It's been a long time since our last revisit. For posterity, it is good you write it here while the musings are morose again.
Since we last left off, the job search in the lovely city South was of to minimal avail. For the record, you are far too picky. Sure, solar panel company operating from B-grade horror movie set may be a twitch dodgy, but it's probably far better a place than you are in now.
Your hopeless optimism is offensive to your own sense of self, but you had nothing left but empty promises. Next time, go with your gut, for it seems far better at this game than your brain does. Consulting had promised to be everything it did not turn out to be. That should be the last time you do a paper evaluation.
Strictly speaking, you are in a far better place than most, and should be satisfied with that. But again, you should realize that the best of a bad situation is unlikely to ever be as enjoyable as the miserable of a fabulous situation. So while this consulting gig pays better in nicer conditions that what your compatriots are settling for, it is not for you.
If there's any takeaway from this, it's that you gave it a shot, and you should have let it drop.
And finally, you have managed to end something that should have ended so many years ago. Rightfully, you made the call in such a way that he had enough control to know that it was the way he wanted it to be. The pathetic on-and-off you had let go on with him, love of your life he may be, could only mean to kill any sense of self you had left.
Now that you've called it quits, you think that things can move on. She tells you that you should give it time. It has only been a few months so far, anyway. She's had to endure years of seeing and not touching, so she'd know better than any other. But the big difference that, you suppose, she could never fully comprehend, is the fact that ultimately the pain is that you honestly did love him. Had he asked, you'd have given a kidney, liver, your still beating heart if he asked. And that you still would.
You take solace in knowing that you're doing this because he was not happy with you. In hindsight, he never was. He let you stay around because you were comforting. You were good at providing, protecting. But you were never what he wanted, and maybe not even needed. Seven years is a long time. In some jurisdictions, you may even have been common law spouses. But you know better now. The last couple of years were merely zones of comfort. It was as apparent to you then as it was to anyone else that he had no honest affection for you. The last year painfully so when you were no longer Love.
And soon he will return, as his annual pilgrimage dictates. You are friends still, since there was no real wrong. But can you honestly say there's any right?
Shocking then it should be that you should finally, after so many years, come across another someone who so quickly smote you, so different than any you would categorically find attractive. Too much of a Princess, this one. Too delicate, and certainly too much of an Oriental persuasion for your typical liking. And yet smitten you were.
After all, he was rather pleasant to the eye. A little shorter than you would normally find, but that added to the charm. He was of fine face, chiselled cheeks, with shoulders that belied the hours he put in, and, to put it directly, an ass that wouldn't quit.
They were only too happy to oblige you, since the whole notion of Princess in distress is a trope all too appealing, in all iterations, in all flavours. While you continue to thank them for their enthusiasm in helping in this pointless pursuit, you have found yourself in these past hours, pondering if this is merely a delayed rebound, a rebound from finally letting your internal turmoil set and say that things have already ended with him.
From their giggly interrogation, its obvious that you will likely not have a chance with him. At least, in no more or less certain terms as the impatiently-awaited End that you have been pursuing with inconsistent skittishness.
Your generosity in this final season of annual gifting was born of death throes of someone who has honestly given up on life. The promises of things unseen, of sensations unfelt, of loves not affected, of pleasures not experienced, holds far less dread than the idea of having to live a life in knowledge of the pointlessness of the whole pursuit.
You buy them expensive gifts because you cannot shake the feeling that you may not live out the following year. And hope against hope that this is true, because like all things that you know are meant for you, it will be cruelly denied, as the world deems it rightfully should.
You crave a labour that interests and rewards, and are granted false promises and perspectives, methods that offend your carefully crafted sense of self.
You yearn for a life simple as it used to be, uncomplicated by the treasons of "modern living".
You long for the touch of a love gone past, gone by your hands and deeds, gone by your affections, and gone by the lack of his.
You lust for a new one, another living body with a physical attraction so great as to be inexplicable, but so far away from your ideal that your body and mind are at constant odds.
And you reach for a grave that will not be filled by a body yet, only the hopes and dreams long left to rot by a world that is not ready or interested for them,
Thanks for the memories, and may they serve you well.
