It’s like a curse.
What is it about seeing an ex with a new person that’s so unsettling? Time has gone by; they’ve moved on, even beginning to date other people. It’s like an amputated limb; someone reaches for it so subconsciously, like a reflex, something familiar. But it’s not there. It’s been gone long enough to accept it will never come back. But somehow, the feeling of want surfaces again.
It’s a weird feeling. I know the two of us are better left apart, yet when a new person entered your life, it’s as if she was taking my place. It’s frustrating because the jealousy is pointless. I moved past the relationship—so why am I struggling with his commitment to someone else?
It may seem cliche, but we are trying to be friends despite the mess that was our relationship. I mean, I’ve known the guy since we were 15 years old. In the end, it never would have worked out. I just couldn’t be with someone who seemed devoid of real feelings. Sure, he had the witty, smart-aleck routine down, paired with the ability to make sarcasm an art. But with things that truly mattered, when it was time to get down and dirty with emotions of the heart, it was a place he dared not to go. I always hit a brick wall when I tried to share my deepest secrets or reveal my most vulnerable states. I wasn’t even sure if he listened half of the time or took me seriously. I just wasn’t getting the same openness in return, and I grew tired of him being so unwilling to be emotionally intimate with me.
So it came as a surprise—a shock, really—when he told me he had been seeing a girl with whom he had begun to “open up to.” My first reaction was anger. I immediately felt like a jilted housewife whose husband had cheated throughout their entire marriage, only to have him become faithful with the next woman he had found. My initial thought was, “Why didn’t you do that with me? Was I not enough for you to try? “The thought that followed was, “He must feel something for her that he didn’t feel for me,” but that just made me bitter.
From my experience, this guy was incapable of having a real relationship with a woman because he refused to take things seriously. It nearly infuriated me that he suddenly decided to make a change that could have quite possibly made things drastically different between us. All I ever wanted was for him to share his heart with me the way I’d done with him. The jealousy of knowing that he was giving that opportunity to someone else made me sadder than anything I told him something that I had always said as a joke, but now meant as a cruel remark: “You’ll never change.”
It wasn’t until after the words left my mouth—or rather, my thumbs, because this conversation was through text messages—that I realized how hurtful those words can be. They can be so defining, it can mark almost as permanent as a scar. I’ve always thought that people typically don’t change who they are. I have rarely seen it happen. But then I remembered someone whose heart had been transformed and whose life had turned around for the better: me.
A year ago, I was lost. I was searching for something stable, something that meant I belonged somewhere. I thought the party scene was where I wanted to be, no matter how many times I had to pick myself up off the floor or out of the bed of someone whose company I had enjoyed for one blurry, fleeting night. Before I found faith and something to believe in again, I had a growing reputation latching onto me like a disease, one I felt that I’d always be remembered for. In fact, some still think of me this way. But to those who have been with me through it all, they can attest that I am not the girl I was a year ago. I did change. So who am I to begrudge someone else of this opportunity?
People grow and change at their own rates. It can’t be forced or coerced, no matter how much we might want it to. It’s easy to get angry at someone for not being what you needed. But now, I’m thinking better late than never. It’s never too late to become a better person, and to deny someone that chance is selfish. It becomes more about your own hurt, and frankly, life is too short to carry around such a dark weight. So while it may be difficult, all I can do is try to be this guy’s friend through this process, and forget about how betrayed I feel. It’s more important that I become part of this new journey and watch him become the man I know he can be someday.
Getting older really does make you wiser. Who knew?
