This microphone amplified so many different voices, words bounced off these walls leaving imprints of stories in each and every single crease. Something about this stage attracts the ones who can no longer stay quiet, and under this light in front of an anonymous crowd they speak.

Today I’m hoping that same stage supports my weight, I want that same light to burn my open wounds and dry up my tears ducts.  With so much happening in the world today, Haiti in chaos, my people looking up to the heavens wondering if once again God has gone deaf but still not loosing faith, I am ashamed to say that the only pain I can feel is my own.  While oppressed young men and women are walking out of classrooms to march through burning streets and protest against an uninvolved government. I am here to recount yet another sad love story.   

From the beginning “detour” signs paved the road, bright flashing red lights were at every other corner but I was too high to take my foot of the gas pedal and missed all the exits.  Speeding down a One-way Street not realizing that love is a Two-way avenue, I crashed at a dead end and have been parked there since then.  Jean-Paul Sartre said “Hell is the others”, I never thought I would ever understand his meaning so well.  I tripped, tried to keep my balance but still ended up falling. Ladies I don’t know if you can relate but for this guy, I would have flown to Afghanistan, walked through the streets of Kabul, perched on 6-inch stilettos, wearing daisy dukes and a cut off  T Shirt with the inscription “so what” across my chest; ready to defy the one to throw the first stone.  Had he exhibited the desire to engage in a threesome I would probably going against all natural instincts said “yes babe” help him find a girl, closed my eyes and let that other woman eat me out while he watched.  

But he was too busy going on a rampage to expose the Jezebel he thought I mutated into once I stepped out of his place. He would ask “where, when, and who are you with” then doubt my answers once I responded.  When looking into my eyes I guess he would just see lies and be oblivious to the growing bundle of emotions I was carrying around.  Without a background check I lent him qualities that only “the One” should get credited for.  I accepted him with all his flaws. At times when the situation would get atrocious a little voice would tell me to put on my running shoes and sprint; a few times I tried. I would be in ready/set mode but when I was all ready to “go” he would not allow me to leave.  I realized later on that this pattern had little to do with him caring for me and more to do with him not wanting to deal with the reality that a relationship would not end on his terms. Control freak. If I had any doubts about his motives for holding on, they got all cleared up the day he put our relationship out of business because of one bad transaction on my part.  While I had been encasing blow after blow but still sticking around because of my “feelings”; He, on the other hand, refusing to deal with the fact that I could affect him, decided to call it quits.

I cried driving on the way to my girlfriend’s house; I had left a part of me with him. I cried when he called that night and offered to talk about it “because that might clear up the air”. I cried some more when staying true to my masochistic self I called the next day faking to be ok, consenting to talk, then having to swallow the fact that he sounded so great.  I hung up the phone, slowly dropped to the floor, pressed myself against the wall and water rained down my cheeks with more power than Niagara Falls. Two days later the crying stopped, not because the desire was gone but because physically my body despite the aching pain would not allow me to do so. Seeing that I could not produce them myself I went searching around but no one wanted to hand out tears for me to waste while he was probably finding warmth and comfort in between someone else’s thighs.  That image brought out the Delilah in me, I wanted to rape his feelings like he molested mine; but he never gave me a picture and I had nothing to throw darts at so I sat at my computer and typed.

Typed for the times he said he cared but still could not bring himself to make us official.

Typed because when he said he wasn’t ready he was right.

Typed because surrounded by strangers I silently cried at a random café when they played the “you are my lady” tune.

Typed for the time he said I had a destructive nature but didn’t realize that my biggest destructive act was falling for him.

Typed for the days I’ll pine over him, over us, trying to move on.

Typed because picturing someone else in his bed, replicating my moves, doing the things I wanted to be the only one doing, filling up my place, and enjoying a better version of him drove me crazy, and that’s when I stopped.
    
Because you see, a man so conflicted probably has compiled unresolved issues from his past lifetimes to deal with along with the ones from his present existence. No woman would live long enough to see him change and only a mail-ordered bride from Russia with no options will put up with that kind of mess. There was life before and there sure as hell will be life after. Although this experience added another layer to my defensive shell and will make it harder for the next guy to get through, bitterness won’t eat away my essence and I will still be ready to dive for it and take another chance at romance. I have no idea when I’ll exit emotional Limbo but I do know that one day soon while recounting this story as an anecdote at social gatherings over wine and cheese; somewhere on the other side of town he’ll be facing a frightening revelation; when it comes to him the saddest thing about love is that he’s had one too many opportunities…