People Puzzles

I do enjoy a good jigsaw

I've been licking my wounds of late, having experienced the callous sting of rejection. Of course it’s not nearly as bad as it could be, because he’s not entirely aware that he’s spurned me. Which sounds perfectly ridiculous, but you see, he doesn't know because nothing of consequence really ever occurred. Nothing concrete anyway, which I can pin on him and justify being upset about. No, on this occasion I’m being forced to take personal responsibility because I projected a fantasy onto him which didn't correlate to the events unfolding in real life. My dream world ran alongside us, just like a ghost who is oblivious to its previous demise. 

Romantic yearnings are like any competitive endeavour. When you’re in the moment you’re focused and your outlook is restricted to tunnel vision. But a spectator has an unbiased viewpoint and can analyse every wrong movement you make which contributes to your failure overall. It's laughably tragic how I reveled in those once precious moments, when seeing them from a fresh perspective reveals they were merely borne of his boredom. Something he knows little of now with his new girlfriend (or so I hear). 

But I'm not entirely bitter, from what I know of him he seems deserving of it. He just wasn't the right man for me. Or is it that I wasn't the right woman for him? I'm brash and offensive, my opinions are blase and my attitude is annoying. But it's just a fragment. Amplified for effect. Did he recognise that I can be more? And if he did, then surely it's worse because he chose to ignore it in favour of her. 

I've perused her. She's a low-key intellectual with edgy good looks, and her shy smile reveals a sweet disposition. She doesn't write about such silly and inconsequential things like relationships. And while it's not exactly worthy of The New Republic, the topic is a mutual interest of theirs and only further crystallizes a bond between them which I could never share. Although a nagging part of me wonders if the only legitimate advantage she has over me is down to the simple logistics of the situation. Doubtful. But I still choose to placate myself with it from time-to-time. 

Perhaps the problem was that I didn't really put myself out there. I shied away from his half-hearted and clumsy attempts at wooing me. Admittedly I found them endearing but I was too frightened to give them any real credence in case they hurt me. If I hadn't have carefully kept them at bay would they have blossomed into romantic fruition? Perhaps if my candour wasn't tinged with playfulness and I wasn't such an incorrigible flirt, I might have provoked faith instead of mirth. I should have taken hold of the situation and not left it all up to chance.

Ultimately though people will find away their way around an obstacle if they really want to. And very often they create them if they want to prevent what they can see on the horizon. He saw me. I was right at his fingertips. And while mine weren't completely outstretched, they were there to be grasped. I don't know whether to take solace in the fact that I didn't make enough of an effort to secure him or to reprimand myself for losing out on something which could have been, well, really something.