He exploded into my life like a whirlwind, changing everything I believed. There was a connection deeper than anything I’d ever encountered, a bond that still proves nearly impossible to break. But each time, our forever has a time limit.
I can’t say exactly how I knew, but I did. It was a feeling I couldn’t shake. Something was wrong and he needed to know I was still here. I came across it by chance, a complete accident, or fate you might say. One thing lead to another, and my phone rang.
“Will you see me?” I ask.
“Will you show up?” He replies.
The drive was shorter than I expected but felt as though it took years to complete. My brain rattled off conversations, imagining how things would go, praying that I could keep calm. It didn’t feel real.
It didn’t feel real as I sat in the lobby, or as I sat in the booth and waited. It felt like a dream, like a nightmare, like a journey through my imagination…. It didn’t feel real as he walked up to the booth. I didn’t think it would ever feel real by this point.
But then, he sat down across from me. The energy between us was palpable and the whole moment felt like it shook. The pain of every moment leading up to this, the relief of him actually being present here in front of me, and the stunned shock of this being real all hit me with the force of a semi-truck. This moment couldn’t be faked. I laughed at the irony of it all, the comfort in a horrible situation and the joy of watching him laugh too. And I cried. It felt as though my heart would burst out of my chest. The same feeling I’d always gotten around him. Finally we settled into our rhythm, and found ourselves in a place we’d rarely visited before.
It felt like every other time he’d sat across from me. Dinners, drinks, Skype dates…. Except for the talking. He talked and he listened. I cried, I laughed. We told jokes, he smiled. The pain floating through the barriers we’d kept from each other all these years was only vaguely discernable. The rest of the world simply melted away. Sitting in that moment, we found parts of ourselves that were buried in our togetherness.
When it was time to go, we both stood. “I love you” was the last thing I said. “I know” he responded, “don’t look back”. And I turned and walked away.
But just like every other time I left him, I looked back. And just like every other time he’d left me, he was still hesitating, watching me walk away.
“I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.”
Everything happens for a reason. We can’t change our circumstances, but rather must learn to stop and enjoy each moment. Sometimes things go wrong simply to teach us to forgive and live a better existence. And sometimes they go just right, and they teach us that together doesn’t have to be forever. Sometimes forever is only 60 minutes in a place we’d never thought we’d want to be.
Markie Jones
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