A Letter to the Moon

I guess there’s an old saying about not contacting former lovers, to tell them one last thing. Something about how you should tell the moon instead, and trust that your message will be delivered how and when the moon sees fit. I couldn’t find a quote to that effect, so you’ll have to trust me.

When we first met, I hardly thought that I would find myself considering a future with you. When I found myself considering a future with you, I hardly thought that this was a habit of yours, offering girls you meet on business trips a chance to enter your heart and your home. Obviously I can see now that it was all lies, that you never meant the things you said. I’m not sure whether I’m relieved to know that I didn’t screw up the opportunity of a lifetime or devastated at how little I meant to you.

Your words were so real to me. You had waited your whole life to meet me. You were looking for someone to share your life with. That you were impressed by me, that I was smart and sexy and sweet and just what you needed and wanted in your life. That you were excited by the possibilities for our future. Our, we- these words you tossed around so easily- that you explained by saying that you felt comfortable discussing our future.

You were so real to me. I can still picture you sitting next to me on the couch. Milling around the Civic Center in your Red Sox hat. Introducing you to all of my friends. Watching you stretch out in blissful slumber while I slipped out of bed to entrust my notebook with all the hopes and wishes and dreams I had for us.

I wonder if you think about me. I wonder if you are a little chilly without me under your blanket on your own couch. I wonder what you thought when you washed the wine glasses we left in the sink that last night. I wonder if you knew in your heart that you were lying when I told you that the game at Fenway was the best date I have ever been on in my life, and you kissed me and whispered “There’s plenty more where this came from”.

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with you. Driving through the countryside, your hand on my thigh while I helped your son practice his spelling words, and he got one right that he had been struggling with all morning. I squealed in delight for him, and you looked at me, and I just knew. I just knew that I belonged there, my thigh under your hand, with spelling words in my hand and the sun shining in through the windows, and a little boy grinning from ear to ear with success and approval shining in his eyes, and you looking at me with such affection.

It was so hard not to tell you. Not cupping your face in my hands and staring into those beautiful blue eyes and telling you that I had fallen hopelessly and madly in love with you. I wonder now if part of me knew- knew that you would never love me, that you didn’t want to love me- that I was just a game and your lofty promises were “fantasy”.

Because reality is that you disappeared on me. Reality is that you met a girl while you were out of town on business, and you picked her. You picked a girl in a bar over the girl that was sitting at home, waiting for you to return a message, waiting for you to reach out again, waiting for you to love her back.

So now I wonder if I got picked over someone? Who died inside when you met me? Who had to go to sleep and wake up every night wondering what she did, where you went, how something so very real, so very wonderful could evaporate overnight?

That last night in Boston. When we settled in to sleep, and you wrapped your arms around me, and we fell asleep all tangled up in each other. I thought that was it. I thought I had won. I thought that your ability, your desire to fall asleep holding me in your arms was a sure sign that this all was very real.

The way you told me that you weren’t going to let me make my own arrangements when the flights went to hell. The way you apologized for my wait at the airport. The way we talked the whole way home about life, love, growing up, taking risks, drawing lines. The discussion we had on our way to the airport in Albany, about expressions of love and human nature and the difference between girls who love their Daddies and girls who never had a Daddy. That you came to try to say goodbye again before I boarded my plane.

We talked everyday for a week after that. You sent me text messages from bars, and I knew, I just knew that we were going to be great. That you were thinking about me, that you couldn’t keep up the messages if you were talking to other girls. That I was doing the right thing in loving you.

And then you didn’t answer me. And then you knew that I was upset, that I was scared, that I needed to hear from you. You didn’t answer then, either. You just disappeared without even a whisper. You didn’t even have the courage to tell me to go to hell. I finally got all of my answers this morning, on Facebook, where you had just accepted a friend request from a girl in… Oklahoma. Where you spent those two weeks on business.

Did you wait thirty nine years to meet her, too? Did you ask her to get a webcam so that you could talk to her on Skype? Have you made a list of places that she wants to see yet? Have you arranged the first visit? Have you given her the “poor single Dad without a wife” story yet? Have you told her that if she’s cookin’ in heaven, you’ll slit your wrists right now? Did you tell her “listen, the fact that you seem to be putting your whole self into this doesn’t scare me…it has to be there….you have to in order for it to be awesome…even knowing full well that it could fail miserably, but you still have to go ALL in…if you hold back, then it dies…don’t know if that makes any sense…but”? Will you tell her that? Will you trick her into loving you too, until your next trip?

She really is the lucky one. Not because she has you- she won’t have you for long- but because she isn’t the one who dreams about you. She isn’t the one who mourns a future she never should have believed in. She isn’t the one who made a place for you in her heart, only to find a hole that aches with hollowness.

I hope for her sake that she’s smarter than I am, and loves you less. That she fights harder to keep her guard up, to look for what’s behind all of those sweet words and lofty promises. I want to send her a message. I want to send her a letter. I want to give her the same good advice given to me about ninety days too late:

“never trust people with wings. they always leave.”

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