[1] in Depressing_Thoughts
Well, no sense in letting a good coatrack go to waste...
amgreene@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (amgreene@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Apr 29 21:26:31 1988
As most of you are aware, Pam and I broke up last Sunday. This is
*just* the sort of thing that this meeting was set up for -- a place
to get these sorts of things off one's chest.
I feel like such an idiot. I deluded myself for months, thinking that
it could work, that it *would* work. I should have been more aware of
what was going on -- or what wasn't going on -- between us. I kept
making excuses for her, blinding myself against the truth. And dreading
the moment that I knew had to come, and pretending it would never
happen.
I asked her the question I shouldn't have -- ``If it weren't for the
distance between us, would things have worked out differently?'' And
the answer came back ``Probably.''
Oh, G-d, why do You do these things? Why do you bring two people
together, make one fall hopelessly in love with the other, then
separate them and inflict such anguish on one?
The worst part is the realization that I didn't do anything wrong. That
I found what other people spend lifetimes searching for, and I lost it
through no fault of my own. That's what hurts the most.
What hurts the second most is that I hate her now. Not all the time,
but sometimes, I hate her as much as I loved her a week ago. And that's
not fair to her. It's not her fault that she couldn't keep the flame,
as it were, as long as I insisted on carrying it. And I owe her so much
of my self-esteem and self-confidence. She taught me that it's OK to
dance "modern-style," that it's OK to touch a girl, to hug a girl, to
kiss a girl. I am forever in her debt for bringing me out of my shell
and into the real world.
And now it's over. As briefly as it began, and as quietly. It all
started with a note slipped under a door at 6:30 in the morning, and
it ended with two teenagers, sitting at computer terminals 2,000 miles
apart, sobbing quietly as 80-character data packets spelled out the
end of what-could-have-been....
