Final Act - The Decision

I returned home to try and deal with my pain. I spoke to her a couple of times over the first few weeks. I wanted to make sure that she got out of San Diego with no problems. I know it might have been easier to just break clean at that point. But I didn’t want to do what was easy. It’s hard to just eliminate someone who has meant that much to you from your life. I think she felt the same way. We told each other that we really wanted to stay friends. That we should be able to be friends. But in my heart I knew we weren’t destined to be friends.

Personally, I had no plan. No idea what I was going to do after being crushed by love again. All of my plans for the future had included her. So I did what any guy in my situation would do. I drank. Luckily one of my buddies, who was stationed with me on the island, was now stationed 10 minutes from my home town. He was there to help me cope with my depression. We started hanging out in the local dive bar. It was a typical sailor bar. Complete with a lot of drunken sailors. But I knew I couldn’t continue living a self destructive life. I was on the road to nowhere and the traffic was light. I needed to get some sort of a life plan.

The new semester was about to start, so I decided to go back to college. I had completed a few years worth of classes while I was in the Navy and now seemed like a good time to finish. I enrolled in school and set off to complete my education. At the same time, she was beginning her first semester at the University of Arizona. We spoke a few times a week. It was painful. Enduring the pain and still feeling like she was part of my life was a better than the alternative to me. So I tried to maintain the friend’s relationship. It didn’t always work. There were many 2 AM phone calls. Drunk dialing, and not always by me. I think she was also feeling the pain of separation. Realizing the possibility that we might never find our way back together.

It didn’t take long, as a poor starving college student, for me to realize that this was no kind of life. I needed a job. I needed money. I took a job in the restaurant where I worked during high school. The owners were my friends and they agreed to let me wait tables. I think this is what started to turn me around. My life was pretty dark until I started to work again. I met new people. I started to live again, without the regret of the last three years. We still spoke and we tried to maintain the resemblance of a friendship, but it was clear that we were both heading in different directions.

I met someone at school. Not someone that I had a future with, but someone who was there at that moment. I met someone at work. I met someone in the bar. Again no future, but I didn’t care about the future right then. In my mind, my future did not extend past the next weekend. I dated girls here and there. I never told her about them and I didn't want to know what she was doing either. I know she dated other people. I know he visited her. I cared, but I could not cope with the thought of him and her, so I pretended I didn’t know.

Then one day on one of our calls, she asked me to come visit. It had been months since I had returned home to heal. I had been kidding myself that I was moving on. That I was healing. I knew this as soon as she asked the question. I knew it because my heart skipped. I got that feeling you get when one of your dreams comes true. You might think this would have been an easy decision. Yes. Yes, I will come visit you and we can live happily ever after. Well it wasn’t that easy. Taking the chance to see her again in person also meant I was taking the chance that I would be hurt again. I decided to think about it.

I concluded that I really didn’t have an option. I needed to see what was left between us. Was there even the possibility that we would be able to repair the damage of our relationship? We planned a three day weekend together. I was apprehensive, a little scared, but also very excited. I tried not to put to much pressure on the trip. Not to expect everything to be perfect.

The weekend was great. We talked about us. We talked about the future. We made love. We were always good at that. I went home with renewed optimism that one day we would find our way back to each other.

It was almost the end of the college semester, and I came to the conclusion that living poor and going to school wasn’t for me. I had the skills to get a good job, make some real money, and stop living from week to week. I started looking for that real job. It didn’t take long to land a position. My buddy got a job with the same company. We were supposed to work in California, but two positions opened in Texas and I suggested we take those. We had never lived there, but we’re both adventurous and this would get me closer to her. Well at least closer to her family. My buddy and I moved to Texas.

She and I continued to speak and try to work on our relationship. We agreed that we should keep it casual as long we had distance between us. A sort of safety net to protect us from our past. A way to prevent us from exposing ourselves to the kind of pain we both had suffered in this relationship. We talked to each other several times a week, but continued to live our separate lives.

That's when I met her. I actually met her on the first weekend I was in Texas. I didn’t really meet her, she was my bartender. She was dating someone. I saw her every week at the bar. I got to know her. She became my friend. It started out innocent. We would see each other in group gatherings. At first I didn’t see what was happening between us. I think it was the time I saw her boyfriend dump her while she was at work that opened my eyes. That scene affected me in ways that it shouldn’t have. I knew then that I was beginning to have some serious feelings for my friend. But I ignored my feelings, probably because I didn’t think they were mutual. My friend's feelings for me became clear one eventful weekend.

It was a holiday weekend and she came into town from Arizona to spend the holiday with me. We hadn’t seen each other in a while. I introduced her to my friend. We all went out together one night with a few other friends. That evening it became clear that the feelings I was suppressing for my friend were mutual. After the weekend ended, after she went back to Arizona, my friend and I talked about us for the first time. We decided we should explore what we were feeling. We went out on a date. Then another. I could tell right away that the feelings I was having were real.

Over a month after that holiday weekend, I got the call from Arizona. She was pregnant. We had been careful, but apparently not careful enough. My world was suddenly a complete mess. I wanted to do the right thing. In my heart I still loved her, but I was not sure that I could ignore the new feelings I was having. I decided to get married and raise our baby. This was very painful for my friend. A month before the wedding, we lost our baby. This was devastating to both of us. More devastating than anything that had ever happened to me in my life.

She still wanted to get married. I didn’t know what I wanted. I was now faced with the most difficult decision of my life. A decision I was being asked to make just days after losing my child. I decided I could not get married as long as I still had feelings for my friend. So she and I went back to our long distance friendship while I began a relationship with my friend.

A few months later, I got a promotion and the company I worked for wanted to send me back to California. I asked my friend to go with me and she said yes. I knew then that the only way our relationship would have a chance was if I ended my five year, up and down, relationship with her. So I did. I had to break the relationship clean this time. No phone calls. No letters. No friendship. I have always felt guilty about the way our relationship ended. It was very painful for her.

That was over twelve years ago. My friend eventually became my wife. And although our relationship recently ended, I still wouldn’t have traded the last twelve years. Some of those years were the happiest of my life. It would be easy to look back now and think maybe I made the wrong decision. All decisions are easy in hindsight. But we make decisions based on what we feel at that moment. Sometimes people get hurt by these decisions. But at the end of the day, we have to do what is right for us and live with the consequences of our decisions.

I remember after I made my decision, she said she blamed him. If she had not met him, not listened to him, then we would’ve never been apart and our lives would be different. I know it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my fault. It just was. Sometimes life is just life.