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Writer's pictureJacob Landers

What Just Happened

I’d like to say I can’t remember the last time I was in love, but I do. It was one of the craziest experiences of my life. I didn’t know I could be so in love and so walked on at the same time.

I would wait for her to come home from work, I would have dinner made, sticky notes of love posted about, flowers, gifts – I was wrapped in something that got me so high I couldn’t even tell you.


I mean we say that right, “I can’t even tell you” but I can’t, I literally can’t, she was everything I needed at any given point.


I knew she loved me, there was no way what we shared in that apartment couldn’t have been the best love story ever written. I was enamored, there was no turning back from where I was. This was my forever…


It ended as fast as it started, like the day turning to night, it was over. She was not who I saw all those months and it killed me. There was a lie at every turn, the only reality that was lived was the one I wanted to believe, the one I concocted. We parted ways and her tragedy was just beginning, mine played out in full view the entire time. That was 3 ½ years ago and to this day I still do not know what was real. I stopped trying to figure it out about a year after it ended. I kept hearing more stuff, new truths, random sightings and when we would talk, she would lie more and more, each one crazier than the next. It was complicated and ugly and disheartening, I left town for a while.


It’s been 3 ½ years of dating and I’ve been unable to trust anyone, to truly let my guard down. No matter the purity of the woman, I’ve not been able to be vulnerable enough to let anyone in. It’s tragic at best, this life of solitude I wander in. I wonder what day it will be when I can let go of the fear and trust, let go of the crazy. Maybe it’s that I don’t trust me, maybe I don’t trust myself to not get so lost in something and skip right over reality and bounce around in the red hearts and cotton candy clouds I assemble. I started to with one woman, got so close but she lied, lead me down a path with a string wrapped around my desires. That ended fairly quickly, today I shelf it with a momentary lapse in judgement and not with the broken hearted.


The holidays are back, another year of sappy Christmas movies and festive solo dinner dates. Watching couples kiss beneath the mistletoe and holding hands as they shop for presents to put under the tree. I build up the beauty and love in a relationship because they should be earth shattering, they should unimaginable. Where every kiss gives you fireworks, where you sit on the other side of the room and continually glance at them. Where you watch her lips move as she speaks, trace the shape and want nothing more than to kiss them. To sit there and wonder how it is you got so lucky to have that person in your life. Not forever but for that moment, that moment that captures you and stops the world from spinning.


I miss being in love, I miss the touch of someone, the phones calls in the middle of the day, random texts. I miss spoiling someone, treating them like there is no one more special in the world. I miss watching movies on the couch and eating popcorn, making dinner, laughing and crying and being wrapped in someone. The arguments, the disagreeing, the selfishness that leads way to the apology, to the make-up and not just the make-up sex but the make-up that says I just want us to be happy. There is so much in a relationship that feeds the soul, the good and bad of it all. I wish to never again take one for granted, I did that in my marriage. I was so self-absorbed and we drifted so far apart, I had no idea how lucky I was to have been married. I think in the end neither one of us knew how to be happy and blamed each other for it. We were young and in early recovery when we met and neither one of us had good self-esteem or knew anything about self-love and loving someone else. I think we did good for what we had to work with and it lasted many years. I think if I had it to do all over again I wouldn’t do any of it differently except surrender more, my control issues were something else.


I could go on about what I miss in a relationship, but we all know the stuff that is so admired when in love. I could go on about my misgivings in my marriage but that will go into a book of its own one day. I could go on about her, the crazy love that’s unexplainable. I could go on...


I do go on, on and on and on...


I wake each morning, walk this road and think what the fuck am I actually doing. As I write this I struggle for the next thought to come forth. I mean like really, it’s like the rich guy that complains about taxes. Your rich, why would you bitch about taxes? He doesn’t think he is rich and he thinks his taxes are too high. I’m that guy and I hate it, I complain about my taxes all the time, I can't stand myself in those moments. But I don’t complain about being alone, I know how alone I am not and how lucky I am to have loved a couple times in my life.


This has forever been a touchy subject for me, I’ve always been filled with the desire to devote my heart to someone but never really knew how to. Maybe that’s what I am learning by being solo for this long, like everything has a lesson in it lol. What a crock, somethings just happen cuz they happen, right. Search for meaning cuz it helps give us understanding and acceptance. I think even if I got into a relationship I wouldn’t know how to act, besides I’m leaving in 5 months anyways or at least that’s the idea.


5 months. 4 months and 20 days to be exactish. Who does that? Packs up their life and walks away from it. Like it’s a fucking preposterous idea. Here’s a profitable business, great apartment, loving friends, family, amazing town and I’m like “I’m going to go live in my van for a year” at 45 years old. What the hell?! I must’a hit my head real hard when I was a kid to be in love with the idea to travel around the U.S. alone. If I only had the desire for financial growth as much as I have the desire for spiritual growth, I would stay here and drive a real smart car, wear fancy clothes, diamonds and gold chains. But no, I strive for a happiness I know cannot be bought or gifted or hustled – it has to be earned and not just earned by waking and saying a prayer. We do achieve spiritual awakenings in that manor and we are brought closer to god by doing the dailies of prayer and meditation but I am looking for a grind, for the struggle. Like forging steal or shaping stone – like that hasn’t happened enough in my life, yet there is something to be said by living an arduous life. We can dig holes with shovels or backhoes, we can run a mile or walk 10 – there’s more than one way to get to where we are all going and what shapes us is the journey there.


It’s weird, when I am outside of me, I get lost so quickly in the world. I tend to see a future that doesn’t exist, a reality of the moment that is made of smoke and mirrors, skewed perceptions that come from imaginary knowledge and not wisdom. I knew I wasn’t normal since I was a kid. My belief in ridding myself of ego will not let me tell you I’m special but I can say I am not normal. The combination of the chemical imbalance, the disease of addiction, the past lives, the way thoughts contort in my sandbox. It doesn’t make me special or unique but it gives me the belief that I am different. Maybe that still is ego and I mask it so I can hang on to it, it’s ugly at best, all of it. But through the ugly the beauty is born, like the meek inheriting the earth…


This all started with wanting to fall in love, to not be so alone and ended with me believing in taking this trip. Both these thoughts being completely unstable…


I think I need to meditate now. I think I need to be quite and watch my breath…


I think I need to follow the path, not the one my heart see’s, not the one my head see’s but the one that can’t be unseen…

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