It’s easy to keep your cool if you just think of him as a child, my best friend says. Don’t be surprised if he’s small-minded, petty, mean. That’s just who he is. You know him. You know him.
I guess what makes it harder is the weight of the past. The face-heel turn. Maybe, the realization that there might not have been a turn at all. “I’m an asshole,” he used to say, “I can be an asshole.” You looked him straight in the eye and told him, “I don’t believe you.” You told him the same thing when he said he didn’t love you anymore.
What was this? A test of your willpower? Trust in your perception? The change that you wanted to see in the world? The change you wanted to see in him.
Was it as prosaic as being a woman, unwilling to look at the truth, believing a man would change for only her?
I wanted the world to warp around me through the sheer force of my personality. This man was an immovable object and, slowly, I melted into the ether.
It didn’t work then, why should it work now? Why should I expect anything different? Do I, on some level, feel like a failure? Is this why it’s so hard to accept? Or is it just the weight of life being unfair? My efforts were fruitless. I slip, unrecognized, into the past. My great love - a lie. A lie that I lived.
But don’t you waste the suffering you’ve faced. It will serve you in good time.
This accumulation of years, of experience, of disparity. Maybe use it to bring your life into sharp focus. Keep your dreams but live in reality.