A Talker.

One of the things that stuck out about my very first relationship was the way it ended. We both knew it was time. I could tell he "just wasn't into me." We were best friends and we had so much in common. I just couldn't leave it though. I wanted to know why. 

I remember that he called to check to see if I was ok, because he loved me. That was not in dispute. I sat in my closet (yes, in my closet) talking on an old rotary phone I had hooked up back there. 

I was bawling and so, so sad.  He sat and listened to me, and then once I gained my composure, there was silence as he waited. He knew I wasn't done. He knew I was a talker, and that to close the door, I needed to talk it out, to make sense of things first. 

I remember asking , "Why?" I could tell he was uncomfortable, but I figured the discomfort of that moment was a less than fair trade for my broken heart. He said, "You don't want to know. It won't do any good. Just know that I love you and that's part of the reason."

That explanation made no sense to me at 18, though it does now. I had a similar conversation last night, minus the closet and the rotary phone, though I wish I'd had them both. Instead, I sat on my warped brown wicker chair in my bedroom, holding dry cleaning, and listening to my dog bark incessantly at nothing from behind a closed door.

My heart had been bruised over and over in the past year, but I considered it worth it for this person-- most of the time. I could tell he was uncomfortable, but I figured that a less than fair trade for my legitimately broken heart. 

The thing is, I had just admitted to myself that it was broken. And I knew that in order for us to move on, to be friends, I had to talk it out. 

I had tried to avoid the conversation initially, but considering that he had moved on to talking to someone new in less than a month, and I was still doing well just to have a 15 minute conversation with any new guy, that told me that I had been way more emotionally invested, even from the start. 

I felt the discomfort, the awkwardness in the air. It was almost like at those points in time yesterday, he wished he'd never even met me so that we wouldn't be there together, in that stale air, having the talk that would take us nowhere, other than to more stale air and discomfort. But still, I asked, "Why?". 

"I've never given it much thought," he said. 

I found that odd, considering the length of time we'd known one another, that he would just feel comfortable giving up and just trading conversations he could be having with me for someone else, without even considering why. 

He even acknowledged that if we spent more time together, he thought our relationship would grow, most likely in a positive way... But that he just didn't want to. 

Now that he'd obtained the object of his months-long conquest, he was done... And on to the next. And then I wondered, "Is it the person that matters... Or does it just matter that there's someone there?"

After all, how do you choose the person that you're with? Initially, it's someone who makes you feel comfortable and with whom you can be yourself. When we first met and when we were together in person, he'd mentioned how comfortable he was with me... In a way he'd never been. And we'd talked and talked so many nights until the wee hours... About everything and nothing. We knew so much about each other. He was comfortable. I was comfortable. 

And then the last time we were together, things were different. I was uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable. It was just odd. In a way, it was almost like he'd made up his mind before I'd arrived that the outlook wouldn't be good. I know this person so well, almost like he's myself somehow, and it's always been that way, so I could tell. 

So then last night when we sat there in the middle of my this-time-tear-free puddle of "why," I realized it really didn't matter. That I didn't need to talk it out. That it wasn't going to make me feel any better. 

Because I know his answer. And sometimes the answer is just, "It didn't work because I didn't want it to."

And really, that was an answer I'd known from the very beginning. Without saying a word. 

He was ambivalent. He felt for me the true opposite of love... Indifference. Which is why he'd never given it much thought. Because it didn't matter. I didn't matter. 

Worse than negativity, ambivalence says, "I could love you, but naw... I'll just keep looking."

And when I hung up the phone, I was sadder than when he called. And I did not feel loved. And I did not feel hurt. I just felt numb. 

I felt nothing. And nothing doesn't want to talk anymore.