Torrents of Spring

"Am I a bad woman?"
- Maria Nikolaevna (Turgenev)

Today is a perfect and interesting day. Packing up the place and getting ready for the house. Perfect temperature outside with overcast skies keeping it cozy but not hot. A nice breeze is pouring in through all the open windows and music fills the place. And then a few words shared with you puts a nice layer of icing over the top of it all. I think it's funny how even after all this time, sharing a tiny moment with you like today's back and forth gives me this certain feeling of happiness that nothing else does. Unlocking that hidden little part that will always be yours, I guess. :)

Sometimes you say things that reflect many of my thoughts during the days/weeks/months between our little conversations. As I'm prone to saying lately "My life is as good as it was when you were in it... almost" :)
Pretty much exactly what you say... that you're happy... mostly. I completely understand that and feel the same.

From time to time I've wondered "what if" and tried to picture where we would be right now. Almost 6 years later... so... we'd be married, probably for about 4 years by now. And the places I have gone in between... the cruises, swims in both oceans, nights under the stars on beaches, endless trips to the show and the afterglow... all would have been with you.
And the plan for a child would happen in the next year. I'm even more sure that's not what I want in my life now, but I do wonder if that would have changed were we together. My love for you made me so happy that I would have done anything to see you happy in return... so it's hard not to wonder...

But, I also think about where I'm at right now and how you leaving was directly/indirectly responsible for that. If you had stayed I wouldn't have come to Austin, wouldn't have ended up in my dream job and wouldn't have met some of my current friends that will probably be around forever. And even if you left but we had stayed together long distance then I probably would have ended up in Boulder... and again, I wouldn't be where I'm at now.
True, I could have ended up in some other wonderful job, some other great house with different friends... but I guess it's a bit harder to play the "what if" game when your real life is very good. :)

As for my image of you... I really don't think you have to worry about that. I think I actually have a really good idea of who you are. I think I knew it even back then... you're different now, but I could see how special you were and would be. Although you made decisions that I wished you hadn't, I think I could see in you the person that you are now and I knew that was the person I was looking for... you just didn't know it yourself yet.
I think that was the real tragedy for me. Being older, having been through a bit more of life, I was maybe a bit more aware of what the situation was, what it would become and maybe that if we let it slip away then we might forever ask "What if...?"
It was very frustrating being alone in that knowledge. It made it very difficult to accept the situation and I apologize for that.

So my image of you is that you have become (or are becoming) the person that I so badly wanted you to be back then... not that I didn't love you just as you were... I just wanted you to have the same... wisdom? experience?... as me and know that in a few years there will be a small void that might last forever if you left.

You aren't a bad person, you're just a person like everyone else and we all have... I wouldn't say regrets, that's too strong... but we all wonder if the decisions we made were always the right ones. Sometimes it's easy to know, sometimes not. I think ultimately I'm a better person for having known you, having lost you and having to pick myself up afterward. I still think I have a long way to go to be a good person, but I do worry that I would be nowhere near the man I am now if you and I had stayed together. I probably wouldn't have been able to give you the happiness you deserved. That isn't meant to say that you were bad for me... rather *I* was bad for me and I think I needed a few years of having everything stripped from me to come to grips with who I really was and how far that person was from the one I wanted to be.

The one thing that I do feel really good about is that I can go through the rest of my life knowing that I at least tried. I asked you simply "Stay"... just for a little while so that we would know. I wasn't manipulative and I didn't hold it against you when you said you couldn't. So now when I hear stories of people letting love slip away I can at least know that I didn't stand by and let it go quietly without saying boldly what I felt and what I wanted. :)

When I'm in Dallas I often have to take the Knox-Henderson exit from 75 and every time I do I replay the conversation we had as we took that ramp on the way to Samba/Milk... about long distance and how you asked if I could wait 6 months to see you again... "I could do 6 months standing on my head... as long as I knew you were out there and that I would see you again". That was a great moment. :)

So be happy and know that I'm always here and that you're not alone in the way you feel. :)

And now, since it just came up in the playlist, says exactly how I felt back then and was something I played during that night at The Orchid Bar when I so wished you had been there to share it:

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Olive - You're Not Alone
In a way, it's all a matter of time
I will not worry for you, You'll be just fine
Take my thoughts with you, and when you look behind
You will surely see a face that you recognize

You're not alone, I'll wait till the end of time
Open your mind, Surely it's plain to see
You're not alone, I'll wait till the end of time for you
Open your mind, Surely there's time to be with me

It is the distance, that makes life a little hard
Two minds that once were close, Now so many miles apart
I will not falter though, I'll hold on till you're home
Safely back where you belong, And see how our love has grown

You're not alone, I'll wait till the end of time
Open your mind, Surely it's plain to see
You're not alone, I'll wait till the end of time for you
Open your mind, Surely there's time to be with me

---

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Another Time, Another Place

Early morning moments, 5am on a flight back from Veracruz, Mexico. Watching the sunrise after a weekend of crashing waves, Cirque du Soleil, sunning at poolside, 2 trips to the show at the water's edge and again feeling as though I'm going through the motions, living the moments, but still missing something to make them complete. It was a nice trip, but...




And now another odd predicament. An ex's best friend is getting married. A month ago we met them in San Antonio to be introduced to the new man. In the process the bride's (married) sister came along. I developed a little crush and could tell there was some mutuality to it. I could make her laugh while her husband seemed to only annoy her.
The bride has now asked me to compose something for her to walk down the aisle to as she isn't fond of the traditional wedding march. So I dragged a melody out that I wrote 20+ years ago but never found a home for. Only I find the real inspiration in it all being driven by the little sister. So there I will be, at a wedding (always a favorite romantic venue for me) with an ex, watching the ex's best friend marry to music that I wrote, all inspired by the bride's married little sister.

Heh. Gotta love how I can never just keep anything simple.

Trying to get the house ready, get packed, get moved, buy furniture, etc etc etc. There is a ton to do and not enough time to do it. But once it's all done I'll be much happier