I should never contemplate myself at 1:00 am in the mirror of a hotel bathroom far from home. The poor lighting brings out the grey hairs and the wrinkles. No comfort can be found here. No snuggly pets, no favorite pillow.

I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a few weeks now, so it’s a real shame that I’m finally here and feeling this poorly. I was expecting a happy reunion. What I’ve got is a silence so deafening that I can hear almost nothing else.

For all my carrying on about the grand single life, I, like most people really just want to fall in love with someone and have them love me back the same way. Everything else will get worked out.

I don’t trust it, though. The busted marriages, the infidelity, the unhappy people moving from day to day living with the devil they know because the alternative is an unknown that is just too much to deal with. It’s everywhere.

Ah, but did I get carried away. It was so intoxicating.

I firmly believe that jealousy is the most destructive and useless of all human emotions, but I have to give hope a close second place. All of the lessons I’ve learned, heartache, tears shed, I cast them all away in the face of a bright, shiny hope. That is broken down now and busted just as thoroughly as the fortress around my heart that I must now rebuild. I’ll pick up all the tiny pieces and fit them back together, then I’ll add another layer, stronger than before.

I’m not going to let this tarnish the memory of the magic though. He owes me nothing. The disappointment I feel now is my own fault. I’m going to take the intoxication and the breathlessness and the scraps of that shiny hope, and fold them up like a handwritten note, placed somewhere that my future self may find it and smile at how nice it was, just for a little while.

Next time I’m asked “When can I see you again?” by a seemingly earnest and honest man, I will smile and say, “Never.” Everything can remain full of potential and adventure and joy in a future that will never come. It was never going to come anyway.

We will just smile at each other, turn, and say goodbye. Say it now, or say it later, it will be said. So much sadness can be avoided though. Yes, I would rather miss the party entirely. It turns out that the sadness I feel at night’s end isn’t worth it at all.

I wonder if I’m writing this a little too soon. Left as I have been in complete silence, maybe I’m just being dramatic, making up problems that don’t exist. Then I think, but does it matter now if I hear from him anyway? I’ve already cried more in the past couple of weeks, the past couple of days especially, than I have in months. I distinctly remember him saying to me, very earnestly, “I don’t want to fuck you up.” Well, want to or not, fucked up I am. In trying to be understanding as to all the possible reasons there might be for him not to communicate with me for several days, here two evenings before we are supposed to see each other, I am forgetting myself. Why does he not consider how I might be feeling, getting no replies?

I feel like I’m sitting in a dark room after a candle goes out. The flame made it warm and cozy and lovely. In its absence, it’s just dark. This is what I wanted to avoid all along. I don’t want anyone to have the power to remove the light from my life.

Hope, though, hope made me believe it was alright to drop my guard. Maybe this one, this one, would be the one that didn’t follow the course of history.

As much as anything, I think, I’m wounded because I feel like a fool. I think I misjudged his character. That I was outright lied to. He’s not here to defend himself, so what else can I think? I’ve tried so hard to never let anyone take advantage of me. I feel duped. And foolish.

It’s Monday night. Well, Tuesday morning at this point. Wednesday evening was supposed to be the time. The reunion. When we would talk over all the roadblocks. I’m going to wait to let this entry out, until Wednesday evening comes and goes in the silence that I just know will continue. Hope keeps me from pulling the trigger until there is no way for the truth to be ignored.

Perhaps I am writing this just for myself. But, if you are reading it, then the warmth and light and magic lasted only for a few weeks, and now I’m sitting in the dark.