Explosions

Explosions.

You explode into a swirling mix of smoke and sparks when you are entranced by the potential or actuality of love, a beautiful firework, bright and confident, bringing pleasure to both yourself and the world around you. But when love ends? You explode as well, only internally, burning up your happiness and dreams, leaving behind a smoldering, uninhabitable mind full of doubt and loneliness.

I am one such mass right now, scrubbing hopelessly to remove the caked-on ash and cinders that appear to be determined to forever mark me as a hurting soul, a person in transition, someone who is, after all is said and done, completely alone.

I don’t understand how this has come to be my existence. I truly believe that I begin everyday optimistic and honest, looking to see the best in everything and everyone. I am kind, raw, personable, fun; do I not exude all of these things when I interact with the world around me? Do all of my positive attributes really go so unnoticed?

He saw these things in me. He did. Yet I sit here all alone while he goes off and falls for someone else. Why is this the way things consistently happen for me? What am I doing so wrong?

I hate to single him out, but my life since I met (and lost) him has been a whirlwind of emotion. We were complementary to each other in a way I had never experienced before. We were perfect, or so it seemed—how could he not fight for that? I explode in anger, hurt, frustration, confusion. We were perfect. We were real. We were truly and uniquely us.

He told me so much about himself. He let me in, and I am sorry for kidding myself into thinking that that meant that I was important to him in a personal, maybe even romantic, way. I did trick myself into thinking these things; I must have, for it can’t be true only for him to leave things the way they are between us.

He “checked in” the other day. He even told me so. What guy who is actually “checking in” with a girl says he is doing so? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I still recall the exact way I felt when I looked down and saw his name across my phone, accompanied by the simple “Hey Lizzy! How are you?” I exploded then, into a burst of color and emotion and thought. Last I knew he was in a relationship with some mystery girl. A little research told me that this was still the truth. What then could he want from a not-good-enough, “nicest person I’ve ever met,” sorority girl like me?

I still don’t know. His “checking in” comment provides me with no answers, no hints, nothing. I have wanted nothing more since our last texts than to talk to him again in some fashion, let him know he has crossed my mind—tell him that the heart he awakened somehow, someway has not forgotten him.

Were we too good of a match? Was the world—or us, perhaps—not ready for a team as perfect as us?

Or am I that undesirable? I am really someone who will never find another human being who can put up with who I am through and through? I have been told a derivative of this recently and I am struggling to understand where such an idea comes from. Surely I am not a bad person. I think most people would agree that I am quite the opposite. What, then, is the problem?

It’s not just him. It’s been other guys. Some of my best friends. My family sometimes, who I notice seem to enjoy the company and opinions of others more than mine.

I have searched for answers but repeatedly have come up with little substance for them. I am not perfect. Sure, I have my share of faults and shortcomings, and failures. But that fails to attribute for the fact that I seem to be lacking in nearly every aspect of my social life.

I hope to have answers soon.

Until then, I continue to explode, as if the ash that clouds my life presently is not enough as is.