in a few words...it's all gone

How do you respond when the man you've been dating for the last seven months, whom you have invested so much time and energy, patience, acceptance and emotion into tells you-
"I just don't see a future together?"

How do you respond when he tells you he is still trying to find that "connection" with someone, that you are not his "match." News flashes to you and all that you had believed.

But, here's the consolation prize: "I've had so much fun with you."

Was I "just a good time?" I'm so tempted to ask, but I am so afraid of what the answer might be. This statement comes with the implication that my name should be scrawled on the yellowing walls of some public restroom. A roadside rest-stop or a small town diner, perhaps. Above a urinal in blatant, unforgiving, thick black marker. Maybe a snide remark or two encircling my phone number.

It felt like I was in a bad movie. Standing out in the parking lot by our respective cars, warm early spring sunshine in my face and tears trickling down, slightly blinded as I looked into his dry eyes. Classic statements like "Is it me?" flying around. His assurance that it is not that.
But, is it? I honestly wonder if it is just that simple, me. Am I not smart enough, pretty enough, witty enough, fill-in-the-blank enough. For some reason I can just not let myself think that perhaps it really is just him.

Today my eyes feel like swarms of tiny wasps attacked them. Puffy, red and sore. Heavy to keep open, as though little weights are hooked onto my eyelashes, dragging them down. I close them, but it feels like sand grinding together. I have seeped out so much water that my eyeballs have become two small parched deserts.

I am fragile feeling, but I sense a strain of anger creeping in. I wish him well and happiness, but secretly I curse him with heartache and swollen eyes along the way. What is that saying, "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?"
Part of me wants to try and sting him back,
but a greater part just wants to hold him again.

Should I have held back from discussing the future with a man I knew feared, shied away from, commitment? I could have had a few more moments with him. Or would that have just been prolonging the same conclusion by another day, week, month? Worsening the impact because of those extra shared times?

What is an unbelievably painful realization to me is that as much as I want him back, I have no doubt that he could have erased my number from his phone as soon as we parted yesterday. If he can't see it, then I am no longer there.

I lamented out loud this morning how I truly thought we had been making headway in our "relationship" (though I am at a loss for what I really should call it right now). He seemed to be putting in more of an effort; suggesting things to do, calling back. My mother bluntly said, "He just wasn't as busy. He had more time right now."

Perhaps I was just an item to pencil in.

Everyone keeps telling me the classic line, "you deserve better." Someone who will love and care for me equally. Who will meet me in the middle and hold my hand between both of his when we get there.

They tell me, "Nora, you are only 22 years old. There are plenty of other guys out there. You are young, you have so much time to meet someone else."

I understand all of this. But no matter if you are 22, 52, 92, Infinity2: A heartbreak is still a heartbreak.

And it hurts something awful.