Far away

Today for the first time he started to feel far away. I was looking through some of the SMSes we exchanged that I'd saved, and suddenly they felt like distant words from a time past. Recently past, but still past. I thought about him and what he might be doing now. And he felt far away.

Perhaps it's because we haven't had a chance to speak this week because of schedules (and time zones). Maybe it's because I've become so busy and I know he's also busy himself. Maybe it's because of the new surroundings and preoccupations I currently have, and knowing he does too.

Distance sucks. In our case, it's probably a good thing, all things considered, but it still sucks all the same.

The missing has started to diminish. That's just me I guess - out of sight, out of mind, what-ifs aside.

More than one person has said something similar - this thing is like a fairytale or a Hollywood movie, one of those light-hearted chick flicks with a plot-with-an-expected-twist.

Why wouldn't it be? What-ifs and lingering feelings are the stuff that choke tales and movies and trash romance novels. Surely some are based on reality. But I believe most are based on how people want them to turn out. Neil Gaiman wrote in "24 Hours" (Sandman #6) that all stories have happy endings only if you know when to end them, because if you stick around long enough, they all end in disappointment and death. And that's a fact of life.

I'm a practical person. I've learned to follow my gut instinct, which isn't failsafe but very mostly right. It doesn't always tell me what I want to hear, but to ignore it is to invite peril. So for all its whisperings to me, I'm almost glad things turned out the way they have - with a bittersweet taste...but more sweet than bitter.

I've been asked why this didn't become a long-distance relationship. My answer is always the same - I just can't do that. Not again. It's not what either of us want, anyway. I can't wait for someone, not for that long, especially with all the other factors considered.

Kev asked me before what I look for in an ideal man, and I gave him the same answer I give everyone, which is that I don't have one. When I fall, I fall. I don't ask why. But I've come to realise that I do want some things in a man. (Whether the dude I end dating has them or not is another matter.)

I want someone who knows what he wants. Someone who knows what commitment is and knows how to keep it. Someone HONEST. Someone not afraid to deal with reality and everyday life. Someone who has grown enough and knows his place in his own life and in others'. Someone who knows who he is. Someone who wants to know who I am.

In other words, someone who has matured sufficiently. And that's hard to find. I've never met one.

We shared something special, all the more treasured by how involuntary it was, in the way that it evolved in a direction neither of us wanted to go but were glad to go in the end. We'll always have that, at least.

What will it be like when we meet again? It's so far away, too wistfully far away. So much would have changed. How much and what? Who will we meet in between? Will we still see each other the same way? A Hollywood ending would dictate a joyful and intense reunion. A realist reunion would find us both different people, grown in different ways, perspectives shifted through vastly differing journeys, perhaps with different people too.

Maybe he'd have grown in the way I hope he will and I'd see a larger version of the person inside him that I was starting to fall for, one that has nothing to do with his looks, nor his intelligence, nor his language savvy, nor his social flitting - the one that at times I almost reached on quiet nights in warmth, when our inner sentries had fallen asleep, the one that I felt more than I saw or heard, one that touched my heart more than my mind.

A sorta fairytale indeed.

"I don't, didn't think we'd end up like this...
...I can't put this day back
A sorta fairytale with you"
~A Sorta Fairytale, Tori Amos~