Do You Wanna Come Back? It's All Right

It used to be the dogs--briefly our dogs, adopted together, canine children to replace the little versions of ourselves we were never going to have--barking. For the first few weeks after my Virgo left, I'd be sitting in the house alone, the dogs would bark because they heard something or someone outside, and I'd expect my Virgo to walk through the door.

Then it was the cars. I walk almost every night, and a few times over the past few years while I was out walking, my Virgo came home and pulled up next to me or just happened to be driving up as I was walking towards the house, and I can't tell you how many times I've seen headlights in the distance and hoped to myself while simultaneously pretending not to hope to myself that it was him. 

Now it's the car keys. You know the little beep some cars make when someone hits the lock button on a car key or key fob? It's that. My Virgo's car key makes that noise. It's how I used to know he was home from work or some other place on the rare occasion he was out without me. I'd be sitting at the table or be upstairs in our room, I'd hear the beep, and I'd know he was home. So now? Every time I hear someone's car key or key fob beep and Jesus Christ do a lot of people have car keys or key fobs that beep, how did I never notice that until after my Virgo moved out?, I do the same thing I did (do) when I'm out walking and see a car from afar. I become conscious of the beep (headlights), think of my Virgo, dismiss the thought because obviously my Virgo isn't about to come waltzing through the door, and hope so secretly that I'm not even admitting it to myself that my Virgo is about to come waltzing through the door. 

(I know it sounds completely contradictory that I'm not hoping and secretly hoping at the same time and totally impossible that I can hope something so secretly that I'm not even admitting it to myself, but I know some of you have been there, and for those of you who haven't, lucky bastards that you are, you'll just have to trust me on this.)

You know the end of the movie Singles when Linda shows up at Steve's door? You know what? For those of you who haven't seen it, let's take fifty-seven seconds to watch what I'm not expecting but secretly hoping for every time I see a headlight or hear a noise. 

Poor pathetic Kelly, you're probably thinking, thinking her Virgo might come back. (Or maybe not. I've had some pretty vocal not fans over the years who are probably thinking much worse things than that. I know of at least one person who's surely thrilled that this vieja y sucia is now alone.) 

But I'm not. I'm not thinking, I'm hoping. I'm hoping while simultaneously pretending to myself not to hope for it at all. 

What are the stages of grief? Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance? 

I'm obviously hell and gone from the last one. 

After All This Time

Almost three years ago, I wrote about a time when I saw a cute guy during a trip to Publix and didn't care for the first time in my life (for those of you who don't want to click the link, I can abbreviate: Despite being the most boy crazy person known to man, my Virgo was the only guy I had any interest in at the time; I didn't even care to look).

That was only three months after my Virgo and I had met in real life, though, and only a month after he decided we were official, and aren't the majority of relationships like that when they start? The person we're newly in a relationship with is all we ever think about, all we want to see, all we want to breathe. It's normal for people to slip out of the beginning excitement of love as their relationship progresses, and, in effect, to notice cute people, flirt with people they're attracted to, sometimes even develop a crush. 

I've written about this very thing in the past. I've talked about my attraction to other people when I was with my high school boyfriend, with my ex-Glenn, and with just about everyone I ever dated before, after, or in-between. Because being obsessed with boys has for such a long time been one of my predominant personality traits, crushing on other people while in relationships was just my norm. 

I know you know what I'm going to write because there's no way it isn't obvious, but I'll write it anyway - 

With my Virgo, things were different. 

I don't know why things were the way they were because even for people who aren't boy crazy (or girl crazy), being attracted to other people while in a relationship is totally common, but when I tell you that not once in the three years I spent with my Virgo did I have any desire to be with anybody else, to kiss anybody else, to touch anybody else, I'm not exaggerating at all. 

You know what? Let me give you an example of how not interested in other men I was.

In 2019 when I started teaching at the high school where I teach now, I had a pretty big crush on a teacher whose room was--still is--in my hall. Let's call him Mr. Cute Guy. Because teachers stand at their doors in between classes and because of the way the school is laid out, I either had to pass Mr. Cute Guy every time I went to the bathroom and every time I went back to my class, or I had to wait in line with him in the kitchen for one of the bathrooms to open up, and sometimes, because we had the same lunch, the two of us would be in the kitchen waiting for our food to finish cooking at the same time. I can't tell you how many times I made an idiot of myself around Mr. Cute Guy that year, either feeling too dumb/shy/intimidated to say anything, or feeling so dumb/shy/intimidated that what came out of my mouth sounded so stupid, I wished I'd stayed silent. 

Now, in the past, as stated pretty much ad nauseam at this point, being in a relationship did nothing to stop a crush or the awkward behavior that goes along with it. I can still remember being in the dry stockroom at The Cheesecake Factory with a kitchen guy I thought was super cute a year or so after I got married and not having the nerve to say a word, an incident that was not remotely anomalous.

At the point school started again in person a few months into the 2020-2021 school year, my Virgo and I had been dating for what? I guess about five months. Still the beginning, I know, so it's no surprise that Mr. Cute Guy was of no interest then, but even last school year when my Virgo and I had been together going on three years, although Mr. Cute Guy was obviously still cute, his cuteness and his presence were so blasé to me, I could stand and have an entire conversation with him and feel absolutely no awkwardness at all, something which might not sound like such a big deal, but if you've been reading my blog long enough, you might remember that once I took a guy to buy heroin in Opa-locka (<---- this is a link that also doesn't show) in the middle of the night because he was so cute I didn't have the nerve to tell him no. So being perfectly normal around Mr. Cute Guy? Pretty monumental.

Also monumental? The fact that it wasn't just Mr. Cute Guy. It was Mr. Every Guy. There wasn't one single time when I was with my Virgo that I coveted somebody else. 

Well, as we all know, I'm no longer with my Virgo, so why do I bring this up? 

Because last week my therapist told me it's time to date. 

People call it a rebound, she said, but it's not really that. Dating somebody new is the best way to get over somebody, she continued, and then she told me to go on Plenty of Fish, which I did, and promptly felt like I was going to throw up, leading me to hide my profile just minutes after I made it, and if the experience was supposed to make me feel better, never has anything backfired as badly as that. 

A couple days later, I decided to try again, this time on okCupid instead. I made my profile and started to scroll through guys, and while I wasn't on the verge of vomiting all over my bed, all it did was reinforce what I already knew, what for three years I've known. It doesn't matter how cute someone is, or the books in common we've read; the distaste we share for the Oxford comma is irrelevant as is the fact that someone loves to run; an absence of video game references or anime allusions is insignificant; and even the promise of a big welcoming family means nothing to me, and lest you think this disinterest is because I'm sad, I'd just like to state that before my Virgo and I broke up, I found out that one of the cutest guys I've ever met has a crush on me, and while I was flattered, my heart didn't do it's characteristic somersault not even once. 

So again, I have to ask, why do I bring this up? What exactly is my point?

Well, as Keifer said when we talked about this very thing this morning--my three-year-period of no interest in anyone other than my Virgo--that's how you know.

It's not the only way I know, but he's right. 

Forget the Nights That We Spent Laughing Till the Morning on Your Bedroom Floor

A few years ago, I wrote about how I wasn't writing in this blog anymore because I felt like my life had finally begun. I had closed not a chapter, not a novel, but several volumes of unhappiness, of longing, of searching and was in the beginning chapters of a novel with my Virgo, ready to scribble our existence across its pages creating a new story, the story of us. The thing about life, though, is that, like a living language, it's ever changing in ways most people can't fathom, and in a turn of events I truly couldn't fathom, that novel we began, Bug Warrior and Kelligralamb, the Early Years: What Happens When a Video Game Virtuoso and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fanatic Fall in Love, turned out not to be a novel after all but a novella instead. 

I didn't come here to talk about our breakup, though, because, unlike almost anything and everything that happened in my life before my Virgo came over one night three years ago to hang LED lights in my room and pretty much never left, the premature ending of my story is for me and not you. What I will tell you, however, is that while the ending might be classified under the genre of tragedy, if you look at our novella as a whole, it would be anything but that. 

Our novella would be chapters filled with 

road trips and plane trips and

Hudson and Jazzy and Hudson's IVs and

French accents and mon amies and 

picadillo and Japanese curry and coffee and no-topping taro tea and

Metal Gear Solid and Ms. Pac Man and

Turnstile and Turnover and

Lineage's vegan iced coffee and

Caramel and Cocoa and

ridiculous questions about impossible scenarios and

craft beer and breweries and

HappyVegan Baker and Aguacate and Vegan Cuban Cuisine and

Mr. and Mrs. Final Fantasy VII and

my obsession with giving cards and

my Virgo's love for my mom and

Beatrix and

the J ♡ K ring I can't bear to not wear and

walking at night and 

weekends in bed and

Morning baby I love yous and

I love you muchos and

I love you demasiados,

all bookended by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Vampire Diaries

And the chapters themselves would be filled with stories about two people who loved each other, who love each other still, who after three years of building a life and working towards a shared future learned that timing and circumstance are just as important to a relationship as love and intention - or at least one of them did; that's something I'm still trying hard to accept. 

What I have accepted, though, is that although, yes, the loss of a relationship, the loss of companionship, the loss of a built in plus one and a future that had been semi mapped out is something to mourn, the relationship itself isn't something to regret. When things ended with my ex-Glenn as well as all the times we separated before the actual end, I fixated on having wasted X amount of years of my life. I now know that wasn't true for the twenty years he and I were together, and I know it isn't true for the three years shared by my Virgo and me. 

We may not be together anymore, but, in a surprising turn of events coming from a woman who used to say she would go back and change specific painful things if ever given the chance (something likely I'll explore here one day), I wouldn't trade those three years and the chapters that filled them despite the negatives and the way things are now. The giddiness and excitement, the happiness I felt, the fulfillment and the contentment, the lessons I learned about relationships and myself and the way I've grown through my Virgo's love and patience are things I'll always be thankful for, things I'll treasure forever, and while I have to admit that this harrowing time of change and loss might be easier if I focused on what was wrong instead of what was right, I refuse, after wholeheartedly, unreservedly loving somebody and sharing every aspect of my body and mind and life with him to turn it into a negative memory, and so, when I think about us, even though, yes, it makes me sad, sadder than I've been in a long, long time, I choose to remember us 

happy  

a family

affectionate

in love

and no matter what happens, no matter how much time goes by, my (ex) Virgo? 

He'll always be my Virgo to me.