A few years ago, I
remember it was Christmas night – the 25th – when I was driving back
home from my father’s house after a family get together (ain’t those always
fun?), and called up a guy I had been seeing for a few weeks. He was the
ugliest guy I have (to this day) ever dated, and I’m not kidding. He had
buckteeth, glasses and was shorter than me by an inch – and if you ever saw me you would know that’s incredible difficult since I’m 5’2”. But he was one of
those guys that had a really sad story, the kind of story that made you want to
console him, hug him and help him put his pieces back together. Plus, he was
smarter than most guys I had ever dated and had a huge… heart. (What did you
thought I was going to say?)
So, he proposed we met
at the local Ihop. I’m not a big Ihop fan but I love pancakes, so that was okay
by me, especially considering it was around two in the morning. And I remember talking
for hours, feeling nervous about whether or not I looked pretty enough without
looking like I had tried to hard – considering I was just visiting family – and
eating a great stack of pancakes while feeling a bit guilty as I did. I remember
talking about everything, anything or nothing in particular, just browsing
through topics like we had nothing better to do or nowhere better to be.
He was older than me
by a few years but we connected like kindred spirits. We even talked about past
lives and actually believed that we had to have met at some point in at least
one. And I always believed, even though it sounds silly and I never told anyone
before, that if we did he most surely broke my heart.
The thing I remember
most clearly it’s his smile, so big and easy, never minding his buckteeth. He
was so sure of himself, so sure of what he wanted out of life. I guess that was
his most attractive feature in my eyes, because I was the total opposite of
that. I was so insecure, so afraid of life and what might happen tomorrow that
I never stop to smell the flowers, as they say. I passed… like a shadow of a
person, winning hearts for a short time, collecting friends I would abandon in
a few years and men I would sleep with once or twice and discard not because I
didn’t like them – I never went to bed with a stranger, always a friend,
someone I trusted and liked – but because I was so afraid of commitment, of
belonging somewhere and loving someone. Because opening my heart meant to let
the good and bad things in, and I
wasn’t willing to take that risk.
And I keep thinking,
how stupid we are when we are young – or should I say younger? – to believe
that everything has to be connected. We can’t simply meet someone randomly and
find out we actually have stuff in common. We think that the planet aligned and
made it possible for us to find each other, not only on this life but in all
others. Or at least, I used to. Of course, the cynicism and pessimistic side of
all was always there. Simply thinking it had not ended well before, fathom that
it will not end up well again. So,
basically, I was setting myself up for failure.
