On a cold rainy night in Chicago…a woman who had experienced an amazing love chose to expose herself in front of a room full of people. She had high hopes that the heart of the man she had loved and lost would be in attendance and would receive her words. She was called to the microphone and upon arrival she searched the room with hopes of seeing him…but he was nowhere in sight. In that moment she still made the decision to share her vulnerability with strangers by reading an original poem from her poem book. After expressing her deepest feelings for this man that she cared for…she immediately left the building and tossed her poem book in the trash on the way out the venue because although the love for him was very real…the situation was a burden she could no longer carry. It was the tension that she wanted to do away with...and when she calculates the amount of time it took to release her heart on to that page in her poem book plus the tremendous amount of courage it took to go to the place that he frequents to share her heart…it was too much for her to handle.
See you don’t understand that she played out exactly what was going to happen in her mind before this very moment. In her brain…her dream photography job in New York City that she worked extremely hard to attain…was giving her an opportunity to mix business with pleasure. She was to fly back to Chicago where their love was birthed, work a shoot for her job during the day, then go to the Sanctuary that night and sign up to read her poem for him. When she’s called to the stage she was going to say “I wrote this for someone and he’s here tonight,” she was going to read it, he was going to receive it and then the love was going to be right again…but he wasn’t there to hear her heart…and that was enough for her to say I’m done! There was no fight left in her…Interesting enough it was a short fight...nothing like the fight she put up for her last man.
See there was a time when everything was perfect with her and the heart she was after in Chicago…maybe too perfect. The beginning was great and exciting because it’s refreshing, new, and it felt good to be adored by him. There were weeks of carefree great times and she got to thinking “he might be the one.” Now her pride challenges her to question how she drew that conclusion in the earlier days. That same pride was helping her ignore the key moment that changed everything. That moment after making incredible love when she decided to inform him that she was taking a trip for a few weeks to handle some business…and see a past lover that she had years of history with to see if something was still there. A man who wanted another chance after asking her to marry him and then leaving her without a trace or warning and she couldn’t find him. She was willing to forgo what she was building in Chicago after receiving a phone call for someone who walked away from her disrespectfully without leaving a way to be contacted finally reached out to her after months of being missing.
She told herself she wouldn't take the trip to see her old lover if this new lover in Chicago told her not to go because in her heart that equated to him caring about her...it equated to her having him...but he said he was cool with her going...more than likely because she showed him that her heart was with someone else and that was enough for him to try his best to shift his heart in another direction.
She went on her journey to fight for her past and fell flat on her face and when she returned to Chicago she went to the Sanctuary looking for her new lover and he was nowhere to be found. She told herself she'd call him tomorrow…and when tomorrow came around she saw him out on the town with another woman and it hurt her heart so badly she decided not to call. What she did decide was to go on a few dates with one of his friends and one night while on a date with this friend of his...they ran into her Chicago lover and she was embarrassed and left.
The Chicago lover followed her out and took the higher road and discussed all that had taken place while she gave him attitude. He questioned why she never called after returning and she responded by saying she saw him with another woman. Eventually they came to an understanding and put the other woman and her dating his friend behind them and begin to date again.
A few months later they ran into an issue when she couldn't let go of the fact that he dated another woman while she went on her journey to chase her old flame. She vocalized to him that because he chose to date that other woman...she didn't trust him! He was baffled by her words as this other woman was clearly a thing of the past and only happened because of her journey to chase her past. Yet and still it's how she felt and enough for him to be done with her.
After the love was gone she worked hard to get her dream gig in New York and left Chicago and the love that could’ve been. New York gave her time to think about this love that could’ve been and time to realize that what she left in Chicago was special…
But on this cold rainy night in Chicago…he’s clearly not special enough because she has no fight left in her as she opens the door to the taxi that she just flagged down…
My guess is she didn’t want to fight for this love that she knew was greater than anything she had experienced before…because she had previously fought hard to love the wrong person. Her pride was blinding her from seeing the difference between the two. She no longer knew what was worth fighting for. There's so many things in life we think we want that we don't need. It's a shame that we waste so much time and energy fighting for those things that when it's time to fight for what we need we're burned out and give up on fighting for it. We are victims of chasing the wrong people and fighting to keep them when they weren't suppose to be kept.
Two days ago...my friend Jamie told me something that I found to be very true...
"In this lifetime we will fight for gifts, glory, and garbage...and sometimes we won't know trash from treasure because we mistake cravings for starvation."
It's important that we know the difference to understand who is worth fighting for and who is worth letting go.
Signed,
Aaron "Ab" Abernathy