Epilogue

 Dido

The other day, I described this to someone else as a baking metaphor: I tried baking before, and it didn't go well. For a while I didn't know what went wrong and how to fix it, so I kept trying to bake but I didn't get great results. And I fed you bad cakes.

Recently I finally understood that my issue was with the oven: I did not know how to use it. I read about it, studied the manual, saw YouTube videos, but I never actually used that oven before, so I ended up burning my bakes. The oven did not have the intention to burn it, it was just being an oven, doing what it was supposed to do. I couldn't handle it - maybe its dials were confusing to me, maybe its temperature was in F instead of °C...

Now I know where my issue is, and I spent the last days fine tuning my oven skills, and my baking is getting better and better by the day... But where do you come in all this?

Well, there's a saying that goes like "all things come to those who wait". And I want to thank you for waiting and being there. I want to thank you for eating the bad cakes I fed you. So far, you have been patient and understanding with me, my issues, my insecurities, my complexities and my complaints. I brought into our friendship issues that had nothing to do directly with you, and you had to take them. Actually, strike that. You did not have to take it. You chose to take it. 

I am sure there were positives, but there were a lot of not so positives. And you're still there. You saw something in me that, at times, I could not see. To use another metaphor, you bet on me, and when my share value went to its lowest point, you remained calm and kept your money invested, because somehow you knew that things would pick up again, and your patience would pay off. You saw my potential and you knew one day you'd get a delicious cheesecake with a chocolate base and salted caramel sauce, and it'd so delicious that it woild even change your opinion on salted caramel.

Now I can see what you already saw. I feel that the tide is turning. I am getting my personal issues sorted, I am tidying up my house, cleaning the fog and seeing better days on the horizon. You haven't seen the best side of me yet, but that side exists. It has been dormant, suffocated by bad demons that were set free by someone else. It took me a long time to understand those demons, where they come from, how they operate and what needs to be done to get them back where they belong. But I finally do, I finally understand everything now. I am confident that the rough part is over, and if we were able to survive that, the next bit will be amazing. I am back in control, I promise you that. 

And I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life being your friend.

Closure in 2 acts.

Act II - The Hawk

I know anymore exactly how or why, but suddenly you came back to life. To my life, that is, as you haven't really died in the real world, only in my metaphor. And we started talking again. In the beginning I was unsure this would be a good idea:I think there's an old saying that goes about someone who has been burned before is afraid to play with fire again. I don't think I could describe it better.

The truth is, I never had any negative feelings towards your person. I was just afraid of what you represented. Talking to you again was reliving everything, and there was a huge part of my brain telling me to run and never look back.

But there was also my heart telling me to stay. To listen to what you had to say. To give you a chance to explain your side, and give me a chance to see the full picture and understand what really happened. I had to listen to my heart on this one - something I learned both from you and from Roxette. 

And I did listen to you. I asked you questions, I gave you the chance to tell me your story. I ate it, digested and assimilated what you said. And I am a better person for it. Not simply because I was kind, but because I could learn more about myself and understand the root of some behaviours I have now.

Dealing with people is not mathematics, there's no right or wrong answer. There's no definite result to get. Sometimes things just don't work out, and that's ok. It's not my or your fault, or anyone else's. It's just the cards that have been dealt are not great, and the pile didn't offer anything better. Maybe you got the cards I needed, and I got the ones you did. As they say in Montreal: c'est la vie.

I never blamed you, and today I see that I should not have blamed myself either. The issues I had were my fault, you were only the trigger. But your actions would not have had any effect if it wasn't for my personality, my insecurities and my personal issues. Those issues are not (and probably will never be) completely sorted, but I understand now better how to control them.

I have another virtual friend now. He's what you and I would have been, if things were different. I now see that I brought a lot of baggage from our friendship to my friendship with him. Some of it was bad and created friction, but some of it helped me navigate things better with him than I did with you. 

I learned a lot from you, and I learned a lot about myself. And that's what stuck to me: not the bad things, not the issues we had, not the hard times. But the fact that you made me a better person. And I will alway be thankful to you for that. I don't see you and me as friends anymore, and I don't think I ever will. But I like the idea of having you in my life, knowing that if I'm ever at your city, I can give you a ring and maybe meet for a coffee or a poutine. That we can be social to each other and chit chat on WhatsApp about life. I'm happy with that arrangement. But most important, I got closure. And I can move on.

Closure in 2 acts.

Intermission

Since you've been gone I became a different person. I lost a lot of my self confidence and I trusted myself way less than I did before. The whole situation wrecked me. I got destroyed, and only now I can begin to understand the extent of that destruction, and how I can start to rebuild.

You got to know me deep, deeper than most people, and one day you just left without an explanation. So the only thing I had to blame was myself. And I did. For years I managed to take good care of the bad voices that told me I'm not good enough, but those voices now had something to feed on. They could loudly whisper in my ear that they were right all along, and finally I was able to see that.

I became afraid of being myself, because that alone would be a reason for people to go, to walk away from me, that would make people leave me. And although people left me before, I could always tell myself that they were the wrong ones. They were the one who could not appreciate me for who I was, and I'd rather be alone than not being myself. That argument was no longer valid.

I've turned into a person who was always prepared to be let go, and who would go the extra mile to please, to apologize, to annul myself, if that would make someone like me. I was always ready to be abandoned. It was just a matter of time for me to screw things up, like I screwed things up with you.

Closure in 2 acts.

Act I - The Panda

I met you online, and usually people I meet online are all about the body, but rarely about the person inside it. You seemed to be one of those, at least initially, but once in a while a surprise comes along in a world of meh. You were that surprise. I cannot explain how or when, but you suddenly started to be more than someone I swapped nudes with. We started to become friends.

Our friendship grew, and even though you were always very clear about how much you still wanted the body, you become something essential in my life. We talked every day about everything, and you were closer to me than almost anyone else. You were in the same level, and sometimes one step ahead, of the people I saw every day.

But you were not here. You were a quarter of a planet and five time zones away. And if that wasn't bad enough, you had a very possessive and controlling husband, and you were trapped in an oppressive and abusive relationship. I wanted us to become friends, I wanted to be in your life, meet your kids, meet your husband and you meet mine. And two things started to be clear to me: first, we could make it work despite the distance and the adversities; second, we would never be more than friends. Doing anything else would jeopardise everything we were building. I never stopped finding you attractive, but I stopped seeing you as someone I wanted to fuck. I thought what we had was more important than anything else, and that included sex.

We only met once, but it felt like I knew you for years. That we had had just seen each other the week before. I had a lovely time with your family, on your favourite pub, and I later ate one of the best cheesecakes I ever had. I wished then that we could have spent more time together. And we were so excited about that meeting that we forgot to make a picture. We had memories, and the promise of more to come in the future.

But that future did not come. One day, over a video call, everything crumbled. I got upset with the realisation that I wouldn't see you when you came to the UK, and you took yourself away. And that moment haunted me for the next year. I never fully understood what happened then. My logic told me that it was not so bad, but reality acted in a different way. We stopped talking, and later you decided to end the friendship. Just like that, it was over.

I tried to understand, to explain, to make sense. How could something so small and so simple break a friendship so strong and deep as we had? Why did we recover from worse moments, and still this one was beyond salvation? Did I do something so horrible or so wrong, and was I failing to see it? Or what did I not see, what could I not understand, which pieces of the puzzle did I not have?

I asked myself these questions for years, and I built theories. It took me a while to get over you, but eventually I did. I never got closure, but I did move on. I accepted that you were my ghost. You'd appear to haunt me once in a while, but you were, at that point, harmless. I would wake up from your nightmare feeling scared, but then I'd realise it had only been a nightmare, now I was awake and you were not there, in the real world. Life was ok.

Yesterday

The thing is, yesterday there were probably more things under the hood than I let show. But I don't want you to think that I am lying to you or hiding things from you. I am not even sure I know what is under that hood.

My best guess at the moment is that yesterday I started to understand how I feel about you and how our friendship will develop further. I knew something was happening for a while, but I still could not see the big picture. Now the pieces are falling into their right position. I don't have the full picture yet, but I see the direction it is taking. I can tell if its a landscape, a painting, a place, a city, etc.

And I am scared. On top of everything that is going on right now, I am scared about what I feel and how I will deal with that feeling. I am scared about how things will play out for us, now that the world is different. And I am scared with getting hurt, but also being the one that hurts someone. In every scenario that I play this in my head, it goes horribly wrong and there is a lot of pain. Still I cannot let go. I need to follow through. I need to see where this will take me.

If there is one other thing I learned yesterday is that it is and will be worth it. Pain is part of life, and one cannot avoid it if one wants to live. And I want to live. I want you to be part of my life. I want to hear your voice and see your face when I feel sad. I want to hug you again. I want to hear you telling me that it will be OK.

I know it will be, but it's nicer when it comes from you.