A little over a year ago, I decided (as much as one can decide) to pursue a relationship (as much as one can pursue) with the most promising prospect to cross my path in years. Timing, it seemed, was against us. A few weeks after I realized that the crush was mutual (how thrilling!), this guy – we’ll call him Bert for shits & giggles – told me that he was leaving on a week-long work trip. Unfortunately, it was the week prior to my leaving New York for a three-week, soul-searching/soul-salvaging trip abroad. I was nervous about how a month-long separation would affect the still fragile flirtation we were building, but felt confident that we could keep up our playful banter via email, and that something fun and real would likely be waiting for me when I returned home. Except that by the time I came home (and jumped into a new worked project), dear Bert was out of town yet again – this time for a month. At least I was back in the States, though, where back-and-forth emails were complimented by hour-long phone calls, reminiscent of the rambling, twisting high-school calls with an equally lusted-after beau.
When we did see each other – roughly 3 months after last bidding each other goodbye – we had a proper date (I thought), and although I denied to my friends getting ahead of myself, I was clearly lying. That first date, sadly for me, turned out to be our only date, as future attempts to get together were devastatingly unfruitful. Months passed, and although we were finally in the same city at the same time, there was an unsettling distance in the space between us. About six months after my crush began, I decided (as much as one can decide) to give up and get over him.
I write this not as a maudlin tale of lust-lost. Instead, a recent reflection of the confusing and gap-ridden chain of events that began with smiles and flushed-cheeks led me to see the big picture of this Relationship That Never Was. Bert and I – regardless of our physical location – were always in two different places. We existed on two planes whose trajectories neared each other but I doubt every truly intersected. I don’t mean to metaphor-ize this concept to the stuff Chick Lit is made of… the different places I speak of were not those of maturity or readiness or social standing. The chemistry and likeness was there – otherwise Bert wouldn’t have been the promising prospect I swore he was. But with the wisdom and wistfulness with which I approach that chapter of the past year-or-so feels like a global one this afternoon, and I’m learning that we all kind of cosmically reside in one place. No matter how far we travel or where we settle down, we each occupy our own plane, stretching out forever into the vast unknown we call life. Inevitably, we’ll encounter some of the billions of other planes – sometimes crashing, sometimes grazing, sometimes perfectly meshing into an intersection. That’s when we are lucky.
I last saw Bert in a foreign city we were both in, and our planes once again magnetically pulled towards each other. But – as I knew they couldn’t, and as I know now they likely never will – the magnetism pulled only so far before that strange repellency turned us both away. He continued off on his plane, and I on mine. *
Par Avion 