The damnedest thing about all of this is where it's at now: two souls staring at each other across a vast ocean of time and distance with the realization that they will never be together. And that's the way it has to be.
Two Friday nights ago I had a conversation with my friend Cindi. I've known her for 15 years this May. We began talking about how our lives were, photography, and whatnot and somewhere (for me at least) between beer 1 and 2 I finally had the conversation that we've been avoiding: how we felt about each other. This spanned over two hours of chat on Facebook.
The main portion of this chat began with me saying that in my lifetime I've ever only really been in love with three women – Jessica, Jen (for better or worse), and Cindi. She knew she was one of the three. The difference between her and the other two is that I would go to the ends of the Earth for her. Maybe that's what true love is. Sometimes it's the puppy dog “follow you anywhere/let me see if that's what she's interested in.” Sometimes it's “I like you a lot.” Sometimes it's a hurt you feel when you're not or can't be with the other person. With her it was “I would do anything in the Universe for her.”
I can honestly say that falling in love with her wasn't anything I had planned on. I remember the first time I met her – I was given the assignment of working in a call center and she interviewed me. I remember asking her after the fact why she did and she said she was intrigued by someone who was “different.” Following leaving the business she wanted to stay in contact with me and we were friends because she was then-married to a guy named Chris, a former bartender who worked at an auto shop detailing cars.
The first time I didn't have anything to do with her is when she brought up the idea as a fact. I was talking with her on the phone and she said I had feelings for her because it came to her one morning as she stared into her cereal. Up to that point I never considered it – I was just enthralled with who she was. Independent, interesting, fun, and a dozen other qualities I'd never seen in any other woman. I took about a three month sabbatical before I stopped off at her new business again and talked with her. We slowly began being friends again.
I officially left Agony (er, Albany) Georgia for the first time in the summer of 1999. I remember that her and I spent the day hanging out, watching my movie, “Love Bytes,” and we had lunch at the Burger King. She didn't want me to go but I felt I had to prove something to myself and her. I would've stayed if she had told me how she felt about me.
I kept in contact with her during college. I called her on Monday mornings when I was hungover. I called her once before a date to a “Weird Al” concert. I kept in on what was happening in her life – going to the doctor, divorcing Chris, etc. In my head was a plan to finish my Bachelor's in Film and ggo down and tell her how I really felt. The December before I graduated I went to visit my parents and had dinner with her one night. She walked with me outside to my car and I hugged her, holding on to her and pressing my face against hers. Maybe I was a coward. Maybe I didn't know how to tell her how I felt about her. I watched her walk back into her home and close the door. I then left.
May came around and following graduation I went to spend a week with my parents and to go see her. I tried calling her number but to no avail. Her cellphone number wasn't accepting calls and I had no clue as to what was going on. One night I prayed and asked God what had happened to her and the response was that she was alive and alright, but that's all God gave me. I had to suffice with that.
November I receive an e-mail from her stating that she was married again and living in Jacksonville, FL. I was just happy to hear from her. We talked on the phone and whenever I called according to her husband she was “tickled pink” to hear from me.
Fast-forward to 2005 when I move back down South. She offers me a few freelance assignments and I work for her as a videographer/assistant photographer for weddings. I hold back how I feel but I notice that any time around the atmosphere around her changes. We share something that no one else in the world can.
Come January of 2007 I have to make a decision as to whether or not I stay in SW Georgia. I'm working at a crap job in a warehouse for $7 an hour. I love Cindi and I know that she has feelings for me that she doesn't disguise as well as she thinks she does. I know that her life is much bigger than mine and me, I try my best at doing the right thing a concept of which I'm not sure exists as I get older. I don't want to be the guy who destroys a marriage and throws a monkey wrench into something someone else has put time and effort into. Figuring that the pain of fucking everything up for her would be worse than my own I decided to leave.
Five years later I finally tell her such. Maybe not every syllable but we find ourselves in love with each other with the ability to do nothing about it. She feels “a damn fool” for not saying something to me earlier, that she's had deep feelings for me from when we first met. I feel a coward for never being able to say it. This is how the fate of soulmates goes.
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Jen was a bitch.
To some she's The Unspeakable. To myself and a few others, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (not Lisbeth Salander, mind you, but she does have a small tattoo of a dragon on her stomach).
I've never really proclaimed this until I had that Johari's window-type moment, only from two different friends. One was Michael who has listened to enough of the story to either upchuck or create a bestselling novel. The other was my ex-gf Rachel who, although with bare minimum of story, came up with the same conclusion as Michael.
She was fucking John while she was with me.
So goes the last of any notion of nice, any halo that I hung over her head, any issue I didn't want to deal with. Maybe I was cheated. Maybe a lot of things. There's no “cold case” to solve on this one. Foregoing intricacies there will always be a hurt or pain associated with whatever happened but in the end it wasn't my fault.
And that's that.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Life is all about making goals now. Do this. Do that. Don't forget this other thing. Following the last two semi-posts my emotional baggage can now fit inside the overhead bin of a commuter plane. There's one last thing that I have to do: find and talk with my real dad. Stay tuned.
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