The Demon and the Muse

There can be no doubt that March is exiting like a lion. It’s cold, it’s wet and I feel as though I have been mauled. So in the end, I am left shaking my head thinking what the hell just happened? You know, I didn’t write very much about this summer/fall because the whole thing was so utterly and perfectly surreal that I didn’t want to look straight at it or jinx it. I’ve never spent time with someone where I could just enjoy watching the world, talking about the most at times ridiculous and at other times very serious matters, held tenderly and amusingly awkwardly by someone who was about as comfortable as a nine-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The thing is, it was always wrong. I knew it. I knew we weren’t right for each other and I said so...often...yet we continued to plug away, happily enjoying the random argumentative, vertically challenged stranger or blood spattered tween. Yup, that is not an exaggeration. The Demon and the Muse. That was us; I was light and color, bubbly but filled with a deep-resonating sadness, and he was tall, long spiky blonde hair that looked like it took too much effort but with a dark side, always in leather, unkempt despite the coiffing, ridiculously out of place in our sunnier climes, but tender and thoughtful, quick to laugh, still but troubled and forever challenging. I liked that. I have always been able to read people and it was nice to be with someone who wasn’t obvious, who I had to work at a bit. And at first, it was just this amazing friendship that had nothing to do with love or seduction or any of it. Just a kindred spirit.

I’ve always been somewhat blessed (read cursed) with an innate ability to not really predict the future so much as predict how people and events will play out, based on the facts presented. It is a terrible thing to know that you can predict the outcome of events and yet have no recourse or perhaps precourse to avoid them. It is especially difficult when you see your friends making insurmountably bad decisions and if you say anything, yes, you may help them but you will inevitably lose them as a friend as well, so I have grown accustomed to saying nothing except “I’m so sorry” when at last events play out. So it is a uniquely painful experience to be on the receiving end of my own, “I’m so sorry you got hurt.”

It’s interesting, the most random things happen to me at regular intervals, as you have taken note at this point, and doubly so when we were together which was probably part of why it felt so right, the world had become our own private joke. But while I was away, I knew things were falling apart and I couldn’t do anything about it. I panicked, I pushed and I looked too closely at the surreal fantasy world we had created and discovered our moon was made of cardboard, thank you Fantasticks. The funny thing is, I spent so much time nay-saying until finally I decided to go for it, take the leap of faith and...NOT trust my instincts and yet...

Here’s the greatest bits of irony. First, I spent almost my entire vacation simply sorting out what had transpired; he’d had my entire contract to get his thoughts in order and move on, he just didn’t have the heart to tell me. And I knew it was happening but when I would freak out and try and get information, it was always, “don’t worry”, “nothing has changed”, “my feelings are the same”, and “all of this will work itself out.” Well, sort of. Truth is, I’m mostly mad at myself; one, for not taking my own advice in the beginning, and two, for allowing myself to indulge in such a beautiful little lie, a pretty fantasy of the future I painted in my mind of how things could be, how they could play out if I was willing to believe that things could. So I did. And in the end, things went as I knew they would; because of life, because of responsibilities and because of character traits that surfaced while I was away, rendering me incompatible; how about that one? The one person who loved me for exactly who I was…never really did. He just didn’t know me well enough to know he didn’t really love me, well not in the way he thought, anyway. Nor it appears, did I ever really know him. Well, crap!

I’d like to feel relieved to have it all over. I’d like to say, “yay, now back to being my awesome single married girl self!” and fear not, loyal reader I’ll get there. But for now I am left wondering, is this how it was supposed to end, or did I just protest long enough to plant the seed of doubt, thus creating some horrible self-fulfilling prophecy of self-destruction? It is a quandary.