have you ever hoped for something?

    My mind keeps falling back to him, at obvious times (when circumstances take me past places where we once were, together, say) and also when I least expect it. And those latter moments are those that really tear at me, since they're more unexpected and I've no chance to brace for them, and also because they're part of my life now. It's bad enough that he's got control, after all this, of so much of then--it's agony that there's an ongoing portion of myself that's still tied up in that.
    He was hardly my first love. Definitely not my best love. Clearly not my last love, thank God! But he was, without a doubt, what I wanted, and I was not going to stop at anything short of having him for my own.
     I'd only recently separated from my spouse, after having been with him since college. I was seeking something, though I didn't know what it was yet. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I was starting the search, and would only over time determine what it was that I sought, and how I might go about finding it. Maybe that quest is what my life really is, now. Regardless, at the time I thought that he was what I'd been looking for. What I "needed." So I pounced on him with great fervor, enough to frighten even myself at times. He must have been truly shaken by my vehemence, given his odd combination of world-weariness and disconcerting innocence.
    I set out to get him, and I got him. It wasn't easy; he never intended to be "gotten," and put up arguments and made trouble all along the way--while also never pulling himself all the way out it. It was like teaching someone to swim who's afraid of water and determined that they're going to drown, so they're as dangerous to the person teaching and helping them as they are to themselves. He came close to pulling us both under many, many times. But I was at least equally determined that it was going to work, and there were a lot of other people involved (mutual friends, his family) who believed, as I did, that he was "ready to commit," needing only to make the conscious decision to "let himself" before he could do so fully.
     It would never happen. He tested my patience and, frankly, tried hard to break my heart by pulling me close and then holding himself away, over and over. I don't know what finally changed within me, but something finally snapped. We'd had too many versions of the same episode--him quietly explaining, me crying and arguing and sometimes throwing shoes at his head, and him finally, with a perverse look of regret, leaving--when I realized that we just weren't going to stand it anymore. Neither of us could live like that any longer. There were a couple more scenes for us to play out, not as dramatic as what had come before (nor nearly as emotional), but probably just as necessary. Weaning ourselves off of the drug, maybe.
     I've seen him only a couple of times since then. This isn't a big city: his parents live two miles from here; he works half a block from my grocery store; he doesn't know where I live anymore, so he can't go out of his way to avoid me as easily. Really, the odds that we wouldn't run into each other are pretty slim--and yet we don't.
     Why, then, does the memory of him weigh so heavily upon me? When I look back on it, I don't know if I even really loved him. That's a pointless distinction to make now, since I'm still struggling with this either way. But the memories are, for the most part, bad ones. He loved me, or something like it, and he hurt me on purpose, again and again. If I met him now, we wouldn't make it through one whole date before I kicked him to the curb, probably even literally. That sentence means a lot. I used to have hope, and faith, and vehemence. I used to be sure, when I fell headfirst into it, that something would work. Now, I start everything with one foot outside, clean and dry, to make it all the easier to get a running start when it all blows up. Which I'm certain that it's going to do. Because no matter what you put into something, no matter how much you hope or how much faith you have, it's going to blow up. And unless you start running before it's over, you'll get cut up at least.
     It makes sense that I'd get out of something like that wanting to protect myself. I just don't know yet how much I'm hurting myself by protecting myself, still.

[the title quotation is by Ali Shaw, from The Girl With Glass Feet, and reads in its entirety: “Have you ever hoped for something? And held out for it against all the odds? Until everything you did was ridiculous?”]