Men. Ugh.

This is one of those nights where I should have been asleep hours ago, but I just can't seem to do it.

During my web surfing, I came across Michael's recent Facebook activity and decided to check out his timeline to see what he's been up to.  Since it's been....2? months since I last saw him.

"I want to sleep with you.  I don't mean have sex.  I mean sleep.  Together.  Under my blankets.  In my bed. With my hand on your chest and your arm around me.  With the window cracked, so it's chilly and we have to cuddle closer.  No talking, just sleepy, blissfully, happy silence."  This was a picture he liked and I, without marking so, liked it too.  Then ruefully noted how he could have had that with me all he wanted but nooooooo, he had to go and be way too flipping complicated about whatever the heck is or isn't between us.

Sometimes I just....I either don't understand men and their complicated logic (I say "complicated" when really, it's just stupid), or I just plain don't like them.

"I love her so much, I will sacrifice my happiness for her safety and utterly destroy her emotions by dumping her, leaving her, writing a letter to blame her for everything yet tell her I love her, then die."

"I love her so much, it's just not enough.  So I'm going to break off our engagement, end all wedding plans, and effectively destroy her heart yet again even though I know Jake did a number on it.  But I want her in my life!  So I'm going to keep her as close as I can while denying both of us the happiness of a life together.  Because that makes sense."

"I want to love her, but I can't.  So I'm going to have a hot, steamy tryst with her wherever I can find a decent place to do it, even if it's in the back alley.  But it's too dangerous for her to love me, so I'm going to act like a total asshole in front of her so she won't want me.  But I want her in my life.  Just not that much.  Maybe?"

*bangs head on keyboard*

Sometimes I wonder where things went wrong.  Like, what did I do to welcome such...chaos...into my relationship life?  I was a good girl.  I clung to morals, ethics, rules, righteousness.  I didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't have sex with anyone, didn't even date until senior year of high school.  I went to church at least twice a week and worked hard to live what I preached.  All I wanted out of life was a good home, a good career, but most of all a beautiful love story in which the guy loved me so much he'd give his life for me, but he'd never leave me.

The hopeful, faithful, loving voice inside me says that I just have to ride the waves, wait it through, that one day my prince will come and sweep me off my feet into a world of happiness and peace.  The cynic in me says if I just "listened" more with my seer abilities, I'd have avoided this whole mess.

Moments

God and I hadn't talked in a long time.  Not because I was angry with Him.

But because I was afraid of what He'd have to say.

"Why are you hiding from me?"

"Why did you let all this happen?!?"  I knew He felt the pain edging my thoughts, the pain I've spent months burying under as many lies and half-truths I could muster.

"I gave you what you wanted.  What you asked me for."

I scoffed.  "A love story unlike any other.  Really?  No, what you gave...no, what you let happen, was some sick form of double-faced deception!  What love story?  How many men are you going to throw my way, all with the same face?  How am I supposed to know???"

Even though He wasn't physically standing in front of me, I knew at this moment He turned around to face me with a brow raised.  A very...paternal...brow raised.  "Really?  Have you forgotten already?"

People rustled past us as we lay on the grass outside the museum, basking in the warm September sun.  He listened as I told stories, things I thought he'd only forgotten....because I thought he was Jake.  At one point I looked over at him because I felt something stir in the air.  He kept gazing at the sky and asked for another story, so I closed my eyes and started a new tale......

"You'll know it's her, that she's The One, when you have The Moment."  I smiled at Shawn and playfully nudged Tristan.  "It's the first time you realize, she might actually be your future."

Shawn smiled back and eagerly leaned forward.  "When was your guys' Moment?"

Tristan and I looked at each other.  "Huh.  When did you have that moment with me?" I asked him, suddenly realizing we never really shared Moment stories yet.

He paused and thought it over.  "It was Chicago, that day you and I walked around and explored the museums.  I asked you to tell me those stories, and I realized that you'd gone through things too.  And I realized that you might actually understand."

No.  No.  We were NOT going to go through this.  "That's not fair.  That was just....it wasn't..."

God smiled.  And kept the tape rolling.

We laughed as we snuck up the stairwell, the bright antique bulbs glowing in the ballroom lighting our way to the balcony.  Tristan stopped and looked around for the next set of doors that would lead us to the rooftop so we could see all of Chicago at midnight on one side, and the infinite darkness of the lake on the other.  

A slow song started playing.  Savage Garden.  Tristan took my hand, turned to me, pulled me close, and we started dancing together next to the window.  Outside the stars glittered, inside the ceiling was a soft golden glow.  He even sang a few of the verses, and I smiled.  Then I felt it again, that....something....and his face was considerably closer than it was a few blinks ago.

The slow song stopped.  So did the "something".  We broke the embrace, shared some small talk, and agreed to not tell a soul what just happened.  And as we made our way back to the dance floor where our friends waited, Tristan glanced over his shoulder to give me that knowing smile.

I folded my arms.  "Fine.  It was real....then.  But things change.  We changed."

"You wanted something real."

I stopped.  My stomach flipped.  All I wanted was something real.... I closed my eyes and let out a deep sigh, hopefully expelling the memories as well as the pain.  "I'm still waiting for that something real."

More memories.  Moments.  Isn't that what I'm all about?  Moments in time, in life, that are captured in our hearts forever, no matter what happens afterwards.  That's how I explained it to the seamstress as she helped me tie the corset of the wedding gown.  I didn't care what the gown looked like, I had said.  All I wanted was that moment, shared between my husband and I.  Between Tristan and me.

"No!"  I spun my back to God and plugged my fingers in my ears.  Petulant, I know, but the best plan I could think of.  "No!  I'm not, I can't.....No!"

Memories of our first apartment together.  Painting the walls, fixing the windows, listening to Tristan's stories and adventures and confessions.  Laughing when he snuck a bear hug on me because he was so happy he finally finished painting the living room archway that horrid green I thought I loved.  Clinking cheap wine glasses together filled with cheap soda and heart-shaped ice cubes because that was all we could afford.  An early, freezing morning when he surprised me by coming home from work with breakfast and we huddled together under the flannel blankets.

I fought back with more memories.  Of coming home to blood on the walls and spending a sleepless night searching for him.  Waking up next to another double who tried to tie me up and throw me in the attic.  Of Tristan telling me we were done, he was still in love with his first girlfriend....of the pain.  It was over.

God pushed back with the journey to Spokane.  Travelling west, plotting courses through the highest mountains of this continent, and not having a single argument.  Falling on my ass on top of Pike's Peak and laughing at Tristan who was laughing so hard at me that he couldn't help me up for a solid two minutes.  Almost drowning in a foot of bubbles in the jacuzzi tub in the room his brother negotiated for us.  Playing "guess that date" at the italian restaurant we'd never be able to afford on our own salaries.  Grinning at his first ever hangover and dragging him around the downtown tourist area at the crack of dawn, and the fact that not only did he never complained, he wholeheartedly humored my weird enthusiasm for sparkling water pictures.

"Oh, yeah, Spokane.  THAT was a picnic."  I shoved with the hell that experience was.  The violence, the chaos, the fear.  The ever-present fear.  Of screaming at each other in the parking lot of the cathedral, of sobbing in the trashed apartment after dropping him off at the airport.  Being alone.

"Love takes time, Mira.  You know that."

"It wasn't-!"

"If it wasn't love, if it wasn't real, then why can't you say so?"

"NO!"  No, no, no, no, no.  Stop the tears.  Don't cry.  Just forget it all.  Just focus on Jake and that he's dead and everything else that's super easy to use to block it all out.

God kept going.  We'd avoided this discussion long enough, so it seemed.  "You remember the first time, don't you?"

"Please...." I chanted to myself crap I was now having a hard time remembering.  In my mind I remembered every second so clearly.  "It was a mistake."

"Was it?  I don't condone premarital sex, but this was no mistake.  What was different about being with Tristan that you found with Michael?"

NO!!!! I couldn't answer because to do so would be admitting, confessing, the very thing God was pressing on my heart.  The truth.  I thought my dalliance with Michael meant I was free.  All it really did was show me how meaningless and depressing sex without love is.  Because I knew what it was like to have sex with love.

My chest constricted.  No.  Please.  Not this.  "God....Daddy....please.  I can't....It wasn't real.  It wasn't meant to be."

And then He hit me with my own words: "Wouldn't say 'yes' to marriage if it wasn't love."

Everything flashed through my mind at once.  Tristan admitting that breaking up with me was stupid.  Getting the text from him on his way home from the family cruise, "I missed you!!! Let's never do this again."  Walking into a candlelit bedroom to find him smiling ear to ear and being asked The Question.  Being surprised with a bouquet of silk roses in our wedding colors so I would have inspiration in the planning process.  House hunting.  Family planning.  Church counseling.  Family get-togethers, and struggles.  Arguments that now seem so insignificant, but at the time felt like life or death.

Mom walked into the room to see why I was still up.  I opened my mouth to say something...and all that came out were sobs.

I broke, I sobbed, I grieved.

While many would expect me to put life on hold to wait for the happy ever after, I can't.  I asked God what to do now, and He said the same thing I've been hearing since the moment I read Tristan's letter.  Keep going.  I have to keep living.  I have to keep moving forward.  But sometimes in order to so do, we have to recognize what's been holding us back.  It was just much, much harder to do than I expected (and took so much longer) because it meant coming to grips with reality.  I messed up, a lot, and have to atone for my bad choices.  The biggest one?  Running.

I'll never forget those moments.  I just have to keep making new ones.

Sympathy

The woman sniffed, her dark sunglasses unable to hide the fact that she'd spent most of the day crying.  "I'm sorry," she mumbled.  "It's just....someone tried to hurt me."

As we got to the counter and I set her products down to start ringing her up, I offered a small sympathetic smile.  "I understand.  Been there."

She glanced up at me.  "Really?"

"Yup."  I started totaling up her purchase and memories of Spokane flashed in my mind.  "Psychotic meltdown.  We were supposed to be married, actually.  He's getting treatment."

"Oh, well," she sniffled, "this is different."  Did she sound proud?  I attributed that hint of pride to her myriad of emotions that were overflowing in her mind over this random guy she barely knew who she was pinning the attack on.  She knew him enough to want to sleep with him, but not well enough to trust him to actually do it. "I think he slipped me something."

I took a deeper breath of air through my nose.  Oh yeah.  She had ingested a cocktail of weed and some other herbs, no hardcore street drugs like cocaine or meth.  It was in her scent rather than on her clothes, and I found my tongue ready to vocalize this affirmation before my brain had a moment to process the wisdom of that action. Fortunately common sense slammed its fist down and I just gave her a listening nod.

"Good luck."  I smiled softly and handed her the bag.

"What?"  She looked at me in horrified disbelief.  "Good luck??"

"It's better than nothing."

The final look she gave me as she left made me want to tell her, yes, lady, good frikin luck.  You have bigger problems than the minute amount of drugs you injested, like your choice in complete assholes that your mind was scrolling through.  And just so you know, I've seen worse and experienced far worse, the kind that there is not antidote for.  Don't give me that flippant sob story when people have died from far stronger drugs than your pathetic existence can handle, and they were KIDS!

Instead, I moved on to the next customer, who was also put off by the woman's attitude.  Suddenly no one felt sorry for her, and while I said a silent prayer for her good health, I fought the bile of disgust that threatened to surface.  People like her.....women, really, like her.  The kind that want to be the damsel in distress.  Who want the world to know they suffer so knights in shining armor will come galloping in to save the day until the next disaster arrives for them to dive into.

Guess what, lady?  Some of us don't have that option.  Some of us have to keep fighting, keep moving forward, keep being our own warriors.