Happy and sad at the same time…

An era in my life has truly passed.

Tonight, I messaged FG on ICQ, a medium he and I have been chatting on for 7+ years. I noticed he was actually available and I wanted to commiserate with him about Indiana. (Refresher course: FG and I went to high school together, and he moved to California a few years ago. He knows how my mom can be and he knows how I feel about Indiana in general.)

I teased him about his upcoming trip to Europe, of which I am insanely jealous (I want a vacation!), and about the girl he was going there with. I reminded him that he definitely needed to get laid if he got the chance, which made him stick his tongue out at me (he’s so conservative… it’s hilarious.) Then he told me something I didn’t expect. He said, “Well, I guess I should tell you I’m seeing someone, and you know who it is.”

Of course, I knew immediately… he’s had a crush on another girl from his other high school, since before he even knew me. Although she turned him down a long time ago, apparently she’s finally come to her senses and they’re really in love. I knew immediately when he told me that there wouldn’t be anyone else for him… that in a couple of years, I’d go to their wedding, and all that. It all hit me like a bombshell and for some reason, I started crying.

I figured out pretty quickly why I was crying. First of all, I’m immensely happy for him. I love FG to death, and he completely deserves to be happy. But what was really welling up inside of me was regret. Regret that I couldn’t be that person for him. I know he’s going to be amazingly happy in this life; he’s going to get married and have kids and they’re going to have kids and he’s going to travel and buy some cute little house in the mountains somewhere next to a lake (that’s your second home, FG… the vacation home, yes? No, not in Canada. In the Pacific Northwest.) And he’s going to park his phat BMW out front and all the little redhead kiddies are going to hop out and he’s just going to grin like mad. And I’ll just have to sit back and laugh and say “I told you so,” because he’s had this future planned since high school, and probably really even before that.

I wanted to be a part of that future so badly, that even though I knew it wasn’t my true destiny, because it just sounded so damn happy. I mean, who wouldn’t want cute little kiddies and a nice house in the mountains? And who wouldn’t want to be married to one of the sweetest, nicest guys on this planet, who will love you with his whole heart, and who would do anything to make you happy as long as you commit the same thing to him? Who will look into your eyes and say “I love you,” and mean it so deeply that you can feel it reverberate through your whole soul? And that’s what had me crying, because it turned out he wasn’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for him, and yet I tasted that life and some part of me still wants that.

FG and I never would have made it, and I know this now, and I think I knew it way back in 1998 when we first broke up. I’m an entrepreneur and he doesn’t understand that lifestyle; his house and kiddies come at a price, and that price is that he is risk-averse. In 1998 I wrote this poem when we first broke up, and the last two verses still hold true… I’m looking for someone where life will be an adventure, and with FG you always know what you’re getting. Some part of me just couldn’t handle that, and while I still want kiddies and a nice comfy house, I also want more of a thrill ride than life with FG was ever going to be.

Still, I have to say, he saw me as a messed-up teenager and was one of the first people to see the beautiful woman inside. He brought that part out of me and it’s truly amazing. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without his calming influence and his amazing ability to forgive me again and again as I struggled with right and wrong (and broke his heart several times in the process.) I owe him so much and yet I am completely unable to repay my debt to him–on purpose, I think, because I know he wants me to pay it forward and love others with as much compassion as he loves me. I will never be able to truly explain how thankful I am for everything he has done for me.

One day last year, he looked at me and said, “You know, I think I’m done here,” and I knew it was true. His mission in my life was to show me love and beauty so I could show it to others, and he did. Whenever he does decide to get married — and it’ll probably be a couple years yet — you’ll find me crying my eyes out in the audience, so unbelievably happy that someone who showed me so much love has finally found what he truly wanted.

God bless you, man. You deserve it.