Its 2:00 am, and I'm at my local dive bar that helps me indulge on my vices, addictions and many more terrible habits. But, its time to go. last call. drink them up and get out. After a brief argument with bartender about what it is that makes him an asshole (the fact that he wont let me buy drinks passed 2am) Im escorted to the door...a few quick wrestling moves and the bouncers gorilla arms are off me. There huge man yells something like "come back...shit". But it doesn't matter...my attention has been captured by this young girl looking straight at me. Dark hair and dark eyes that tell me we have met before. But where?... And more important why do i remember her? Awkward pause for a brief second...then...she smiles...the feeling hits before the memory. Starting at the stomach and working its way up my spine to my brain...I smile back. I remember her now...
***Brief History***
Its 2002 late summer, and i think i had just broken up with my then high school girlfriend at the time. Well I'm working and feeling pretty down, just sort of skating through the days...then I happen to start working with this girl and we get along pretty well and she ends up being pretty cool. We talk and laugh but I never actually get the vibe or feel any sense that she was into me as more than just a friend. Anyway so after a couple of months I finally get the nerve and get her number (I was a very different person back then, wasn't as confident in myself as i am now). So i eventually ask her out and we go out have a good time... I cant remember exactly what we did i think we went to go eat or something along that line, anyway its the end of the night and mind you by this time we had been talking for months. It was a full time job so i saw her at least 3-5 five days a week. we could of started going out no need for a date. But it was more I guess just to confirm our feelings for each other. So the night ends were in my car talking and i finally nut up and lean in to kiss her. Im not sure if she wanted me to but i did...and she does exactly what my lurking suspicion was telling me...she turns her head! and puts her arms up!...she didn't want to kiss me...a crash that is comparable to the twin towers and the Hindenburg...we say good bye and she goes inside...I swung for the fence and struck out. (little did I know that that was only the beginning of what would soon to be the worst batting average of a mans starting career in man kinds history!)..anyway, time went on and we talked less and less i guess the awkwardness was just to much...shortly after that i got fired. and that was that.
***back to reality***
The feeling from the past struck deep. We talk about what we are dong and what we used to do. She tells me about her marriage and kid (ya,I know). After a short while I tell her about how i used to be really into her...after a few more moments I discover that the reason she didn't kiss me is that she had never kissed a guy. And that she was scared to. When she left the car and went inside she was angry at herself for not going through with it...she thought I didn't want to be with her after that and was to embarrassed to come up to me and tell me how she felt...we looked at each other with a look that knows that there could of been something great, with a look that in another time and place, maybe in some other universe we could have had...something. But, we were no longer those people and that time had passed...(deep breath)...regret my friends is a terrible thing to experience. And I felt it then and there...we both did. The kind of regret that sticks with you whether you recognize it or not. The kind that sticks with you years later and leaves you thinking "What if?"....She later told me that she would often think about what would of happened had we ended up together. I tell here that sometimes I had thoughts about the same thing. Just thoughts, but i did have them.
We said our goodbyes and she walked away. I thought about her the for sometime after I left. I don't know if Im glad I saw her or if it just added to the painful regret of those days. But, I know now for certain that a lesson has been learned, and I will never let someone who I care about slip away again.
I leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather
that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be
stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me
in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of
man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to
prolong them. I shall use my time."
-Jack London
