Finally Finished..."Endless Love And Salad"

"when i write i’m spilling my guts, so i wonder if bleeding all over this piece of paper has told her anything she didn’t already know about how i feel about her?" – me

"i don't write fiction; i write alternate versions of my own reality"; another quotation from me, but i'm only using it because people ask me if the pieces i write are real and i've found it to be an extremely accurate statement. has everything i've written actually happened? no, not everything. i mean, i've written a thought about my child being born, but i don't have any kids; and i've written another about my wedding, but i'm not married. there are works on me proposing, the deaths of women i've loved, varied sexual encounters; none of which have occurred, yet all as genuine to me as if they had. the truth is i don't write stories; i write about situations and how i would react in each one since they tend to deal with the thoughts that occupy my mind. are the things i write real? every event may not be but the emotions any character displays in something i've penned, especially the ones from a person is based on me, wouldn't be any more authentic than if it were me actually living through it.

thus, another “true” story…

"i've moved on brian, perhaps you should too"; followed by the click that comes from a disconnection and the subsequent silence you get when a phone call is ended abruptly and you're still the one on the line. but i can't bring myself to press the "end" button on my cell; fortunately, the phone does it for me; mocking me by flashing “call ended” and “5:10”. 5:10? apparently it only takes five minutes and ten seconds to experience the full gamut of human emotions; most of them at the same time, and i’d gone through all of them in a single phone call. but now all the joy, despair, confusion: every feeling i felt during the span of three hundred and ten seconds, have morphed into a fierce anger; and it takes every bit of sanity i can manage to resist an intense desire to imagine my "shadow" to be a baseball and use it to fire a 85 mile-per-hour strike into a nearby wall. instead, i place it down on a nightstand, carefully, and crawl into my bed to think about the conversation she and i had just had. i'm good at thinking; in fact it's probably what i do best, and i've spent a great deal of time over the past couple of years contemplating the history between us: how we went from what we once were to what we are now. before we'd been in love; discussing a future where she and i would be together with a family of our own; and five minutes ago the relationship we have today had been summed up in eight words: "i've moved on brian, perhaps you should too". so yeah, i definitely had reasons to find that declaration from her to be upsetting; i still don't really understand how we got to this point.”

except it didn't happen like that...

me: “i love you…”
her: “i love you too brian…”

i don't understand why an "i love you" from me doesn't seem to carry any significance; casually dismissed like the obligatory nod of acknowledgment between two people in passing. you know, the one that says, "hey, what's up?" without you having to waste the effort of actual words for a greeting. why spend that energy on communication when that person will be forgotten as soon as they disappear from sight? someone walks by, you make eye contact, you motion your head up; it's reflex now, the move's been executed so many times. you don't think about it anymore, you just do it. so i wonder: "is that what me saying “i love you” had been determined to be now; the verbal equivalent of a familial head nod? is that what someone who hears those words from me perceives them to be? ‘cause i honestly don’t know. maybe when i’d first told her, they had touched her heart and made her feel feelings she’d thought had long been lost to her. i like to think that’d been the case for us. once upon a time i told i loved her and she echoed my words back at me; and we both believed we’d meant what we’d said to one another.

and i don't understand the question marks that she responds to my statements with; not when we were talking, not now. but at least then i could rationalize them with "me saying these things to her is new and a little unexpected considering our past.” not that someone saying those things, as she was and is, still a beautiful woman deserving of every beautiful word directed at her; i guess it was just surprising that the ones being spoken then were coming from out of my mouth. i mean i get that hearing someone profess their love for you the first couple of times can be a little overwhelming, especially if you share a history of unspoken mutual attraction. but eventually i would think you’d get over that right? i mean, after five or twenty times of hearing someone state how they feel about you, don’t you just come to accept that the words were said? even if never having imagined that person would carry such emotions for you, doesn’t hearing them escape a pair of lips mean there may possibly be some truth in what they’ve uttered. and once believed, why would time or distance cause them to become any less meaningful than they had been when she’d looked into my eyes when i spoke them? i don’t know, but the most pressing question i have and can’t seem to be able to figure out is why she thinks anything changed between us just because she left me.

me: “i love you…”
her: “i…”

i don’t understand that; it had once been so easily communicated and then…then it became not so easy for her to say.

“i hadn’t been there very long when she arrived; and i was staring down at the menu when she approached me. don’t know why, i always got the same thing when i ate there; maybe i expected that by doing something different the night would wield different results for me but i knew what i wanted. “hey b!” i looked up and the first thing i noticed was the end of the black dress she was wearing; it stopped about six or seven inches above her knees. then the shoes…also black, with three-inch heels and cut-out tips that showed the bright red nail polish on her toenails. what i saw was almost too much for my eyes, and i hadn't even focused my sight above her waist yet. i continued to scan her, eyes darting from feet to hair, and everything in between. when i finally concentrated on her face, she flashed a smile at me; and images of past instances where i had caused a similar one formed in my mind. i hadn’t seen her in a couple of years but they had been kind to her: she still had the kind of face that a poet could spend years attempting to describe in words; a body that couldn’t be sculpted or painted without the gift of the most talented of artists. she stood before me a vision of loveliness; the embodiment of perfection that at one time had been the inspiration behind everything i was writing…and now i had her there in front of me. i stood up to pull out a chair for her and she sat down; and for the first time in years, she and i were face-to-face sharing a conversation.

"i've moved on brian, perhaps you should too"; and then there was silence from both parties, as we shared the kind of awkward moment that can only be experienced when one person spurns another's advances. seconds seemed like minutes and minutes lasted for an eternity in the time we spent seated across from one another at a table in the back corner of an "olive garden" restaurant. i'd asked her there because i had questions that i needed her to answer; questions about our relationship and how it ended, well, faded into less than what it had been is perhaps a better description. i didn't understand why one thing had become another in virtually no time at all. and i thought that maybe she had the answers i was looking for. but our dinner had produced nothing more between us than those eight words. during the meal, between alternating bites of chicken parmigiana and “endless” bowls of salad, i tried to convey how i felt about her: every emotion that i had felt during our time together and the period immediately following her departure; how her leaving had crushed me and how i still wanted her despite everything that had happened; only to be met with something i can only describe as less than indifference. sometime in the middle of my gut-spilling monologue, she placed a finger to my lips and i knew that even i kept on speaking, she was done listening to what i had to say. she was different now; her demeanor had changed and it was evident in the tone she had used to articulate those eight words. to her: we were a past that couldn’t be recaptured...not because we couldn’t go back to being what we had once been but because she didn’t us want to.

i wanted to get up and leave; preferably after dropping a few, er, not seemingly enough 4-letter bombs and calling her every name in the book; anything i could think of that her mother didn't actually name her. but i wasn't a guy who liked making a scene and drawing unwanted attention to myself. i wasn’t one for yelling and screaming; and acting an ass in public would've created a spotlight that i wasn't looking for. so i said nothing…and she said nothing; with both of us doing everything in our power to focus on the entreés we had ordered to avoid even momentary eye contact. but the uncomfortable silence between us proved too much and a short time later she thanked me for extending the invitation to her for dinner but excused herself by saying it was late and that she needed to be making her way home due to having to be up early because of a busy morning she had the next day. i didn’t look at her; i merely offered a nod as acceptance to what she had said and went back to finish eating the food on my plate. i wanted to say something. i wanted to give one last impassioned plea on why we should be together. and although my brain was searching feverishly for words to do so, in my heart i knew there weren’t any i could come up with that would made the act less futile. so i didn’t say anything: not when she stood up to leave; or when she placed her hand on my shoulder; not even when she told me she knew that i would find someone else to spend my life with. i just sat there quietly…and she walked out of my life the very same way.”

except that didn't happen either...

what happened was she left…and that was it. there had been no tearful goodbye for us to reminisce about in our old age; no hand-written letter filled with genuine sentiment to be read and re-read over and over until the pages fall apart. when she left, there were only questions i didn’t have the answers to; and a heartache that i haven’t been able to get rid of. the reality of our situation was one day she was where i was and the next she was gone; and with her departure came a finality to the events that had occurred between us. but there’s been no closure for the way i feel about her; and there’s nothing i can write that would be “truer” than that.”

"the most painful and worst possible types of goodbyes are the ones that are never said or never even explained." - schrie snell

sometime around the beginning of '12. just finished today. i think.