Today on the way home from work I tortured myself. A situation presented itself that I could have dismissed easily or let myself get hung up on. Overthinking is something that I guess I am prone to do, though, so I took the opportunity to torture myself over nothing. Just as we were pulling around the corner from work, a large white truck drove by in the direction we were headed. It looked like someone was moving. A black futon was partially disassembled in the back and there was a young woman sitting with it in the back of the truck. I couldn’t make out her face because she was turned the other way, but her size and shape, her hair and build and sense of style – even the white top she was wearing – made her appear to be … an old love of mine.
Since this passing thing was one I had decided to torture myself with, I recalled that this lost love, last I knew, slept on that same model of black futon. Her best friend drove a big white truck, and she lived near where I saw the truck coming from. These coincidental tidbits all came together in a couple of short seconds as the truck passed quickly out of view. I began to think a bit about why I still feel so strongly about someone I haven’t seen in so long. I began to wonder if it were her, where was she moving. The last time I saw her, she said she was planning on moving from where she was at, but that was some time ago… She’s probably already moved far from here by now. I couldn’t see the truck, it had gone too far down the road and we got stopped at a red light. I hoped she would be heading down the same road for a while so we could catch up & I could see who it really was in the back of that truck. I knew the chance of this was slim, and if I weren’t lingering in the torture of thinking about lost love’s biting pangs and the idea that a tiny glimpse of someone who may or may not be an old friend could make so many things run across the surface of my mind and heart, I would have dismissed the thought of it entirely.
Luckily for me, I had taken the bait at the beginning and was now pondering the idea of where she might be moving, where the truck might be turning, where her bed would be supporting her sleeping frame this night. It occurred to me that she may have decided to move to the same place that I moved. (The idea of someone I want to be close living so close is one that has occurred to me before. One that is intoxicatingly delicious to me. I have loved too many too far away from where I was to want to deal with such a thing again.) That she might be turning down the same road that we were heading towards. Then as we pulled into the left-hand turning lane, two vehicles up was that same white truck with a futon and a girl in the back, about to turn left.
As though the world were in league with me in my own torture, she had turned a bit about so I couldn’t see her face and we got stopped again at a red light as she passed right through on her way to … someplace new. I waited patiently, lingering now on thoughts that she might be living so much nearer to me, with the idea that it might be someone else in the truck now entirely out of my mind. As we drove down a side road through neighborhoods and by parks, the truck grew closer and closer to us, the possibility of seeing her radiant beauty again fueling me to try to see past the vehicles in between us and her to make out a lock of her hair or a flash of her face. Then as we were about to catch up with her on that last stretch of road, Iain turned the car into a Circle K and the truck disappeared from sight.
Never to be seen again. Now I don’t know whether it was her at all in the truck. Or where the truck went to, so I can find out. Or why I still care so much about someone that isn’t but happy memories in my life. I grew anxious and excited and I’m not even sure that I WANTED it to be her in the truck. I’m not sure because I don’t know how I would deal with seeing her or knowing where she was or making her a part of my life again, even as acquaintances, or as friends, or more… I just don’t know. There is so much else going on in my life right now that I’m not sure I want to even address my lingering love for a woman I have seen only once since my relationship with her ended over two years ago.
Anyway, I just wanted to write this down. Less than 10 minutes of my life, yet I know I felt more in those ten minutes than I did the rest of the day. It seems like maybe there is something wrong with that, but I only thought of the other women in my life a few brief times today; they just didn’t come up. Then again, as I said the other day, perhaps it is the sparseness of interesting things that makes them so interesting. I know I will always love this girl I have lost, yet my mind does not chance upon her very often.