You stopped looking forward

It’s funny - Tony asked me just this week if I wrote poetry. Sometimes, I said, though I hadn’t written a poem in years. I wrote a poem last night, a few hours after he broke up with me. A few hours after he said “I just never got the feels.”

Tony and I met when I was in the first grade and he was in the second grade. We dated when I was a junior in high school and he a senior. He stopped asking me out then because I wouldn’t sleep with him, and other girls would. I don’t blame him; it was high school.

We went out again when I was 23, one summer when I was home looking for my first full-time job in journalism. I still didn’t sleep with him. He stopped calling me then because his previous girlfrield was pregnant and they got married. He didn’t bother to call and tell me.

We reconnected last summer, via social media first (though we had been following each other for probably 10 years). We met up in July when I was home. Later, I found out he started dating an ex-girlfriend again while he and I were getting to know each other via text and phone calls. They broke up (again unbeknownst to me) and he came to visit in September, which is when he told me about the getitng back together and breaking up, though we had been talking daily.

He is the one who encouraged me to write about my stepdad, and then to take it further and publish nationally. I’m so glad of that. I’m so glad I did that. And eventually, I will file charges, something I had planned to do when I visited Tony in December, but that trip, like the next two, got canceled.

We saw each other a few more times through November. I met his kids, his dog, his cat, his mom. We talked everyday by text and very often by phone, many hours of serious and not serious talks, of political, musical, intellectual and silly conversations. We watched movies together, talking on the phone.

We agreed we were dating and trying to see if we could make this work forever. He started a song he said “might be about you, but I’m not sure.” It was about a girl he had been waiting for his whole life. Clearly, it wasn’t me.

I trusted, though I struggle with trust. I opened up, answered every personal question he asked with honesty, even when it didn’t make me look good. I asked him personal questions. He talked about future, our future, from the beginning. He said he was always watching on the periphery after his divorce 11 years ago. He talked about making the long-distance work, or moving here or us being snowbirds. Sucked me right in.

My friends teased that this was a romcom and were very excited to see a fairtale ending.

We had plans to meet up in Atlanta this weekend for a Christmas gift (him to me) event - Buster Keaton movie to R.E.M. music in Athens, Ga.. I bought a flight. He was driving. Two days before we were supposed to meet, he called at 4 p.m. to cancel. I had a feeling. I had been having that feeling for a couple of weeks. Something was off.

He didn’t ever “get the feels,” he said. He said he really wanted to. He wanted me to be the “one that got away” but turned into the faiytale. But I wasn’t, he said. He said I was amazing and awesome - yes, I am, I said. He loved me “like a sister, like a best friend.”

WHAT?! I mean really, WTF!

“Ouch, that is fucking brutal,” were my exact words to him, this person with whom I had finally been intimate.

I canceled my flight, no refund, no change available. Is he still going, and with someone else? Probably. He didn’t offer the tickets to me.

I have had a lot of feelings in the past 36 hours. I will get over this. I’m tired of having to get over men, stuff, feelings. I’m tired of men saying I’m amazing but yet not wanting me. Am I worth more? YES. Is it impossible to find? Seems likely, especially if the boy I’ve known since first grade isn’t it.

The poem I wrote? Here it is - a bit raw,: like I am right now:

No wonder you didn’t want to meet my friends

No wonder you didn’t want to share about us

No wonder you stopped looking forward with me

You made me feel safe

I shared so much

I trusted so much

It takes a lot for me to trust like that, and you knew it

No wonder you made jokes about who I would end up with

It wasn’t going to be you

You talked future, for awhile, like it would be ours

You listened to me talk about my heart

I shared my fears knowing they made me vulnerable

I told you my secrets; I set myself up

I told you my past worried you would judge

Maybe you did

You didn’t share everything

You acted like you did

Truths would creep out

I shared my hopes

I shared my desires

We talked about the world together

Only yesterday you looked forward with me

No more pedestal

No more hope of us

No more looking forward together

Did you ever really look forward with me or was it just words you hoped were real?

You are good with words.