Off My Chest

Last night in Brooklyn, I got to say a few things that I've been harboring for nearly a year and a half since I left New York.

I left very few loose ends untied upon my departure, but there was one big one - the one that got away - and I haven't been able to forget. Even despite everything that happened in my disastrous LA love life (or lack thereof, or misrepresented, led-on version thereof), I was always confused over what happened just before I left, why things ended so abruptly, what might have happened if I'd stayed. I couldn't let it go.

I hated the way we left things. I felt horrible about it. And when I saw him again last night, for the first time since December 2010, I told him that.

I told him I wished he'd blamed it on my move.

I told him how hard it's been to move to LA and try to build a life there, at this stage in my career, at my advanced age.

I told him I didn't miss New York.

I told him I was in LA to stay.

And despite that, I told him I wanted to keep him in my life, even if it was only as friends.

And surprisingly, despite abject difficulty in confessing it on any of our dates, I finally him how old I am.  And it turns out, being four years his senior is not the end of the world.

It wasn't hard to say any of those things. I couldn't not say them. I didn't think I would ever see him again - that I would fade away into a distant memory, a blip on his dating resume, a hiccup between long-term relationships - so when, by some strange miracle, I did, I wanted to tell him everything.

And to my pleasant surprise, he had plenty to say too.

It's not closure, and I'm glad. I never wanted it to end.

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