Throughout the years of facing cancer head on, my heart had always one lingering question. Could he be the One? The season of Z was a heart-racing pitter-patter that sent me on some of the highest of highs my heart had known ... at the time. He made me feel alive and special and like I was possibly the most interesting thing. He had my heart from an early start. It happened with lingering conversations, progressed with late-to-return-to-work laughter and escalated when we became friends outside of me serving him sandwiches. There was something charismatic in his demeanor. The way he could engage, as if everything I said mattered, made me feel like I was someone worth being around again. Let me backtrack for a minute here. In a future post I will talk more about another season in my life, the Season of C. I've already introduced him as the ghost, so if you've read all posts so far, you'll start to see him to shape more. When the ghost ghosted I questioned EVERYTHING about myself. Namely believing that I wasn't someone anyone truly wanted to be around because I was an awful person. Now, there was some truth to that, I wasn't easy to be around or deal with, but his reason for ghosting had nothing to do with my temperament. It was all very innocent the way my heart swelled. The highlight of each encounter quelled the insurmountable ache of wanting love, needing love, desiring love. I was in vulnerable territory that I had up until then given up on revisiting. He wasn't my first love. I had loved the ghost, I just didn't feel the passion and desire that burned within me like it did for Z. I welcomed the vulnerability back in like an old friend, I told him to hang his hat up and stay because now that this love pooled inside of me I felt there was no reason for it to go. But I was left bitter and jaded. Madder than a wet panther. I could chew nails and spit out a barb wire fence. See, during all my encounters with Z, he had a serious (I later learned) girlfriend that he visited in California, his prior homestead. This spurned love was a slow burn. It took a lot of investment before realizing my input wasn't being matched. Now he never cheated on said girlfriend with me. I was very clear to state that I was content to be his friend. But, I also made it abundantly clear from day zero (the day I learned of girlfriend) that I had feelings for him and wanted more with him. I basically spent my time thinking and hoping, waiting for the day he'd chose me. I didn't wreck any homes or plot to break them up. No, I genuinely believed that he needed to be ready to leave that relationship before he could have his future with me. Time passed, maybe a year, maybe longer and then the call came. It was New Year's Eve and he wanted to be with me. I thought it was odd, but didn't deny myself this amazing adventure I felt I was setting out on. I asked about Ms. California, why was he with me instead of her? They broke up and inwardly I cheered. You know, retrospect is a tell-all. The things I see so clearly now that were so hazy then. We talked, we kissed, we dated. I thought finally my dreams of being a Mrs. were going to be a reality. Then things began to fall a part. We didn't communicate regularly, we didn't go out frequently, we didn't have a label. I needed the label to be more than dating because none of our behavior was like those who only date. We were boyfriend and girlfriend without the designation. We acted like couples do. For a time. A very short time. The more shit got real, the more he pulled away. The more I wanted to delve into our backgrounds, the more he recoiled. He could say it was because I wouldn't sleep with him, but that's not what made the broken sand fall beneath us. It was already broken. We were broken, but didn't really fit. But I couldn't see that then. I saw what did fit, what did work about us. I had made a promise to myself long before cancer ever came to steal that I wouldn't be a baby momma to some guy who didn't really want to be with me. The entire time we were together, I questioned if Z really wanted only me, or if he wanted other women too. He had stated that sex was the only binding rule to exclusivity. There's too much at stake to for me to view sex as casual. Problems arose from this topic. I explained my position. I told about how having cancer and desiring children wasn't something I could put myself through. I told him that I wanted marriage and that having sex is going to make me grow more attached to him and that if he wanted a no-attachment-relationship then sex wasn't the way to go about it. My words fell on deaf ears. It was as if we had a language barrier. I may as well have been speaking a foreign language to him. He couldn't see dating and not having sex as a viable alternative. Our friendship deteriorated. Our no-label-relationship ended. He said he felt pressure from me about getting married. My love was rejected. Full disclosure, he may have been right about the pressure. To say I was desperate was an understatement. I definitely was craving love and the attention was amazing. I let myself go invisible and as much under the radar after the ghost. I didn't want to even be thought of as an attractive woman. I just wanted to be seen as another human being. I felt myself come alive being around Z. I was depressed from being abandoned and didn't feel as wonderful as I did with him. I lost friends over treating cancer holistically. I didn't have anyone else that I felt was a friend and a romantic interest. I thought he accepted me for who I was and I was so eager to be loved in that way. I just misread what his love looked like. I think he really did love me as a person, because he loves people, but he wasn't in romantic love with me. He was sexually stimulated by intelligence and that wasn't romantic love either. He just loved to love as a lover. He just didn't want the other things that go beyond Eros love with me. And I couldn't understand that. How could he show me such affection and then take it all away? Perhaps there was a part of me that felt like I was reliving being ghosted. He did have the decency to at least tell me that he couldn't date me anymore. But my heart was devastated and broken and iced over the second I learned he was dating someone new shortly after dumping me. My heart sank. I felt the time table of life was ticking away my opportunity at happiness; at marriage. I thought my chances of getting married had run out. I felt hardened to the fact that the only two men I loved and wanted to marry both left me. I didn't know if cancer would take my life. I lived like it wouldn't and I wanted others to believe the same. But I always knew that cancer was lurking ready to steal my dreams. Present day I have forgiven Z for not loving me the way I wanted. I also have an incredible friend turned romantic interest that helped me resolve the numbing bitterness that festered after the breakup. I'm not without hope that I could still get married, but now it's a sad hesitant hopeful. I feel so reluctant to believe that my heart could be again believing he's the One (not talking about Z here) that hoping almost feels foolish. Not that my desire is foolish. No, to think that I am so certain and right about a person's place in my life leaves me doubting if I'm right. Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way? I don't know of another who has shared these thoughts this way, so in this way I feel alone. I hope that I am not though.
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