talonkarrde | ...which swallow us up (Reply)

There's a boy and girl — a man and a woman — you and me.

And there's their last meeting, in a room, where they talk, where they kiss, and where he drives her home. The next morning, she says that she'll never see him again.

It's been almost two years since they met, since they started this journey of theirs, this relationship (albeit on and off), and it ends here, after they discuss what can be, and what can't be, and she makes a decision for the both of them. He doesn't blame her for it, though he knows what it means.

The truth — or a truth — has always swirled around them, sometimes acknowledged, sometimes buried, and it is this:

It was always going to be hard. It was always going to be the two of them in a rowboat that was leaky and had one oar, and they'd only make it to land (assuming there was land somewhere out there) if they worked together, if they had faith (the irony abounds), if they kept at it. And they did, for a while, and even when he would falter or she would despair, the other would be able to convince them to keep trying. And he thought that maybe it meant that they'd make it, them against the world, and eke out a compromise that would work for them, even if it didn't work for everyone.

And then it stopped working.

-

For all of it, for so long, I just thought that love was all that mattered, and...in the end, it wasn't. There were other things — tradition, acceptance, and religion, and what us being together would mean for her children, and more still. And part of it, I understand — I understand that if there are areas of her life that she is very passionate about that I am indifferent to, she may want to find someone who shares those interests.

And yet... I don't know if I do understand the sheer animosity, the sheer horror of even the idea of dating, or marrying, someone outside of the faith. We shared the same views on so much, the same outlook and worldview, and yet, the fact that I did not grow up a certain way excluded us from having a future together. The sheer fact that we kissed was wrong, because we could not have a future.

That, I will never understand.