How it Ends
April 12, 2014
The sun begins to set on an uncharacteristically cool spring day. The breeze lingers far too long, unwilling to let go and make room for warmer, balmier moments, desperate to hold on and believe in the eternity of a moment. As I sat there on an unassuming park bench alongside Oscar, I could feel that same desperate energy within myself.
There are people you meet in your life that you can never understand. Even if you spend every waking moment with them, they will always somehow elude you. The more I tried to know Oscar, the more he disappeared and hid in the uniformity of our comfortable romance. He would only linger enough for me to want him, yet gone before I could own him. We would push forward and against the current towards the infinite possibility of romance, yet one of us would prematurely stop the boat from sailing.
“I think we’ve reached a point where we can just admit we love each other or end it. I know you don’t love me like I love you,” I mutter out, waiting to see any shift in his expression, but all I see beyond his empty gaze is calculation. I can see him trying to find a way to maintain this new age millennial relationship centered on convenience and lack of imagination. It’s a relationship rooted in halting loneliness through convenient, liquor soaked physical trysts. Emotions are left in the unforeseeable future where they will never break the surface and come to light.
He lets out a sigh. “I just don’t think it’s that simple,” he says, moving his gaze towards me. “I know you want to hear I love you and honestly—I just can’t give you that. Would you rather I lie to you?” He scoffs to fill the silence with something besides the brutality in his tone.
“Then what can you give me?”
“Me?”
“You can’t build a future together on a partial presence.” Tears well, but I can’t get them out. I should fully cry, but I find myself only feeling disappointed in myself for letting this go on. I want to walk away and just let the past six months fade in the backburner of my mind. Only impending disappointment awaits if I keep pushing.
“I think it’s best we end it here. I just can’t give you what you want anymore.” Anymore echoes in my head. He has to be lying to himself to think he ever gave me what I wanted. He never gave me all of him, no matter how many times he would succumb to me physically.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t give you what you wanted,” he says and turns to look at me, but it’s as if he’s looking straight through me. There’s no remorse or any concrete emotion. Only calculation and apathy. The millennial poster child of emotionally unavailable. We sit like that for a while until I knew that I needed to leave. Even at the end I’m waiting for a confession that will never happen.
“Well I said everything I could think of…So..” He reaches over for a hug, but I flinch away. I could never understand why people hug when they break up. Just feels like saying, “hey thanks for letting me sleep with you for this many months! Never thought I’d get so far. Everything about it feels so drawn out and insincere. We both now the only interaction we’ll have is pathetic Instagram likes and breadcrumbs. God forbid someone actually cares. It’s a new age millennial death sentence. Planting further insecurities in your own head, as you stare at the seemingly invisible people who live behind a phone screen, yet control your life in ways you could have never imagined. Amongst the mindless devotees and bots, a woman hides and waits for her appearance to make itself known in the outside world. She rests there, not even engaging with the man who owns the account. She knows she has him, she just waits for him to show up in her late-night messages. I thought Oscar had moved on. I thought I was the one to fill that void she left and he would never want her again.
Until one day he did. And now I’m here sitting on this marble bench.
April 12, 2014
As Olivia sits me down on this bench, I’m already preparing my exit. On this bench in the middle of the courtyard, I feel entirely too vulnerable. There’s a target on my back, and she’s just about to pull that trigger. I sit and wait for her, attempting to cover my face with the sleeve of my jacket.
I’ve spent roughly the past year avoiding this conversation. The impending social firestorm that comes next will undoubtedly paint me as this unfeeling bastard. Just another product of his generation of instant sexual gratification without commitment. You shouldn’t listen to her victim performance. Well rehearsed, yes, but lacking in actual depth and truth. What she won’t tell you is that I told her I was not ready. I told her upfront that I was not ready to be hers when I was barely my own. Olivia was doomed to live in the shadows, a temporary fix for a colossal romantic disappointment in my past.
I never meant for her to be a casualty in my own disaster, but she simply would not keep herself from grazing in my mess, a sheep in a pack of lions. Olivia, with her seemingly angelic air and her martyr complex. She does not mind—no—she enjoys being the victim once she sees the role of savior has already been fulfilled. I see her pushing through the crowded campus. She makes her way through the bustling students to make her way towards me. She struggles and pushes but no matter how she tries, the people keep her from making progress. She has no choice but to surrender. She stands there and waits for them all to pass her by. She walks up to me and sits down without a word. I stay silent, unwilling to be the first to speak.
“I think we’ve reached a point where we can just admit we love each other or end it. I know you don’t love me like I love you.” Jesus. Had I known she’d come straight out of the gate with this melodrama I wouldn’t have even made the choice to come. Throwing love out already. She is going beyond the role of victim—she is painting me out to be the villain. Like all holy things, there is always someone to blame for their corruption.
“I just don’t think it’s that simple,” I respond, unwilling and unsure as to how to deny her without compromising my own character. I know you want to hear I love you and honestly—I just can’t give you that. Would you rather I lie to you?” You wicked woman, but what’s truly wicked is that you’ll keep lying yet desiring my unwavering devotion and honesty. A contradiction in its purest form. I can see the tears pooling in her eyes, threatening to come running down her cheeks at any moment. With her tears completes the perfect cliché of a cold hearted-sorta boyfriend who breaks up with his sweet, devoted, maybe girlfriend who only wanted to love him and be loved in return. Why is it my responsibility to be the image she has painted of me?
“Then what can you give me?”
“Me?” A revelation for her I’m sure. I already predict her impending disappointment. It’s not enough for women of this generation to be happy in the moment. In the joyful moments, she cares for me more than all these beautiful, frivolous moments thrown together into one sunny, summer afternoon. Until summer turns to autumn and their hopeful security in low expectations and desire becomes something greater. It becomes an insatiable lust outside of the physical. A lust for commitment. A desire to be a force so powerful, that the man must surrender fully to her. The past does not exist and she is the only foreseeable object of the future.
Or that’s how the girls want it all to be. A note to the men of my generation—don’t succumb. You won’t win, you’ll merely find yourself fading and your past agonies only growing over time. I am the example. I was this man, and it got me here. I’m Still as broken as I was before I met Olivia, but with a piece of myself now missing and misconstrued because she selfishly tore it away from me and made it a part of her instead.
“But not all of you. You can’t build a future together just on a partial presence.” I can’t take this anymore.
“I think we should end this here. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted.” I can feel the shackles loosen. I’m almost out. All that’s left is to flee, to flee from this bench and from her life entirely. The light and promise of freedom is almost mine once more, and this time, I won’t let it be lost to me so quickly and with such abandon. “Well I said everything I could think of…So..” As much as my body defies me, I reach out to hug her in what has to be the pinnacle point in any twenty-somethings sort of relationship.
This is how it ends, with one party not wanting to seem like a total ass. When someone loves you, their presence tends to linger, and when that love is not returned, a part of that same hope remains even though the spirit can no longer sustain itself on hope alone. That’s what I felt as she left. Her pangs of hope that maybe one day I would realize my mistake. That I have abandoned the one good thing in my life. Olivia, darling Olivia, with that exasperated gaze that only wants to hear how much I love you and believe that underneath this seemingly damned man hides an angelic being. An angel that holds onto bits of the demonic, ready to take you into a world of a both coital and emotional bliss where you can finally live the life you’ve created for us in your head. Unfortunately, you’re already the second woman to hold me to such a foolish and doomed high standard.
“At the beginning, I thought you and I could be something. Something more than whatever this is.” Olivia says to me, staring into nothing.
“If only I gave us a chance.”
“You did. As much as you could have. I assume.” Olivia rests her head on my shoulder as we sit on that bench and watch the leaves descend to their demise, so akin with ours. I expected her to cling onto my sleeve, still unwavering in her devotion, but she hugs me and disappears as if she were never there. This time, she’s able to navigate her way through the crowd that swallows and embraces her.
