Heartbeats and Heartbreaks

I have had the slight misfortune of having two men in my life who I thought I loved. Men, in retrospect, is generous. I have had two boys in my life who I thought, for better or for worse, loved me. I don’t say that as some sort of insult to their perceived manhood but merely a fact that they, we, were young.

The first boy, Boy #1 chronologically only, was 20 when we started dating. I was 18. In all we had 5 miserable years together. He was unfaithful and I was desperately trying to hold on to someone who I knew was nothing more than a friend out of a desperate fear that he was probably the only boy on earth who would have me. I was young and stupid and just as needy and insecure as he was deceitful. A toxic combination. But I remember one night we had driven down to Saint Paul and parked to look down at the city lights. We just sat in the car for an hour or so and at one point I had laid my head on his chest and just listened to his heartbeat. I remember thinking how crazy it was that this might be the person, the heart, I would spend my life with. That woud not end up being the case.

After we had broken up I remember thinking back on that moment in the car and that heartbeat… and how odd someone so heartless had a heartbeat at all. Looking back on it now, older and wiser, I can see it for what it was. One of the more pure and happy moments we had together, no matter how fleeting or brief. It wasn’t all bad. He wasn’t all bad. We just never should have been a “we”, that’s all.

The second boy, Boy #2, well… he was a completely different story. I know for a fact that I have had 2 truly happy years in my life, and they were with him. And I know I have had 5 traumatic soul crushing awful years. Those too were with him. And even now, I still can’t say if I would trade those 2 good years away to have avoided the 5 that followed. Probably not.

There was one night, early in that second year, where I found myself listening to his heartbeat as well. It brought me back to the first time I had done that with boy #1, if I’m being honest. And I couldn’t help but compare. Last time I thought I was listening to the heartbeat of someone I would be with forever. This time I KNEW I was listening to the heartbeat of someone I would be with forever. I mean, I was wrong of course but here’s the thing…

With Boy #1 I learned I had never really been in love because I didn’t know what that was until boy #2. So, Boy #1 was just a lesson in the long run, and he and his heartbeat are out there somewhere going on with life. But Boy #2, I guess he was a different kind of lesson. I will never know how he felt about me. I will never know if the one person I ever was in love with, was ever actually in love with me too. You see… he isn’t out there living his life. He’s gone. That heartbeat has stopped. And I will never know the answer. And all these years later it still keeps me up some nights, like tonight. Always triggered by the smallest thing. Or the biggest. Really anything. The not knowing. That will always haunt me.

I think maybe, just maybe, I’m destined to walk this earth till the end of my days with only the sound of my own heartbeat, and some nights that’s a very lonely thought to bear. So, I do things like this. I look back. I get sad… and in a miserable way… I guess it makes it all more bearable. What my relationships have taught me thus far is that my choice is to go on lonely hearted… or broken hearted.

What a choice.