Old Flame, You're Still The One That Holds Me

Close your eyes and make a wish.  I wish that Joe Manganiello was passed out on my floor.  Naked. 

Our lives are shaped by the choices we make.  I can look back over my life and pinpoint the exact moments that my life was changed forever because of a choice that I made.  A common misconception is that if we do nothing, then nothing will happen.  But doing nothing is still a choice.  And it has an effect on the rest of our lives.

Like the moment 13 years ago when I chose not to fool around in the bedroom with the guy I was previously convinced was my soulmate.  I didn’t make this decision lightly.  Every cell in my body screamed at me to just do it.  You’ve been holding this torch for him for years, Kate.  He’s standing in front of you, BEGGING for it.

But I told him no, and I slept on the couch that night.

I told him no, because I WASN’T convinced that my heart wouldn’t get broken again. I was trying to protect myself.  This was the same man that took my virginity and then apologized for doing it after not speaking to me for three weeks.  To an 18 year old girl in love, this was earth shattering.  It’s not hard to understand why I didn’t want to take that chance again some years later.

I chose instead, to try to make it work with the man that would later become my first ex-husband.

Hindsight is 20/20.  I should have fooled around that night.  My whole life would be different.  My. Whole. Fucking. Life.

Different.

There is something about the first person that you fall in love with.  I’m not talking about a schoolgirl crush, although that runs a close second.  The first person that you can’t live without, every word they speak is coated in glitter, and sunshine comes out of their ass.  This love never quite goes away.  You may go months or years without even thinking about them.  But all it takes is one chance encounter, one phone call, and all those feelings rush to the surface like molten lava in a dead volcano.

Lives change.  Tragedy befalls every one of us.  We live, we breathe, we move on to the next tragedy.  But that first love remains inside of us.  Sometimes faint, sometimes deep, always there.  We’ve both made decisions that can’t be changed or helped.  There are some things in life that, no matter how hard we wish for them, how bad we want, even feel like we deserve, just are not meant to be.

And this is the hardest part to accept.  

I can’t help but remember the best moments.  Those moments are my Happy Place, just so you know.  (ALSO, just so you know, I can only tell you these things because I have finally accepted that it is never meant to be, but it doesn’t change how I feel.) I remember the afternoon by the creek.  I remember the words he said to me.  I remember endless nights on the telephone.  I remember sitting in his lap with my arms around his neck.  I remember being completely, 100% all the way to heaven and back, in love.

I remember these things most when I’m hurting the worst.  And I realize that the men that I'm most attracted to look like him in some way or another.  For my own sanity, I need to stop remembering.    

Because it can never be.

Not like it was.

And it’s my own fault.

(You have to stop calling me.  My heart breaks every. single. time. I hear your voice.  Our timing has never matched up and we will never be.  I know I cross your mind, because you cross mine.  But my sanity is slipping, and a chick's gotta do what a chick's gotta do.  I've made my choices, and I'm paying my consequences.  This is one of those consequences.  I know you as well as I know myself.  I know the guilt that I'm putting on you, and I have to, because I can't carry it anymore.)