Journal: Entry for Dragonsoul

And I don't know how to deal with it. True, we haven't spoken in nearly two years. But to find out she's married...ah, it's hard. Harder than I thought. I guess because I always thought that no matter what, we'd end up together somehow. Funny thing is I didn't even want that to happen, but now that it's gone I find myself...sorrowful for the future we would have had.

We were never the "golden couple", her parents hated me because I was Catholic, mine hated her because she wasn't Italian. She had a lot to put up with, my strong Catholicism and Italian nationalism, my stubborness and temper. And I had my fare share to deal with as well, her militant protestantism and tendancy towards socialism, her temper and stubbornness. We both had to deal with the outside world, and the behavior of people who still didn't like to see interracial couples together, even in 2006. We had to deal with friends and family who didn't like us together, and for a while all that made us stronger.

I guess after a time she just broke. The sacrifices became too much, she felt she was losing her identity. She started to cheat, and when I found out, I ended things. But she's the only woman that I've ever romantically loved, so completely and utterly that I'd given my whole self to something. And as bitter and angry as I was after the cheating came out, after the relationship was over, I still answered the 2 AM phone calls when she got fired from work for skipping shifts because she was high, or when she'd had yet another bad breakup, or yet another guy had used her and tossed her aside.

And as time went on and I could never fully escape her, even after we lost touch, I suppose I never realized that the only way I moved on from her was by convincing myself that one day, all that we'd planned and hoped for while we were together would arrive. I thought of the house, the kids, the jobs, the life, and filed it away in the back of my mind. Now that I think of it, in some of my darkest moments over the last few years, it was that idea of that specific future that kept me going. Even now, as I write this from work, too preoccupied to get anything done, I realize that my job, my major and minor, most of the life decisions I've made since our break up were working towards that future. Because I love her. Still, I guess.

I always thought, somewhere deep down, that she felt the same way. That like some Hollywood romance we'd fnd eachother, years later, and pick up where we left off. She told em once of a dream she had where we split up before college and got together later in life, making our future. At the time it bothered me because I wondered why we'd ever split up, after the break up I used it as a map, hoping she'd remember it too and that we'd figure it all out. Stupid, I know.

And now she's married. I saw a picture of her smiling in her strapless wedding dress brown hair long and straight as opposed to their usual braids, beside her new husband. And all I could think about when I saw that photo was that that was not how I'd pictured her dressed for our wedding. And then I realized, there would be no wedding. This is her happily ever after.

And I can't figure out how I'm feeling. Sad, angry, happyfor her, jealous, afraid. It's all one big mix, but on top of it all is regret. Overnight the faces of the children I pictured have fizzeled out, gone blank again. And I don't know how to start over. I don't even know what I'm doing with my life anymore, why I've made the choices for work and school that I have. I agree, making them, even if the decision was an unconcious one, based on a dream, a fantasy future was stupid.

But now I feel more lost than I know how to describe. Adrift, I feel, on an endless and stormy sea. And I feel physical pain in my heart for a loss that never took place, for a future that never was. I always had that fallback of "no matter what happens, I can always just call her, and she can help me through whatevers going on". And although I never did it, I felt I could. I felt that she would always be there, because, I knew and know, that if she ever needed anything from me, I'd always be here. But know I know it was all an illusion, something I did to myself to get myself through the worst of the pain. But now I know she's gone. We're gone. Not just temporarily suspended, but gone, comepletely. And so now I wonder...where do I go from here?