Last night the girls and I went out. So many things happened and yes X, I did make notes on a napkin. One of my notes: How many men does it take to hang a moon? I don’t know if I ever said it out loud or when I wrote it down. But I did. The napkin’s sitting right here beside me.
I was minding my business, reaching my newly established two-gimlet drink limit when a dude walks over to me. He reaches out and shakes my hand. He tells me I look familiar. (Likely story) Then he tells me that we met at his nephew’s house. I’m still like, “Uh, ok, if you say so.” Then he tells me his name. Still, I’m like, “Duh.” Then he gives me his nephew’s first and last name…TXXX HXXXX (Some of you know him as Sir-Whores-A-Lot). To which I’m still like, “Who?” We exchanged a couple of awkward glances because I still had no freaking idea who the hell this TXXX person was. As I was turning back around, the first person I saw was Edwige and that’s when it hit me–only because her and him live(d) not far from one another. Has it been that long that I don’t even know his freaking name? At the time we were ‘dating’ this man hung the moon for me. And today, just like a few years after, I didn’t even recognized his name. Bwahahahahahaaa!! Can you tell I’m so over it?
Anyhow, the theme of last night seemed to be ‘old loves’. That person who, no matter where you go or what you do, you’re still connected. Can this connection truly exist if you’ve moved on? Tricky. Ya see, I have felt like I was connected to someone AND had moved on with the emotional strings uncut. I was wrong. I was connected to who he was way back when. Better still, I was connected to who I was way back then. I was addicted to him and the way he made me felt. And like any addict, even when you put the pipe down, you still secretly long for the feeling of that high. You might fight it, but you know you can’t be in a room with the pipe. It calls you…like crack did to Pookie. Truth was, he and I had both changed. Grown in different directions that made our connection not only unrealistic but not conducive to our moving on.
Amazingly, Anthony Hamilton’s new video is on. As I write this and think about lost loves, isn’t this such a fitting song? “I’m gonna love you anyway. You are my life…I can’t let go…” WTF-ever.
I’ll just tell you about one of the two times I got over ‘old love’. How was I eventually able to really move on?? After soooo many years? It literally just happened. It wasn’t anything I ever planned. Sure I wanted to put the pipe down. But there was no ‘Crack Recovery for Idiots’ book I could go to. I played it out til the last act, final curtain, and the band packing up!
I looked at him one day and saw him. I mean truly saw this MF. I looked at him and really saw him probably for the first time since I met him at 19. I just didn’t feel anything. Because I SAW him for what he was and not just how he made me feel at 19. Later that night, things came to a head. I started to actually react to him in a way he was not pleased with. Cus I was responding to who he was that night, not who I wanted him to be or who I thought he was. This caused a glitch in our whole matrix. And he wasn’t willing to deal with the change. He took me home that night and on the ride we were silent. I reflected but I had no pleasant memories of him. Can you imagine? Color a b*tch pissed and feeling cheated!! We’ve not spoken since. This was a couple years ago I guess.
I really had moved on. But it took me to get locked in the moment to know I was over him. On some level, I thought that if I were to get over him, maybe I never loved him to begin with. I’m still on the fence about this one. Or if I got over him, I could remove the part of me that he’d created. Just because you get over a person, a relationship, a situation, it doesn’t mean it leaves you. I firmly believe we are the sum total of our experiences. When you get into a good place, a place I think I’m in now, you look back upon it all thankfully. I wouldn’t trade 99.7% of my experiences with the League of Extraordinary Men. (There was one night in particular that I wish I could take back.) But those experiences, good or bad, made me into the person I am today. Gerald Levert even sang about it, “And every girlfriend. And every one nite stand. Every heartbreak and every heartache led me to ya. It drew me to ya. It made me better. Better suited for ya.”
As an aside, I’m not one of those women doesn’t want to know about my man’s ex’s. I want to know because they made him who he is. They made this man who, as O stated, “…is perfectly suited to make me happy without even trying.”
When I left the spot last night, early, as I often do, the first person I called, without even giving it any thought? Manfriend. I told him that when I leave from hanging out with my girls, I appreciate him so much more. And by ‘appreciate him so much more’, I mean love him just a wee bit more. Not because of what my girls do or don’t have with men. Because we’ve all come so daggone far. Single or with significant other. Because many of the issues people have, I just don’t have with him. Not to say I never had those issues cus Gawd knows I have–we all have. I jus don’t have them with him. Don’t get it twisted. His ass can get on my nerves as I know I can get on his. Between me and you (y’all), the only time he really gets on my nerves is when we’re looking for a parking space. I don’t know what happens in those 15 minutes. But his hunting technique flies directly in the face of my let’s-just-sit-and-wait methodology. And because it’s when I’m out with the girls that I’m most likely to be confronted with some former significant other’s aura. Yet, I never once think, “What if?”
I guess I have answered the question on my napkin. If you think you’re connected to old loves, if you also sincerely believe and feel you’ve moved on….And I’m not talking about when you move on out of desperation or in an attempt to get over the old love. I’m talking about when every fiber of your being is somewhere else. At the very most, old loves might arrange the stars. But hanging the moon? Not so much. That’ a one man job. At least over at The After Party.
*If at any point this whole Me and Him thing goes south, I maintain the right to take back everything I just wrote!
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