04-October-2006

I avoided the internet for a month after seeing Jai’s latest MSN screen name: “I’m over you.” I sunk into that familiar heartbreak. It’s not bad enough that he removed me his contact list when he thought, “If you could have the heart to leave me, then you don’t deserve to be remembered”. He just had to add insult to injury by telling everyone in his contact list how over he is of me.

Like, how could Jai get over me? How dare he get over me? All I could think of, night and day, was Jai. I’d be having friends in my face and would still have Jai closer to me than any of them. If I hadn’t gotten over him when I was the one who bailed out on our marriage, how could he get over me?

I could have just removed him from my contact list. I could have just dismissed him the way he acted out his dismissal. But I kept writing and thinking about him. Verses and prose poured generously out of desperate longing for him. I was still waiting for him. Waiting for him to miss me enough to initiate contact, may it be a risen hell or methodical damnations. A part of me still clenched with fear of his disapproval. All of which meant how undone I was with him.

What made it harder was that I was getting involved with a new guy who, at first, reminded me so much of Jai. Every time a sweet moment passes between him and me, I’d automatically recall Jai, thinking “now why couldn’t I have this with Jai?”

Then one day, just like the day he removed me from his contact list, I said “this is the last time that you’re going to hurt me.”

That’s when I removed him from my list. That’s when I stopped waiting for him. That’s when his solitary email couldn’t stir or twist a single emotion in me. The relief of having a light heart again after so long was similar to the relief I feel when releasing a block of frozen shit off my ever constipated butt.

Of course, daylight can be deceitful. It makes my heart hopeful and strong. Whereas when dusk falls, and darkness shrouds all secrets with restlessness, and thoughts of Jai came back.

These thoughts came back in a form that made me understand, and certainly believe, that he never really loved me. At least not the way that I wanted to be loved. He didn’t love me; he couldn’t love me, because there was always someone else better. It could have been someone I should’ve become, or someone he expected me to become, or someone who was beyond his reach. Either ways, he couldn’t love me for me. That’s why marriage to Jai was the most frustrating love I ever experienced, because we both loved each other, but for the people that we weren’t.

What amazed me was that all of these insights emerged with mock anger and playfulness I never thought existed in my feelings for him. I felt so ridiculous that I practically giggled when I called him a “big, fat liar”.

And that’s when it really happened. When I got over him too.