Retrospect

Dash was right about a great many things over the course of our not quite 8 years and yet missed the boat as often as he was right. I’ve come to accept that it wasn’t really either of our faults. Not his fault because his heart wanted what his heart wanted and to his credit he tried albeit in vain to give me what I thought I wanted – but you know that old adage be careful what you wish for; well it’s true.

So if you take something away from this here’s what it means to me: Those little annoyingly endearing qualities that we all find in the person we love shouldn’t be locked down because we don’t like them, but silently endured with a quite smile and the knowledge that the underlying reason for anothers actions whether we like the action or not for whatever reason is really quite sweet.

As an example I’ll tell you both sides of 1 stupidly simple gentleness I ruined, at the beginning what it meant to me and again at the end.

He liked to open my door for me.

In the beginning I hemmed and hawed and sighed through it because it made me feel like a spoiled, pampered woman. Now mind you the woman’s equality thing is not the soap box upon which I then (nor is it now) stood but more of the Miss Independent – “ I don’t need a man to do things for me” viewpoint. I then proceeded after a few months of this to tell him I didn’t like it whereupon he did the honorable thing and stopped. Many (for the most part) happy years down the road when I was counting (mostly) only my losses it was among the things listed as “he never does this anymore” and I knew then that it was my fault alone because I’d asked him to stop and he’d obliged, I wonder now how much it cost him to stop and for everyone of those little niceties how many pieces of his heart died trying to please me.

For my part in all this it wasn’t my fault either because I didn’t really know what I needed and this leads me to the top 3 things I thought I loved about Dash.

1. He accepted me for who I am and allowed me the room to be me and grow beneath the sunshine of acceptance.

That would be fairytale #1. Maybe we both knew it from jump street maybe we didn’t. Neither of us did this for the other. He always had a problem with my weight and it created one of my major issues with him – our lack of sex life. He wanted a centerfold, I wanted a porn star.

2. He was patient and supportive.

Patient as a Saint I tell you and not his fault that I felt the need to push it to its limits because I wanted to see if I could break him – mission accomplished. Supportive maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t but if he was it was a quietly reserved thing I wish he had done more vocally like a cheering squad and I only have myself to blame for needing his approval, my own opinion of myself should have been enough. I tried to push him toward his dreams as well but I never had much patience.

3. This is actually more about me – I loved him before I ever saw a picture of him – for his mind and soul.

It would seem every time I move on from a relationship I spend a goodly deal of my time looking back on it and wondering if I ever really loved him or vice-versa. I have known since I was 16 that I have a tendency to love the mere idea of being in love, and creating castles on clouds convincing myself of magic fairytales. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t but when the shock wore off I found myself lovingly putting away the good memories unable to erase those from reality as I am so want to do.

I really wish I could hate him but I simply can’t because the fact of the matter is I didn’t know what I needed and so therefore how in the universe could he have given it to me.

The list of what I needed is simplistic and without the experience that was Dash I would have never seen the forest for the tress because I know damn well in my pain I sought beyond my walls for a truth I had been too afraid to see before. Every single experience brings me closer to that enlightenment I seek and that truth is the answer to one simple question “What is love?”

Turns out for this moment in time (I have a smug smile on my face but I can’t tell you why yet we haven’t made it that far into the present here in the past of 20/20 hindsight) I need 3 little things:

1. Acceptance

2. Understanding

And much to my surprise . . .

3. Freedom

. . . perhaps a little more truth than I can handle and a mirror that calls me on my bullshit. So here’s to the end of a fairytale and the beginning of a spiritual journey on another plane of existence.