Leaving... by Giselle

I know Giselle from dance (get the pseudonym yet? No?) and work. Together, we are a creative force not to be messed with. And talk about boys a little too much. I love her! You should love her too.

I’m not sure if it’s because my iPod is full of shaggy haired boys playing slow acoustic guitar and singing about unrequited love or if it’s because I had just left a certain shaggy haired, guitar playing boy behind...but I could not find a single song on my long drive home from Harrisonburg tonight that made me happy.

Who am I kidding, the latter is most definitely the reason for that.

For my fellow fans of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, you might recall Lena and Kostos’ meeting in Greece at the end of the final book, Forever in Blue. Kostos is Lena’s ‘person’. You know, the someone you can’t get past despite anyone else…

…Sound familiar to anyone? Anyone?

Sorry, I digress.

Life had separated the two for months, and when they finally chance meet again, it’s the day before Kostos has to leave the country. They spend the night in their special place- an orchard at the top of the village- and when the sun starts to rise in the morning and they hold each other for the last time, he whispers to her a word in Greek that she doesn’t understand.

“κάποια”.

Lena seaches every English/Greek dictionary she can find, she asks her grandparents, her cousins, her aunts and uncles, but no one seems to know the word that she means.

Finally, on her last day in Greece she finds it in an old dictionary.

“Someday”.

Did I expect anything like that? Oh no.

But I can’t decide what I DID expect.

Experience and reason should leave me without expectation when it comes to this boy. But experience and reason should have taught me a LOT about him, and without fail, despite experience…and reason…something always brings me back to him.

Today was full of packing and loading and hauling and moving…so needless to say, by 7:00 tonight I was physically exhausted. And then there was the packing and loading and hauling and moving help that I received from shaggy haired, guitar playing boy- the very same shaggy haired, guitar playing boy who left my bed earlier that morning with a kiss goodbye- but when everything was packed and loaded and hauled and moved, and it came down to the ACTUAL goodbye, the REAL ending, I got a one armed hug and a “see you when you visit the beach this summer”. Now, I didn’t expect much, but I expected more that that.

… needless to say, by 7:00 tonight I was emotionally exhausted.

I sat across from my mom at Applebees, picked at my salad and tried not to cry. And after a while of staring at my pathetic-ness she said, “When did you become such a wimp? What in this 2-year-long friendship, or relationship or whatever makes it impossible for you to say how you really feel? That’s not you.” And of course, she’s right.

With Chicago Boy last summer, I promised myself I wouldn’t get attached.

Sound familiar?

I promised to let it be a physical thing only.

Sound familiar?

I promised to not expect anything and go with the flow and let what happened happen.

Sound familiar?

And then came the end of the summer, and the anxiety of leaving him behind, and knowing I didn’t want to be without him and having the conversation I knew I had to have and the resulting relationship and that was me. That was me telling him how I felt and getting what I wanted and being real.

But for some reason I cant say those things to Shaggy Boy. I can’t even ask him to say those things or prompt him to say anything at all. I never say anything I want to say or anything I mean. And I don’t know if it’s because I never know where I stand, or because I think I know where I stand and it’s not where I want to be standing, or because I think I’m more invested than he is or what, but I didn’t say anything. I drove away from JMU for the summer and from him for who knows how long and I pretended to be content with that one armed hug, and despite attempts to drown my sorrows in a Sheetz milkshake and cheese fries, I cried all the way up 81.

So here it goes- what I might have said if I had any courage or any faith or any hope:

“Maybe, κάποια?”

I obviously think this guy is lame. You should too...