Last year, I had a terrible break up.
His name was V__ and I loved him so much. I'll spare you the poetic maudlin descriptions of the passion between us and skip to the heartache.
He changed in less than half a week. We spent a Sunday taking pictures -- those "pictures of us" that every teenie bopper with a boyfriend has on her Facebook -- and I took one of them, with his permission, for my purse. On a Wednesday over a nice Italian dinner, I took some small items out of my purse and he saw the picture I had of him. He called me a stalker right in front of everyone in the restaurant and I was left there with a shock of feeling stupid on my face.
Some of you know my temper. I would have killed him right there but I needed the ride home and that only increased the tension. A fight broke out and to keep the story short, I simply cut off my ties with him. He tried to make peace but I simply told him, "I never want to see or talk to you again."
This was seven month ago, actually on my birthday.
Being born on the 23, I had a bad feeling that something was going to break down. There was a fight in the air. It was raining. I was stuck in a long boring training and my work performance evaluations had come back horribly against me.
I should've just stayed home but I wanted to be with him so much.
I've spent the past several months avoiding him. I was so afraid of what would have happened if I ran into him. I wanted to kill him; I had this anger of betrayal raging inside me that I couldn't calm down. Part of it was the fear that should I try to resolve a happy ending, he would make me regret it with his own simmering stubbornness. I just didn't know what I would do if I ever ran into him again.
It took me months to relax, to convince myself that any accidental meeting would occur.
A couple weeks occur I played Kevin bacon on Facebook. Y'know, how often you can start out with a friend and then just go from one profile to another and after a few profiles run into someone you know.
I ran into V__, more specifically into a backdoor that lead to one of his photo albums. A few months after we had broken up, he had uploaded "our" pictures to his Facebook.
Why? I thought. Or better yet, what the fuck? Why would he attack me so bizarrely and then hold on to the same pictures that destroyed our relationship?
And what would I say to him? I wanted the pictures gone but I had made it clear that I would never talk to him again and if I confronted him, he would ask me how I knew that he still had the pictures.
I kept my magickal diary up to date of the mundane events in my personal soap opera, and synchronicities started popping up.
His favorite snack was chocolate covered pretzels. While I was up in the Poconos, I kept passing a chocolate covered pretzel factory that just made me say, wtf?
A friend of mine with whom I hadn't spoken in several month contacted me and said, "hey, I was watching some of the new Knight Rider TV shows and did you know who was doing the voice?" Yes, by one of those odd coincidences, the voice of KITT has the same first name and same birthday (December 31 - notice the 23) as my former lover.
As the synchronicities poured in, I kept them all in my magic journal. The language was quit poetic.
He and I were going to run into each other again. It was an impossibility but I knew it was going to happen.
My schedule was off. I was just sitting around. I had to be at work but just didn't feel like going. I had time to kill and was hungry. I left my home later than usual.
I stopped by a Burger King. The service was slow with few people behind the counter. They gave me half my meal and I ate it while waiting. I went to threw the hamburger wrapper away when I turned towards the door.
HE walked in.
We stared at each other from across the restaurant with that what the fuck are you doing her look on both our faces.
He came over to me and we hugged, that lame hug like a dog shaking your hand.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
What a stupid question. Obviously I was getting a fucking hamburger, but I've asked that stupid question myself.
He stood back away from me, a good several feet so I couldn't even reach out and touch him. I thought back to my Speech class where I learned about proxemic communication and personal space.
We talked about or jobs. His dog had died. We talked about car accidents we had been in involving deer.
We were both shaking.
He looked awful. I thought, I can't believe I fucked this guy.
He said he was thinking about me recently. He had taken up to writing again and could have used my help but didn't have my number anymore. Bullshit, I thought, and I called him on it.
"Here, I got a new phone. I'll give you my number." I did but I doubt he'll ever call me.
The woman at the counter told me my meal was finally ready. I told her to wait. A few minutes into my conversation with V__ it felt like we had never fought until that uncomfortable silence came.
"I think that uncomfortable silence means our conversation is over" I said. I turned, paid for my meal (actually threw money at the woman at the counter and told her to keep it). I couldn't focus.
"I'll see you…?" he said.
"Probably never" and that was it.
I ran into a co-worker on my way out. I didn't process it but I e-mailed her later and asked if she knew V__. She did. Actually several of my new friends were friends of his by some odd coincidence.
Today he removed the pictures of us from his Facebook.
I don't know if this counts as a magickal record but for the second time my premonition was right. I had been focusing on this moment for months and it wasn't ever going to come. But it did. It shouldn't have. It was scary.
