From Karma, with love

Two months later, I find myself still asking why it ended? What went wrong? Did I mean anything to him? Why the sudden games and inability to come at me with the honesty that was one of the things that I cherished most in him? Was it all just a game from the get-go? Riddled with all these questions and being driven to a point where I am unable to let go and just move on, I opted to search for closure - well, answers that I hoped would give me the closure I needed to be able to move on. So I reached out and asked for a meet-up, to which he agreed and he gave me answers. It's painful to realise that I may not have meant anything to him and was no more than a much needed stepping stone to a place where he finally realised that he had things in his life that he needed to urgently sort out. But it doesn't hurt as much as I would have imagined it would. Maybe I'm still flooded with a sense of relief to all my before unanswered questions and will be hit by the hurt that I somehow believe should come with the knowledge that I was a past-time. Or, as I had feared throughout our involvement with each other, just a buffer to soften his blow from his just ended relationship and something to keep him busy until he moved to his next relationship. But maybe it really is something I can deal with. When our involvement with each other started, and throughout its short-lived life, I held the belief that I was nothing more than a rebound that catered to his sexual urges. And I was fine with it. When things changed and he made more of our arrangement, well, yes, my feelings changed and  a misguided wish that I was indeed more than a transitional quenching of his sexual thirst was born inside of me. When again things changed I was left wondering what I had done. I was left trying to figure out what we were all about in the first place. What had I done wrong? He had thrown accusations at me that I just could not accept responsibility for because they were simply far-fetched and at the time, and thereafter as well, felt as if he had just desperately grasped at anything he could find to fling at me. Now I am not saying that I was Ms. Perfect, but as I did not assume responsibility for his randomly crafted accusations, I needed to know what I had done to make him come at me with such accusations and what had driven us apart. Well after our conversation, where he echoed the words of a friend's theory on what had happened and said that it wasn't about me but him (yes, the whole "it's not you, it's me") I felt a peace from all the question-rich turmoil that has gripped my every waking thought these past two months. Contrary to him, though, I do regret our involvement with each other. There were wonderful moments, some of which I had longed for for the longest time, but I would honestly give them all away if I could go back to the time where we occasionally met at friends' parties and said not much more than hallo to each other. I understand that he needed to have gone through everything he went through to get to this path of self-discovery that led to self-repair, but as much as he claims it had nothing to do with me, I was involved and I did get hurt and I'm the only one who seems to still be having a rather difficult time getting over what we had and the moments we shared. So I do wish I could turn back time's hands and not have developed the feelings for him that I did and not have shared all those moments we shared. Even though I am unable to go back in time, I do feel a little more at ease. Mostly because, I guess, I see this as Karma paying me back for once upon a time being him and this guy being me in that situation.

A few years back I was walking around holding the pieces of my heart, trying desperately to glue them back together. I decided to one-night-stand away my pain and went home with a guy I met at a club. Well it didn't quite work out as a one-night-stand as he laid out his wishes to see me again. I don't know why I complied, but we met again, and again, and again. I did make it clear that I was not interested in a relationship and he said he was fine with that. But I could tell from his actions that he wasn't. We had sex and we hang out but for me he was just a way to distract me from my now-no-longer-boyfriend. I found it sickening whenever he looked at me with expressions that showed feelings for me and would inwardly shiver in disgust whenever he held my hand. A couple of times after we'd just had sex he'd smile at me and stroke my cheek and I just wanted to wash myself clean of all the vomit I had just thrown up inside. At a certain point my ex contacted me and asked me back. I was torn apart trying to decide what to do. I found myself at a forked-road with one path leading to a life where I'd never find a love like I was now considering giving up, a life where the sex would always leave me wishing I had gone back to him because it would never measure up to the sex we had. The other path led to a magical kind of sex, but a life where we would constantly argue about everything from finances to raising kids to breast-feeding in public because I was too equality-aware a woman in contrast to his club wielding caveman of a man that he was. Being the kind of person that believes in being honest with a partner and giving them the choice to staying or leaving after telling them I want nothing more than sex, I told my back-fired one-night-stand that my ex wanted me back and I didn't know whether or not I would go back. This made him shower me with more goo-goo eyedness and it was simply revolting. He told me he wanted me. He looked like I had just crushed his heart. His pain felt tangible. So I took the cowards' train and simply started to ignore his calls and txts. Pretty immature. And that was that. I felt guilty about it after some time and foolishly believed that that was all the punishment for my behaviour that I was going to receive.

Well, that's not quite how Karma works, is it? No, instead she waited and gift-wrapped my punishment when I least expected it. She made sure I liked him so much that this hope was rekindled; a hope that the road I had opted for when standing where they forked wouldn't lead to bad sex for the rest of my life after all, that I would once again have the opportunity to find the kind of love I had lost. And then when that hope had found sure footing, it would be snatched away from me, leaving me feeling like I had left my attempted one-night stand feeling. And in the way I had used this man to satisfy my sexual needs and as some sort of healing balm for my broken heart, I found myself too, amounting to nothing more than the sexual quenching of a sexual thirst and a healing balm for a man's broken heart.

And that I am able to deal with. That I can accept because I got exactly what I deserved.