I got to the airport, and I got on the plane back to New York. I don’t know how. It’s odd that I don’t remember that. I suppose a therapist might say that I blocked it out. It doesn’t feel good to be the one that breaks someone’s heart. It doesn’t feel good to take something like a relationship that has the potential to be, well, anything, and to kill it off. And I couldn’t even tell anyone about it.
I mean, people knew. My friends knew that I was in a relationship that had an expiration date on it. I had made that clear. They knew why, and they understood. I had confided in them early on that I wasn’t sure about Christie. And when it was clear that she would leave for Texas, they all knew that I would not be joining her. They knew that I didn’t really want to drive Christie and her cats back to Texas.
They didn’t know how serious it was. To them it was just another escapade in a long line of crazy antics. It had been a little over a year since my breakup with Genevieve, and I had spent most of that time veering from one insane situation to another, and whenever there had been a fork in the road, I had taken the path that led to the more ridiculous result. I’m sure people laughed about it. Not in a mean-spirited way. I kind of gave them permission, because I never let them see my pain.
I talked about it. I talked about my breakup like I was the only person who had ever been hurt. It had become part of my identity. Like so many things in my life, I had a really hard time getting over it, but maybe I did all that, because I couldn’t go through it. It was too overwhelming for me to feel what I felt in its entirety. So I ran away from it. I had been doing all these ridiculous things, because I couldn’t accept my unlovableness to someone I loved.
I had had all these moments where I got over her, but it wasn’t until I was on the plane to New York, that I had really gotten over my breakup with her, because something bigger happened. Something worse. I think the reason I blocked so much out from our goodbye, was because I felt so bad about it. I had wanted to help, and I honestly don’t think I could have made her life worse. She was the last person I wanted to hurt. She had been so pure of heart. It was as if the universe wanted to see me be the worst person I could be.
In hindsight, I can say that I wasn’t a terrible person- flawed, maybe. Human mostly. A messy human. But even if I understood that then, it wouldn’t have made it okay. I knew that I was doing the right thing. For both of us. I had no second thoughts about it all. But it still felt horrible. On the plane, I released a mass of self-pity. I let it go. No, I didn’t have any kind of emotional breakdown. I sat in my seat quietly, and as the plane took off, I left it all behind me, and as I sailed miles above, I had one thought: I want to be in love.
Christie and continued to talk after I got back. She filled me in on the challenges she was facing. She filled me in on the people she was spending time with. She filled me in on what she had for breakfast. It’s like she didn’t understand that I was no longer a part of her life. While I didn’t always call back right away, I did call back. I was trying to move into the next chapter of my life. Somewhere during all this, I had learned that I needed to find a new place. Geri was moving back to Atlanta, and Drew was moving in with his girlfriend.
I had found a place in Washington Heights. I had moved all of my stuff again. I had somehow inherited my grandmother’s sleigh bed. I left my loft in Brooklyn, because I didn’t really have the energy to take it apart. Somebody was going to move into the room that I had built with my own hands and sleep on my loft bed. I was leaving it all behind. Some stuff just isn’t worth taking with you. That’s what I had learned.
My new place was huge. I had half an apartment to myself. I was inheriting two room-mates, who wouldn’t be there for long. The apartment would become my responsibility. I was on the lease. I felt like I was coming out of a fog.
It wasn’t long after I had moved in to my new apartment that I went to Michigan with my family. It was a good place to leave things behind. The cellphone reception was okay some of the time, so I continued to talk to Christie, but a lot of conversations would end because we simply couldn’t hear each other.
I think I had told her that I wanted to be friends, so she was trying to adjust our relationship to one of friends, but I just couldn’t muster the friendliness that she probably expected. I was distancing myself, because It didn’t seem healthy for her to devote so much time to me. And what was I to her, anyway? I think she called out of anxiety. She didn’t want to confront the dread of her father dying. We argued on the phone a lot. I thought I had paid my penance, but I kept returning her calls.
I don’t remember much about the trip to Michigan. I’m sure my parents tried to talk to me about making some life changes. I was thirty years old. I was single, and to them I had no career. My life was going nowhere. I didn’t think that it was. I thought my music career was finally starting to go where it was supposed to go all these years.
And then one day the calls stopped. It was a relief. I needed space. I needed to breathe. I need time away from her anxiety. After a couple of days, it occurred to me that her father must have died. Knowing her as well as I did, I knew that she wouldn’t just stop calling me. She hadn’t gotten the message. That was just wishful thinking on my part. It became clear to me that her father had died, and she had gotten swept up in everything that goes with someone dying. I didn’t call as soon as I had the thought.
I was thinking about whether I should even call her. I know from her perspective that I should have known, and maybe I did know on some level. Maybe this was just my way of making it clear that we were never going to have a relationship that would grow and evolve. That we were over. Maybe I thought this would give her closure- as if she hadn’t had enough of that.
I finally called her, and I couldn’t tell you if that was such a good idea. Her father had died, but she didn’t really want to talk to me about it. She seemed sedated until I had called her “sweetie” out of habit, and she told me to never ever call her that again. She said that she’d hoped that I would get some kind of VD, and while I felt like I deserved it, I was also fine when she hung up the phone on me. That was the last time I spoke to her. I put the phone down and wrote a song. I did leave out a verse, though.
I see the light, want to reach and grab it
I hear the words that you try to teach
I feel your love, but I just can’t have it
Your steel-eyed grace wasn’t meant for me.