Stumbling Down Memory Lane.

Being temporarily (I hope) deaf has given me a lot of time for inner reflection (herp, I know...it's super drippy with hokey-ness).  I was digging through a bookshelf, trying to find a picture book with some of my Spawn's infant photos and couldn't find it, so I moved to the Hope chest in hope (ha! get it?!) that I'd find the book there.  I dug away and was unable to turn up the book but noticed a folder that I couldn't remember.  I opened it and found a couple pictures from college, some things from my old dorm room and a few pictures and a piece of hand crafted tandem artwork from my high school crush.  The pictures were from his mission and the artwork we had created one boring day in seminary during my sophomore year.

I smiled and tucked them back away.  I had the great fortune to date this young man, long distance though it was, about a year ago.  Needless to say it ended and I have been very sorrowful about how it ended because the blame laid entirely with me.  But this little trip down memory lane had triggered in me a moment of reflection that I had been avoiding this entire year.

I had crushed on him from the day I saw him in 10th grade.  He was a senior, oh so exotic!  He took me to a 311 concert, he wrote me on his mission and then we lost contact.  I got married and he joined the army.  I had a kid and he was...still in the army.  Then one day, after self-confessed obsessive searching, I found him on Facebook.  I sent a friend request and an awkwardly worded email about how I hoped he remembered me.  Well he did and thus began our renewed communication.  Communication matured to flirting and flirting matured to honesty and my frank admission that I had fostered a high school crush on him that just never seemed to go away.  Here began our long distance relationship.

The relationship was great and completely without trouble/drama/blah or whatever you chose to call it.  Maybe that was because of the distance and maybe just because he's fantastic.  Unfortunately for me, my body was in full revolt and during this time it was quickly shutting me down.  I have since been diagnosed with two separate but very not so awesome illnesses that can be blamed for this decline in health.

But here is my blunder.  Instead of leaning on him, instead of asking for help or celebrating the fact that someone was there to worry for me and care for me, I just shut down.  I knew full well he was in love with me and I knew full well I was in love with him but I let my stupid body dictate my willingness to exist.  I closed up my heart.  I can only imagine the hurt and frustration that I caused him and I will always be sorry for that.  I was so wrapped up in my own stupid suffering that I neglected one of the best things that I have ever been given.  I let my health and some less than pleasant tasks at work get in the way of what could've been my relationship with "the one."  I sacrificed love like I have never known so I could suffer alone.  Not only did he deserve a girlfriend who he could actually see whenever he wanted, he also deserved a healthy girlfriend and probably one that didn't already have a kid.  He deserved and deserves better than me.

That said and after conveniently pointing the finger at being sick when in reality I'm just a big fat asshole, I am so lucky because he still talks to me.  For whatever reason he didn't let my absolute horrid treatment of him destroy our friendship.  We still talk and text and flirt and joke and tease and somewhere in my head I entertain ideas that maybe he still thinks about me in a loving way and that maybe, just maybe he misses me.  But then I kick that part of me in the butt because I find it incredibly selfish of myself to think that after what I did he'd ever consider me with any fondness.

But deep down...deep deep down...I think I miss him.