On People Who Surprise You

I hung up the phone and laughed. I had just received the closure I didn’t know I needed. Three and a half years later I understood where he was coming from that October night. Of course I had moved on years earlier but it wasn’t until that night that I felt something I had never felt before—closure. I paced around my apartment chuckling to myself, saying “what the fuck” over and over again. A weightless weight had just been lifted.

At the end of my life the time we were together will seem like a millisecond, but he was the first person I ever loved. It was one of those all consuming loves and when it ended I was devastated. There were times we spoke after breaking up that I couldn’t even see the caller ID without getting nervous. I never thought we could talk again, let alone be friends. Surprisingly enough, our conversation a few weeks ago showed me there is still chemistry there, and while it is no longer romantic, it’s palpable. A chemistry that comes from a place of deep-seeded friendship, respect and ultimately love. Our romantic relationship was a result of years of friendship and probably should never have morphed into anything romantic, but of course that didn’t make hearing “this isn’t forever” any easier.

It wasn’t until I felt a “this isn’t forever” feeling about a perfectly nice man here in the city that I understood where he was standing all those years ago. And it’s as simple as this: if you are lucky enough to know exactly what you want you shouldn’t compromise it, even if what you have in the interim is perfectly fun and good.

It might take years to realize but life has a funny way of showing you how things are supposed to be. As with everything in life there are exceptions. And he is now the exception to my “men and women cannot really be friends” theory. While he is no longer the confidant I run to, he knows so much about who I was during those formative years that it would be a shame to lock our friendship away. We really are just too good of friends. As we have discussed here on the blog, people come in and out of your life. You never really know who is going to be a “lifer”. I know there is a reason we have come back together. If for nothing else to show me that believing the best in people isn’t a trait naivety but of hope. Because just when I was ready to believe everyone who told me he didn’t deserve to be in my life, he turned out to be the person I always knew he could be.

I hope he and I both find what we wished could have been there. And while we go down that road and compare dating stories, I know we will continue to sarcastically mock each other over text message. It is a beautiful friendship.