REFLECTIONS OF A SHADOW

I'm having a hard time dealing with this. Yes, I know she's happy with that man, and I know now that the last months she spent as my girlfriend were not good for her.
She deserves the best.

I am, however, not entirely convinced that I do not deserve the same.

The words that she said when she told me it was over and done with still burn.
It's a half year later. I am not done with it.

She found someone new in an frighteningly short time.
Whereas my head is still spinning.


Do women naturally recover faster?

Must be that famous female resilience I've heard so much about.

I look at her and she's happy now, she glows.
Whatever I feel about that, I hide from her.
There is no reason to show her how it affects me - it would hurt her, but it would not change things. What is past, is forever past.
Being that open and that honest could serve no purpose nor alter the present.

I still do not understand why she broke it off, but she does, I remember the conversation.
To her it seemed utterly logical.
Even at the time it made no sense to me.
How can you live with someone so long and not understand them?

The only thing I can think of is that men and women (or her and I) do not perceive time in the same way. It's that sense of overlapping time - we feel it differently, we don't experience it in the same fashion.

For me, it was all still a continuity. I saw our relationship as a constant that connected overlapping periods. She was there for me, and I knew that irrespective of everything else I would come home and she would be there.
She didn't see it that way - I was not there, and she allowed her mind to manufacture reasons, explanations. Perhaps women necessarily imagine the worst.
I assumed a constant, she perceived a shift and a change.

Sequentiality fought continuum. And won.


What really caused the break?

I don't really know. But there are a few elements that can be mentioned.

She carried her troubles home with her.
Worrying, stressing, being frustrated - it is not conducive.
Some people can shift gears, some can't.
She didn't shift gears.
That, by itself, is a phenominal downer.

Cleaning up her mother's apartment in the first building the family owned - dealing with the detritus of a dissatisfied old lady's life - fifty years of hoarding, left-overs, pack-ratting - it convinced her that holding on served no purpose.
At that time I became like the scraps that her mom had senselessly saved up.
Scant use, and of little remaining significance.

The last two weeks before it cam crashing down were strange. She went from happily dining with me at a Sushi restaurant to being withdrawn and distant.
In early summer she still found me exciting. A few weeks later, she was cold.
Nothing had really changed. But everything had become different.

She broke it off. By herself, without talking to me, without including me in her considerations, she decided that our relationship resembled the old rags her mother had held on to for so many years. She concluded that our relationship had served its purpose, come to an impasse, lasted as long as it possible could.
And that it would not go anywhere further.

It still meant the world to me. But for her it was over.
She informed me of her decision. She was in hysterics at the time.
I didn't want to hurt her, nor add to the stress.

At the time I didn't quite grasp the situation.

It has now been so many months.
Every week I discover a new wound I did not know I had.
She has moved on, however, and it would be most un-gallant to force her back into what had become a cage.
Dammit, I do not want her to be unhappy.
She gave me incredibly much, for so long.

But she has managed to move on far too fast.
And, truthfully, I deeply resent her current boyfriend.
I know what she wants and needs. I know what nurtures her soul.
He doesn't have a frikkin' clue.

She's is still part of me, and always will be.
He cannot possibly understand her the way I do.
When it happens, he won't comprehend any part of it.
And I doubt that he will even be able to feel anywhere near the pain that she so unknowingly has given me. He has not the wit.

His Aspergers is worse than mine. Worse then hers.
He spends his life in a different universe.
It cannot resemble hers.
And it has no similarity to anything rational people know.


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