New life

People who know me understand that I have a bit of a problem with Google. My problem is that I can't stop Googling people, such as ex-boyfriends, and often come across information I'm better off not knowing. Okay, it's actually just one ex-boyfriend, someone I dated at 26-27; after a short relationship, we broke up and never spoke again. So you can understand why I might take advantage of the internet to spy on what he and his new wife are up to. (Living in LA, working in entertainment, and most recently, having a baby, if you must know.)

I would never call him "the one that got away", but I do consider him someone who got away for the wrong reasons. Of course, that's probably because we never dated for the right ones. He lived in Pennsylvania while I lived in New York, and we were both looking for something more than each other - I, a reason to get out of the city; him, a connection to the city while he worked out a two year television contract in a mid-tier market. But on the surface, things were good, and for a while, I convinced myself he was The One. The One who would solve all my problems, the One that would get me out of Manhattan, the One who could give me the energy and the excitement and the life I could not muster up for myself anymore. Even I knew that was far too big a job to rest on anyone's shoulders.

When I first read that he had gotten married, fifteen months after we had broken up, I was upset. How could he have moved on so fast? How could his life have fallen into place while I was moving across the country to avoid a mental breakdown? Was I ever going to get a break in the relationship department? Bitterness and jealousy consumed me, and I longed for what I could not have. Not him, per se, but the security, reassurance that I might be loveable.

So I braced myself when I saw the baby announcement the other night. I read through the spaces between my fingers as I gripped my hands over my eyes. I calculated what I was doing the day the baby was born. I laughed at the ridiculous name. And then I breathed a sigh of relief.

While I had often, irrationally, thought bitterly of their marriage (it should have been me!); this time I thought the opposite: thank God this wasn't me! Much as I would like a boyfriend, I suppose, I can't imagine being married with a baby right now. Mentally, I am years away from wanting the baby part, possibly more years than my body is willing to give me. And for the first time I can honestly say that I'm GLAD it didn't work out. Not just okay with it, or over it, or moved on from it, but really, truly, happy that it didn't.

Although, had I been truthful with myself, I could have told you back then that it wouldn't.

I knew the night I almost had a panic attack in his apartment. It was a cold, rainy Saturday evening in early spring, and since there was nothing to do in suburban Pennsylvania, we had settled into what was becoming routine. He watched the game on TV in the living room, while I started making a salad in the kitchen. Suddenly, I became overwhelmed with a sense of dread, some sort of claustrophobia where I wasn't so much worried about the walls closing in as I was fearful of my life closing in. Was this all there was, I thought? Was this what my life was going to be? Staying in on a Saturday night watching the game? Suburban bliss was looking no better than the city hell I wanted to run away from. So now what?

I started hyperventilating and tearing up and slipped out of the room because I didn't want to explain how freaked out I had been. I don't remember if I even told my friends that story, because I was so busy trying to convince myself that it was going to work out. It HAD to work out.

But it didn't work out. And even if it was for the wrong reasons, it turned out just right.