The day my heart broke for the last time
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and it hasn’t recovered… yet?
It always seems to be with movies that I get thrown back to situations that have defined me. The last time I got the reminder of what a first time should have been from a movie (or was it a series?), and this time is no different.
I’m currently on a Spider-Man-athon and just finished the second part. (Spoiler Ahead for the original series) Mary-Jane leaves John Jameson at the altar to run to the unexpecting Peter Parker, who looks out of a window with dread and loneliness in his eyes, knowing that his love will never be fulfilled.
It reminded me of my a-grade-ceremony, the highest, regular school diploma you can get in Germany. I wanted to have three people there: one of my best friends, my female best friend and, well, the person who I fell the hardest for ever in my life.
But let me turn back time a little bit.
I remember the first time I met her, and I remember the exact moment I fell unrecoverably. I left my living room for a second to come back into the room, seeing her, sitting cross legged on the floor holding my guitar. I don’t remember the song she played, but I remember the tone of her voice. As it entered my ears it imprinted itself so deep on my soul it hurt.
I had build up walls for such an event. The typical “don’t wanna get hurt so I close off” kind of guy. Always honest though. And certain, that whenever someone would be able to climb over these walls it would be “the One”.
She didn’t climb them, she tore them down with no effort at all. You know those rare moments time stops for a second, most probably because it’s filled with every information in the universe and it just takes an eternity to take it all in? That was one of those moments. One second, one tone and I was lost.
But, the irony hits deep in life, doesn’t it? She was in a relationship and so was I. To make matters even worse it was her best friend. And to put the cherry on top: if I would have met them both at the same time, as we were supposed to, I’d never would have ended up with her best friend.
Don’t get me wrong, Maria (her best friend) was a beautiful girl. Intelligent, musically gifted. I really liked her and perhaps in another world, in another life, I could have loved her as well. But so does a story go: heart-break isn’t usually a one way street, there is always some collateral damage, am I right? At some point in the future we should meet again, have a short intense thing going on until it would fall apart unavoidably. There she told me she knew about me and her best friend. She really didn’t know half of it, but enough for me to know not to push it further. I always am a friend of the truth, I don’t lie! But sometimes there are situations where you might leave out some parts of the truth as it was in this case. It’s not justifiable, I know, but imagine being told, that a musical project where you’d want to help out and be part of the band was literally the musical that the singer has written to cope with his broken heart. And it was about your best friend. I tell myself that it was better to not disclose it like that, I’m just sorry that I had to hurt her twice.
Here we go, back to the original time-line — again. I remember the last day we’ve met. It was at a party at a friends house. After being estranged from one another because too much drama surrounded us we were able to talk for what felt like the first time in a while.
So much had happened before. We made out. She told my best friend that she always dreamed about someone like me (all that happened after she broke up with her boyfriend I might add). She even told me she loved me, once. But that was just the point. I pushed to hard because I wanted to much and she only was able to show and tell how she felt when she was drunk enough to loose whatever it was that held her back.
We decided to take a walk and we talked. It was pleasant until it wasn’t. I asked her, to lighten up the mood, “so you said you miss me?” because that’s literally what she wrote me in a text. And there the peace was gone. She didn’t just get defensive, she got angry and told me how I would over-interpret everything she’s saying, and stuff like you have to let go off a bird and when it comes back to you it’s meant to be.
One word followed another until I gave up. I reached my breaking point. In a second that felt just as long as the second I fell for her I knew I had to close the door, once and for all, because I just couldn’t take it anymore.
And I thought you were something special!
That did the trick. Everything imploded within me, there weren’t even grounds left for me to re-build that god damned wall. That was the day a timeline got shattered, I’m convinced of it. Somehow I think we were destined to be with each other. Somehow I know, that I wouldn’t be who I am today if we actually would have made it.
I always looked for ways to fill the hole I have inside of me. I’ve always had a hole there, she filled it up and when she was gone the hole was even bigger. And my art is somehow my release. Most of what I do is inspired by her, by the destroyed landscape she left behind out of which the smoke of sudden inspiration sometimes rises from the burned grounds to the surface of my consciousness. She made me who I am as an artist, which is ironic, because I always wanted to be one. I wonder, would I have wanted it knowing the price of a whole lifetime that I would have to pay. Two lives, to be exact. One life that I could have been with her, that got lost and a second one where I never get over her.
Sometimes I’m not sure if what happened between us was just tragic or if it was a wish becoming reality. She’s still my muse after over a decade. I still dream of her every once in a while, at the latest when I haven’t thought about her for a few months (there she is, the irony again). I still create with the feelings that arise when I fall down into a moment of “what could be” or “what should have been” or just remembrance, like right now. I know that she’s the reason I’ve become the artist I’ve always wanted to be, because without her I wouldn’t have written the pieces that I did. I couldn’t have! Because with her, I honestly think, that she would have been enough.
Here we come to the situation that inspired me to write this, to take a deep dive. I told you about my graduation-ceremony at the beginning. From the 3 people I wanted there only one person came. My female best friend couldn’t come as well as the girl I’m writing about here. But that didn’t stop me to dream of that hollywood happy ending, where all of a sudden she’d come around a corner. That happened at the graduation. No, she didn’t come around, but I hoped she would. I hoped she would come through for me, the way I hoped I would act in such a situation, the way I hoped life would turn out. But it didn’t happen, as you might have infered. And it didn’t happen one single instance of the many times I would get into situations where I did build up my hopes for a romantic Hollywood happy-ending. Which leaves me at the point, where I’m Peter Parker, watching out of a window with dread and loneliness in his eyes, knowing that his love will never be fulfilled. And there’s no Mary Jane that suddenly appears behind me.
This isn’t the end of the story, by far, my dear 5 readers a month. But this is as much as I’m capable to share now.
