st. partrick's day...the end of an era

sergio and i began our dating relationship on st.patrick's day. seems almost fitting that it really officially ended the same day.  he asked me out to dinner and i was stunned.  it was for "old time's sake".  i swear those are some of the deadliest words i have ever heard and every time i ever here them again, they will probably make me sick.

i was dressed and he was putting forth an effort...and i am a nostalgic glutton for punishment, so i said yes.  he drove and i soon found myself in coco-walk.  at night, with all of the trees wrapped in lights it can be almost magical. so beautiful, romantic like a fairytale.  it took me a few moments to realize that there was nothing romantic about this evening, and in fact i was attending the official funeral of our relationship.

he ushered me into this small cafe..a beautiful little french restaurant.  it felt familiar, that was when i realized i had been there before many years before.  this was the restaurant that we were in when he first told me he loved me.  a hard cold lump formed in my throat and it took several swallows before i could breathe properly.  wow, talk about heart break warfare.

a small table in the middle.  red wine for him, white for me.  lovely french music playing and then a song i recognized.  it was one of adrian's favorites and i broke out into a cold sweat.  i just wanted to be home.  well in the home i was soon be leaving.  but home none the less.  that song was so fitting, paroles...paroles, just words.  that was all he had to offer.

he wanted to reminisce and i had a difficult time following. clearly we have two really different ideas about our roles in our relationship.  he thought we were happy.  i told him that our relationship had always been an awkward threesome...it was me, him and either his oldest daughter or his ex-girlfriend.  that i was in a constant state of not feeling like i was good enough for him.  and that i had tried.

that was my biggest problem.  i was so busy trying to be exactly what he wanted and needed that i forgot who i was.  we had tried to salvage that relationship more times than what could be considered reasonable.  in retrospect, i can say that it was so much easier to stay with him in that familiar role than to actually brave what was uncomfortable and leave.  sometimes the unknown is just so hard that you are willing to torture yourself with what is totally habitual.  even if it is a bad habit.

i was systematically making my way through my plate.  chewing but not tasting.  listening to him but not hearing anything. until he said:

"if i get my life straightened out, i mean if we are still talking...do you think there could ever be another chance for us?"

heimlich needed at table 12...i was choking.  literally choking.

when i had managed to force the chicken down and gulp down copious amounts of water...well that is when i came unhinged.

"are you fucking serious?"
"you are kidding right?"
"i mean like you are seriously kidding.....right?"  my voice getting a little bit louder.
"how dare you?" nearly screaming.

he is totally shocked. i was almost at my feet and he was begging me to calm down.  it wasn't until he was wiping the tears off my cheeks that i realized i was crying.  and then once i realized that i was, i couldn't stop.

i told him that i needed to go.

that i had to leave.

realizing that this was a ticking time bomb..he quickly asked for the check and paid for the bill as i was walking out of the door.

we walked in silence back to the car with me a few steps in front of him.  i was now experiencing every ounce of hurt i had tried so desperately to suppress and bury for over a year.  i was physically ill and not coping well with any of it.

i was just standing on a corner watching the revelers, and remembering back to when sergio and i would celebrate just like them.  laughing loudly in the street and kissing behind trees and at every other opportunity.  my heart just kept tumbling and the tears kept falling.  i must have just looked like another girl who had gotten weepy after a few too many.  fatigue had set in at an alarming pace and i let him take my elbow and guide me back to the car.

the drive home was spent in silence...just the noise of the road reverberating through the car, and through my head.  when i got home he opened the door, it struck me as chivalrous and at the same time tears washed over me anew. 

he took me into what had become my bedroom and i willfully let him take off my shoes and change me into my bedclothes.  i was shattering over and over again at the tenderness with which he moved.  tenderness that i had longed for through out our relationship but could never quite earn.  he even pulled my hair up remembering that it makes the back of my neck sweat.

i felt like my soul had been ripped so forcefully in two.  that it had torn in such a vicious way that there was no conceivable way i could ever be close to whole again. i thought that i had know grief before, but this was a completely different level of pain.  i would have sworn i was on my deathbed, and i was praying through exhausted tears that relief would come and come swiftly.

i couldn't find the strength to object when he guided me to the bed and pulled the covers over me.  he laid down on top of them, shoes and all and spent the next several hours holding me while my body convulsed with wave after wave of pain and terror and unadulterated heart ache.  he never said a word, just this one final act of mercy.

i don't know the hour at which i awoke.  just that it was daylight out.  he was sleeping soundly and i flipped the covers back over him as i got out of bed.  i noticed that my pillow and the better part of the edge of the duvet was damp.  tears threatened to overwhelm me all over again.

i dressed quickly and grabbed my keys.  it took about 2 hours at walmart and target and by the time i returned home he had left for work.  i was able to breathe for a moment and i threw down the bags in the floor.  i grabbed the tape from one of the bags and made a label for one of the plastic bins i had just purchased - adri's dvd's - and then i started packing.

about three weeks later i got a call from a mutual friend letting me know that sergio had remarried his one of ex wives.