the burnham

It's funny how he the love of my lifetime seeps in my mind. His namesake, by coincidence, is the same as one whose architectural imprint from over a hundred years ago is still visible downtown. His friends, who slowly are becoming my friends. His habits, which slowly are becoming my habits. His ideas, which slowly became my ideas too.

I know that I will never forget him. I know that I will instantly be able to replay some of the most amazing moments of my life and they will involve him. Yet, the other side of the coin is that so many of my unhappy times involve him. We had the kind of love that hurts, the kind of love that burns, the kind of love that is manic depressive, because when it was good, it was so good and when it was bad, it was really bad.

For a while I ignored all these niggling memories which seemed to encompass the entire city (there's where we had our first date, there's where we had our last fight), neighborhoods of thoughts, playgrounds full of our time together. I just stomped past them and pretended they didn't exist. Sometimes I would imagine moving away just to rid myself of thoughts of him. Because it seems that there isn't a beach we didn't crawl on, a street we didn't walk together, a place we hadn't been.

It has been a year now.

Slowly time has scrubbed away some of it. The biggest relief was his job, the place he worked, the reason we met, it closed and has something new there, something totally different. It is hard even to remember how it used to be. And maybe, someday I will feel that way about the rest of it, the rest of the memories I have surrounding him.

One of his friends told me a story that made my heart hurt for him, because really, he is still a man, a man with feelings, a man who is trying to find his way in the world, so I cannot hate him, despite who he was for me. His friend detailed how they traveled to her, the new woman, twenty hours in a truck with his stuff piled up behind him. And when they arrived, they unloaded it all, an array of boxes littering her apartment. His kitchenware was most prominent, he loved to cook, and she balked at exactly how he had ruined her clean floor with his dirty boxes. They had just settled on the couch, probably with a cooling beer they bought on the way, and he got up, sweaty, exhausted, worn out, and without a word, he cleaned the entire floor.

The writer in me, the revenge-monger in me moreso, wants to see him doing this on his hands and knees in an endless array of checkerboard linoleum, but it probably wasn't that bad. And the crossed arms of his lover, maybe didn't happen. The ridicule he faced in his friend's eyes though, yes, that was bad. He wouldn't like that very much.

But he made his bed and he finally decided to lie in it. I hope he finds that he is the problem, not us, not womankind, not the scourge of relationships, but him. He doesn't know what he wants, but he does know that he doesn't want to work hard at it, but maybe she has shown him that it is even harder work to love her than it was to love me. I didn't make it easy on him. I tell everyone that, because it would be so convenient for me to let everyone believe he was the villian, but I didn't make it easy for him to love me. Part of the reason it got so hard for him is because he gave up. He didn't put in the work of building a foundation, he just wanted to live in a half built home. He was in a rush to get to somewhere that wasn't ready yet.

I am sad that he never responded to my white flag, but not disappointed. I had a feeling when faced with my love, my caring of him as a human being in the world, with no hatred for who he had been, he wouldn't be comfortable with that. His regrets and sorrows are too big for white flags, and the heaps and heaps of drugs and alcohol he tried to rub them away with only made them stick around longer.

I look at us now with a sense of intrigue. How could I have let such a mess of a man into my life? The idea of us being together now seems ridiculous. And yet, I was a different bird back then, exactly seven years ago yesterday was our first date. We shared ourselves like two dresses being unravelled, and the love he had for me was brilliant. It's too bad he burned out so quickly. It's too bad that I discovered the facade of his life and was unable to keep quiet about its holes. But now, there is nothing to feel bad about. Whatever he is doing, where ever he is, he is not my problem anymore. And for that, I am grateful.