Chapter 31

Too many people, with too many connections, with too many signs. Life is what you make it,. And I choose to let this pass.

Every day, I leave my condo. Early, when it's still dark. I look across the street, and see the well-lit stairs. The over- watered lawn. The door, crouching in the shadows. The dormant memories. You see, they are not dead. They had far too much life to ever die. My immortal heartache.

Leaning on his car, in that parking space, behind that lawn, at the top of those stairs, he told me he loved me. We spent night after night on my blanket, looking at the stars and talking. Kissing. Basically it was a 3-week long oxytocin fest. We came so close to what we were looking for. Well, to be honest, I found it. He didn't. He must not have.

I wish I could say that I have stopped thinking about him. That I've counted his flaws and seen the light. I wish I could say that I don't secretly wish that he'd drop her and come back to me. People say love is worth fighting for. I say I don't want to have to fight for it. He has made his decision. He chose her. Who am I to tell him he chose wrong?

My name is Victoria Hart, I served my mission in Armenia and Chicago, and there's nothing interesting about me, what you see is what you get.

I thought that would suffice. That way I could avoid any questions. People seem to think that I have no feelings. That I can take it. Trevor decided to throw his two cents in.

She dated my roommated and he broke her heart.

My honest gut reaction was to chuck my purse at him. He has a heart problem that prevents him from using his hands very often. So guess who immediately became the villain? Nevermind the fact that he had just aired my 2-year old emotional baggage to the world, tossing the tiny fragments of my heart into the wind – shattered crystal. Dried breadcrumbs. As I sat there, I felt my face get hot. I felt my eyes fill up. I felt all eyes awkwardly shift from me. The first hot tear trickled down my face, and I tried not to notice. It burned as it slipped from one freckle to the next, playing a bitter game of pinball. I got up to leave.

Do you know what it's like to realize you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? That the decisions you made, thinking it would make you happy because it made others happy, is what brought you to the pitiful realization that your life has ended up too far down a road it never should have gone? Do you know what it feels like to trace all your uncertainties, mistakes, and unhappiness to one decision, one moment?

I do.

Do you know what it's like to regret something that was supposed to be the best decision of your life? To loathe a tradition that makes most proud and reminiscent. To constantly roll that most cursed and bitter of phrases around in your brain – what if? Like butterscotch candy in your mouth. It creates a film on the mind. A sticky coating of doubt, self-loathing, increasingly weak conviction. What if I hadn't have gone back? Is he worth losing all the people I met?

I've tried to move on. But it always takes me by surprise.

In a sushi restaurant, a birthday dinner for an old mission companion. Someone raves about how fun he is.

In a mexican restaurant with total strangers from Carlsbad. Do that many people REALLY serve in Thailand?

How about when he is perpetually there, posting about how wonderful his girlfriend is?

It's been a year and a half for them. Seriously, shit or get off the pot. If you're not moving to the next step, then something is broken. Or maybe I just want it to be.

I wonder if I will ever feel as strongly about anyone as I did with Mike. Maybe that was my once in a lifetime.

And I know I should be playing Aretha Franklin songs, dating plenty of attractive men, talking about he just doesn't know what he's missing. But the problem is.... he does. And so do I.

I woke up on that morning in Bloomingdale, Illinois and I knew it was coming. It was one of those fateful days. The ones that change your life without warning and without permission. And they always start out the same way – quiet, calm and normal. The quiet before the storm. I say I knew it was coming, and I did.

That day, I got a letter. It had the familiar scribble in the upper left hand corner; letters over the past 6 months had made the hurried finishing touch almost endearing. And even though I knew what this letter was, the emotional time-bomb it contained, and even the reaction it would catalyze, I left in on the table. I went about my business, getting ready to go back to work after the 9 hours of rest you're allowed as a missionary. It sat on the table, taunting me. Glaring at me. Daring me to unleash it.

When I read the letter, I was numb. That is the honest truth. I felt nothing. Not regret, not heartache, nothing. Just a tingling throb in my chest that helped me realize that I was still alive. It was as if I had fallen asleep on my heart, and the feeling was slowly coming back to it. And the pain, when it came? It wasn't sharp. It was a throbbing, hot pain. Searing even. Each beat of my heart would cause a new wave of pain – reverberating through the core of me, exiting at my extremities.

This is one of my long stories.