Long-Awaited Milestone

It hit me on Saturday very unexpectedly: I think I am over "The Relationship."

He is back in the town where we went to college; I am here. We have plenty of miles between us, and plenty of reasons to move on, but somehow I thought it would never happen.

We both held on like we were nothing without the other, even if things between us had changed beyond recognition. He met someone a week after I moved out. He moved in with her four months later. Every part of that, even though he never spoke of her directly to me, crushed what little bit of hope I had for a reconciliation.

But I still held on, for some reason: fear of not finding someone better, fear of moving to an overwhelming and unfamiliar place, and fear of losing the one person with whom I shared a huge piece of history.

After more time passed, and after hearing from other friends about how how his new relationship was getting more serious, I tried to pull away. I stopped initiating conversations, I stopped finding reasons to send a text message or e-mail. But he kept calling, and I kept picking up.

That about sums up the last two years. Whether he realized it or not, he was pulling the strings. And I let him for a million different reasons. That relationship, the one after me, ending in cheating. The day after he moved in with her, I later found out, he read her diary and found out she had slept with a married man. Any sympathy I could possibly offer was completely overshadowed by the feeling that this situation was the best kind of karma - I felt like he fell in love with a girl that dished back everything he ever did to me. But the satisfaction came way too late.

Everyone that knows the two of us, and how long it has been since we were happy together, would undoubtedly roll their eyes at my admission that I now feel "over it." Should have made a clean break. Should have never given him so many chances. Should have never continued a friendship. Should have left it alone, and moved on. Should have never taken this much time to get over it.

So now I have finally caught up to everyone else who was begging me to leave it alone. I am even pushing to finish this blog even though I just got an e-mail from him:

"i was cleaning up my computer and found some of these pics from your rowing banquet - not sure if you had them or not

hope things at the new job are going well

I head home on friday for jenas graduation..."

And just like that, its done.
Of course my mom snapped last night when I said this, and rightly so. Its far from 'just like that' - it has taken so much out of us, it has taken me to a place where I thought I would never trust again, and I still am in a place where I am terrified of being alone.

But this correspondence feels enough like the final ties being cut that I am thinking, sigh, its finally over.