book. My bookmark was placed on December 29th and I opened right up to the title, "Moving On." The meditation was about how it sometimes becomes necessary to end certain relationships in order to take care of ourselves, how people come into our lives for a reason, a season, and how when it's time to move on, we will know. It went on about timing and how it's all perfectly divine. And I thought, how true. How agonizingly ironic and true and comforting those words were on that cold gray day.
It took me a long time to move on, and to have those intense feelings of love for David fade away into acceptance. I still think of David once in a while, and although my first memory is usually him standing there at the Metro station with his hands in his pockets, I also recall a lot of good times. I like to think of our relationship not as a mistake or a waste of time, but rather the opportunity to ready us for the next phase in our lives. Each relationship we have is like a stepping stone in life. They give us the opportunity to grow and to learn and my relationship with David taught me many important lessons about myself, for all of which I am grateful.
So even though losing love sounds and feels like a negative thing at that moment the magic shatters and the recovery in the days, weeks, months or years that follow, it is actually be the beginning to finding something great a knowledge and understanding of what makes us who we are, our strengths, our weaknesses and everything in between. Over time, it isn't as much about losing love as it is finding our true selves.