Tears welled up in my eyes as we gave each other our last hug before departing to our separate destinations. He was meeting his sig. other for lunch, and I was on my way back to work. We don’t see each other much because our schedules don’t permit us to. But when we do get together, it seems like time rewinds and we’re back in the simpler days when it was just he and i. No one else in the world mattered… or existed. lol We had an incredible relationship. We spent most…err... all of our time together… talking, laughing, playing, sharing our dreams and interests with each other…being so close that we pretty much sickened everyone around us. We probably know everything there is to know about each other. We shared more than our bodies…we shared our soul, our heart, our everything. The problem is that...well, after sharing something like that with someone…it’s hard to not still feel close to them. Even now, when we are in each other’s presence, floods of memories come back…and there we are...eating ice cream and talking about old times…and for a moment our eyes lock. And neither of us say anything because we both know. No one will ever understand the bond we share…and though we’ve both moved on and we’re leading happy lives now, a piece of him will always be with me and a piece of me will always be with him. We will always miss those times…we’ll always cherish those times…nothing but death will ever erase what was there...
I gotta say, the whole situation felt so…affair-ish. I mean, calling from unknown numbers, parking miles away from each other, not even glancing at one another until we both simultaneously approach the ice cream counter…walking with our ice cream to a discrete shade behind a few trees…I mean really, I felt like we were doing something wrong but … it was just an ice cream social in broad day light with plenty of bystanders. Why must it feel so wrong…so sneaky…so dramatic. Honestly, there’s nothing “going on” between us. We are just two people who happen to have incredible history, great conversation and an undying friendship. It’s true. *blink* No I’m for real. He and I haven’t been intimate in ages…and we honestly love each other as friends…yet… I feel wrong.
I guess because I know that intimacy is much more than two naked booties bumpin in the midnight hours. We share everything BUT the physical…so maybe in a sense…we are kinda cheating. Emotional infidelity matters too…
She doesn’t know about us. I don’t think he’s ever mentioned me to her. I think it’s best that way cuz if he did, she’d probably hate my guts. Heck, I’d hate me too if my sig. other shared that type of bond with another human being. I guess that is what makes me feel so… weird. Knowing that he and I could so easily pick up where we left off…although we’ve both claimed to have moved on. And her…so unsuspecting… so far away from our ice cream rendezvous…so NOT in the know. I guess the best thing to do is to just not be his friend anymore. Agree to not see him, talk to him only on birthdays or Christmas and stop confiding in each other about everything little thing. *sigh* I know that won’t work either. If we’re still friends after all of our past drama, then this not-so-good-feeling I have will definitely not be a sufficient enough reason to end such a wonderful friendship. I mean, to discontinue our friendship completely would be…insane!!! He’s one of my closest friends. Always have been… always will be. I’m one of those people who value true friends. And while all of the things that has happened between us in the past would seemingly have RUINED that “true friendship” thing… it never did. It stiffled it for a while, but true friends… and true love…never die. EVER.
So I was at Keish’s place yesterday reading about unconditional love…and it hit me. That’s the problem. Well not problem…but that’s the issue. The reason I feel so…wrong about spending time with him is because we still love each other. Not in the "i'm gonna leave my wife and we're gonna meet in mexico and elope" way. But we still would take a bullet for each other....we'd be sad if we knew it would make the other one happy. We love without reason. He’s the only guy I’ve ever truly loved unconditionally. (besides my daddy). I never realize that before this week. I wasn’t in denial really. I just wasn’t aware that though I don’t want to be with him, I still love him and because of the TYPE of love I had for him, I could never feasibly stop being in his life. I could never feasibly stop loving him. I’ll be honest, I’ve talked MUCH trash about him. He ain’t “this”…and he’s a bad “that”. And I’m also quick to respond with a hearty “HELL NAW”…when someone asks me if I’m still in love with him or if I want to ever rekindle that fire again. But I’ve learned something… as much as I hate to admit this… I still love him.
I’m NOT IN LOVE. Please don’t get it twisted. I don’t want him back. I’m not thinking about him every hour of the day, and I am not the least bit sad that we’re not together. Yet…what I have failed to realize is that…I loved him so completely, so holistically, so intensely that… even though we’re no longer together, my love FOR him will never die. I love him unconditionally. And that’s deep to me. I mean, sure when we were together some odd years ago and I was head over heels in love, I expected to love him unconditionally. And I did. No matter what we went through or how he hurt me…I still loved him. But now that I’m “out of love with him”…and I no longer desire to be with him romantically cuz we’ve both moved on…and the “limerance” love I felt for him went away and because it doesn’t bother me AT ALL that he’s with another woman, and because I’ve fell in and out of love with other people…I thought that I no longer had feelings for him. (sorry for that long run on sentence. just take a quick break and come back to finish the rest. lol) I figured that the fact that he could touch me sometimes and I felt nothing meant that…I was over him. And being over someone meant to me that I no longer loved them.
I was wrong.
I don’t think you can ever stop loving someone you have truly loved. If you can stop loving someone, you might wanna re-evaluate what you really felt…cuz real love doesn’t just go away. Love surpasses emotions… it surpasses reciprocity, it surpasses keeping tabs and holding grudges. It surpasses time. Love evolves. I don’t feel eros love for him anymore…but I do feel agape...and have for a long time. True love is Agape love. All that other stuff…it’s limerance mostly. I feel Unconditional love for him…despite the ups and downs of our past relationship and despite the ups and downs of our current friendship, there’s nothing he can do that would make me stop loving him. It’s deeper than infidelity, and lies, and deceit, and what he did and didn’t do, and if he called or not… when you love someone…truly love someone…that doesn’t go away. Love doesn't die. Limerance dies... relationships die, heck, people die... but true love does.not.die.
I guess that’s why I got so choked up when I saw him there. I doubt he even noticed that I was looking at him, cuz he had excused himself to take his sig. other's call. As he paced back and forth by the Brewster’s ice cream sign, I realized for the first time since our break up that, I still care for him…more than I ever imagined. I want him to be happy. I want him to prosper. I want him to achieve all of his heart's desires. And I want to do whatever it is I can do to help him. In no way am I jealous of his sig. other. I no way do I long to be her… but watching him talk to her on the phone from afar, made me remember the days when it was me on the other line… It made me remember why I cared for him so much. It made me remember why I loved him so much. And shockingly, with tears in my eyes…it made me remember why I still love him. No matter what the situation is now… or what it will be in the future, I will always love him. I’ll always have his back. I will always lift him up. Unconditionally. To me…that’s both very profound, and very scary.
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