Back from the dead.
So I’ve been knee deep in husband shopping, minding my own business, dating as if I’m on payroll. Then wake up from a very, very late night at a dear friend’s wedding reception over the weekend…when Mr. Ex pops up on my Palm’s 2”x2” screen. He asked to please talk at my convenience, in person. Within minutes, my only sister by blood tells me Mr. Ex has reached out to her too, hoping to talk. Suddenly I feel like the stereotypical guy who hears the “T” word and freezes.
I’m immediately taken back to a season six scene in Sex & The City where Carrie is moving on with her love life and Mr. Big tries to come back. She has a compelling and passionate monologue right before she’s moving to Paris with her new Love-ah Aleksandr, and candidly tells him, “You do this every time! *Every* time! What? Do you have some sort of radar? Carrie might be happy - it’s time to sweep in and shit all over it? Oh, it’s never different! It’s six years of *never* being different! This is it! I am done! Don’t call me ever again! Forget you know my number! In fact, forget you know my name! And you can drive up this street all you want - because I don’t live here any more.”
It has been exactly one year since I joined the single ladies club. Him and I had been dating on and off for 70% of the last decade, and the past dozen months have been our longest stretch of separation. In order to embrace the new chapter of my life sans Mr. Ex (formerly ‘Mr. Big’ before the breakup), I decided to treat the relationship’s ending as a death. It was the only way I could conceive of moving forward and not emotionally live in limbo until our next inevitable reunion. Literally I envisioned our courtship as a body that had been on life support at the very end, the plug was pulled, and there was no bringing it back. “We” died and it was time to mourn and move on.
I’ve changed, grown, healed, and had a metamorphosis of my own in 2009. I’m certain that he too along the way has also undergone a transformation.
Someone asked me recently if Carrie and Mr. Big had not gotten married, do I think she would have ever gotten over him. My answer was no. Yes she would have found someone else (an Aiden) who made her happy, but there would always be a piece of her heart that belonged to him.
Although it is a bit silly, and equally eerie, how much my relationship has meticulously mirrored this HBO-scripted show [he is even mentioned in my blog’s bio for goodness sake] I can’t deny that after seeing the movie & the couple finally moving forward to marriage on their own terms, that I too thought maybe our reality would continue to mimic the plot. But I have never been one to dream in a clouded Disney cartoon fantasy frame of mind. In fact, I often see the world through black and white vision. Yet, I’m also someone who is a colorful, hopeless romantic and appreciates another quote of CB, “It wasn’t logic, it was love.”
Without naming names, and if they weren’t subject to a jail sentence, there are friends of mine who would scalp the guy with their own bare hands for his stunts. Not to mention a family who exhausted their patience and respect of our roller coaster ride, and would have to dig deep inside for forgiveness. So to even consider bringing something back from the dead that is buried 6 feet under is beyond my understanding.
And at the same time I also can’t begin to articulate, comprehend or explain the magnetic fields, a fundamental law of attraction that exists between us. I’ve never in all my life felt someone’s soul, their actual presence, touch mine. Without a shadow of doubt I believe our purpose in each others walk on earth is much larger and purposeful than what my simple mind can fathom.
In the past, I was a moth. I was a character in my own life. Now I sport a butterfly outfit and wear the director’s hat. But he is still my flame.
I’m meeting Mr. Ex tonight with no agenda, no preconceived notions, no motive. My heart and I are going with a clean slate onto the next scene.
