This summer, I still think about it a million times a day, but I have decided that I can no longer expend anymore of my emotional energy. It’s been hurting me for way too long.

Because, as Hobbes wrote, an appetite for something that can be attained is understandable and acceptable – that’s just called hope. But to want for something with no possibility of attainment? That’s just despair. And I don’t want to feel that way anymore. It’s one thing to be “fine” with someone who doesn’t want to be with you, but it’s quite another to be “fine” with someone who has moved on from you.

This time, I’m “fine” with this, because I have to be.  In some ways, it’s a relief, almost. It’s no fun to keep getting hurt.

I have to admit, despite the fact that I loved being around him, I would spend every train ride home wracked with insecurity, my mind running over the hundred things I did wrong THIS weekend, and well, that pretty much felt awful. No one, except probably Laura, understood why I kept doing this – I’m a smart girl, and I’m supposed to be too smart for this.

I haven’t been able to give up until now because I never really got a chance in the first place – and I wanted one. I wish the timing had been better, because he fell into my life at the worst possible time – I wish it hadn’t just been a rebound fling. I wish I hadn’t been such a mess last year. Once he hurt me I was so scared of it happening again, that I just kept acting out and getting him to hurt me so at least I would know what to expect.

I don’t blame him for getting frustrated with me, but the reason we kept having the same conversation, was because no matter how many times he told me “no” his actions left open just enough possibility.

So I do hate this.

I hate that I spent so many months falling in and falling out, and falling in, spent a few weeks of having exactly what I wanted, only to wind up exactly where I started. I was just a whim – albeit a highly sexually charged whim. I hate that he was thinking of someone else any time he was with me. I feel stupid. That even though all the signs were there, and when we both let down our guards there was just this energy between us, I was wrong, over and over again.

And really, I hate the loss of possibility. When he kissed me for the first time a year and a half ago, after I had had a crush on him for so long, and completely given up on the chance of anything ever happening between us, there felt like there was so much possibility.

Just a whim. I have to remind myself of that. He asked if we could be friends. I glared through my tears that we are barely even friends now.

“Then why did you even think it would work in the long term?”

And the ugly truth is merely because I wanted it too. Because I wanted him to care.  Because I wanted to call him with good news or bad days and vice versa. Because I thought we could have, if we – who am I kidding, if he — let it happen. There doesn’t seem to be a point in trying for that anymore. He hasn’t spoken to me unless I have spoken to him first in three months. I know he doesn’t care if we stay friends.

The ambiguity was what killed me. Ambiguity always kills me. I told him that the first night. And good god I don’t want to think about that night, because I will cry if I think about how ridiculously happy it made me.

Anyway. I’m sad about this, but I’m also relieved, because I would have kept chasing him as long as he let me, and playing second best isn’t much fun. This is as amicable as possible; no malice on my part, and not even any bitterness. I don’t hate him.

I need to cut ties, because no matter how tough-as-nails I have the ability to be, it’s way too painful to see him with someone else right now. I’m only human. I care about him, and wish only the best for him, but that doesn’t mean I have the desire to smile through this kind of tears. There’s nothing noble in that.

So I’m writing this, because it’s all I know how to do, and after all, HWSNBN was the one who told me last summer after reading ridiculously dramatic entries “if you want to be a writer, it will happen for you…get people to start investing in you now.  And writing it down makes it real.

And it isn’t going to hurt a year from now; this too shall pass. This will happen again…Years from now, I’m going to be laughing with Laura and Sebastian about the crush I have on some guy who just joined the department at whatever school I”m teaching at. He’ll be cute, and intelligent, and arrogant, and Laura will tease me “Remember how you used to have such a crush on…”
“Shut up, don’t remind me,” I”ll interrupt. “God, he was so cute. But he was such a jerk, I don’t know what I ever liked him”

(Let me count the ways that I abhor you. You were never a very good friend…and you were never very kind, and you let me down, almost every time. But what can I say? I adored you)

As a writer, it’s my occupational hazard to romanticize. But even Ayn Rand was a total drama queen.