Time changes yesterday —
I can now admit that the vaunted everlasting love has collapsed and like Titanic is now beneath the waves. I declared at the end, that I will never be happy about our separation, but now I am not so sure. Yet, I still can’t imagine an amount of alternative happiness, or joy that can stand in the balance of what I will perpetually miss — our future. It’s hard to say if fortune favors me as I have moved on really quickly and unexpectedly but only tomorrow can dignify today. My current experiences are decisively more pleasant than the renditions of the past, yet sometimes, I find myself grasping for straws. It has no bearing, I think, on the banality of the chorus of ‘I can’t trust again’ and objectively, I won’t trade this new life for anything else, not even you, but the hollow inside of me makes me uncertain.
In this reverie, I sense the regret that I will inevitably feel if I leave Evangeline — my nightingale, who sings to me through the night, unrelenting like the sun in Svalbard at summer time, brightening the gloomy days that the end of our relationship engendered. This unexpected reunion with Evangeline at the hole-in-the wall coffee shop, a block from Times Square in New York has become one of the happiest experiences of my adult life. She said she had thought about me every day since we met in Prague during my solo Euro trip. Truth be told, I thought about her too, but I had nothing else to give in terms of romance that I hadn’t given to you. There was no version of my future that didn’t have you in it, that left you behind, I couldn’t even re-cast you in my most benign fantasy. Once I thought I could re-imagine you as my friend, but the feelings that I have for you overwhelms the modern definition, so I tried best friend, the very best, but I only have to unwrap a sliver of my emotion before that ran out of capacity. I thought maybe I could think of you as my daughter, and covert all my romantic feelings into familial bond especially since the age difference, 15 years, would make that plausible even though unrealistic but I thought about the intimacy that we’ve already shared and no version of that story would be remotely acceptable and out the window that went. I wanted a future that has us in it, the full version of us, completely us, not a reduced version. I wanted a lossless transformation, every bit of us must be preserved. In mathematical terms, I wanted an isomorphism, a structure preserving transformation, that would take us from this crumbling romantic domain into another where we can be fully ourselves, equipped with a singularity that allows you to eat your cake in this one too.
I didn’t share my information with Evangeline, as such, I was surprised, very much so, when she suddenly reached out to me. The timing I must say favored me as I really needed a “pick me up” event, anything, after the way it ended with you. It was good for me. The memory of my single evening with Evangeline at the wine bar in Wenceslas Square became an oasis in the desert of my mind. When she walked by in that cropped button down shirt and baggy pants, I struggled to breathe. She looked elegant in what is essentially a casual attire. The evening was going well until she announced that like you, she was Russian. I got stuck after that. When the night was over, she called her mother, speaking in Russian, sending me down the vista of months till I saw you at the window of the Hilton where we stayed during the trip to Philadelphia, saying,
“Papa previet!”
I felt an aura come over me, it was awfully quiet after she got off the phone with her mother, thankfully the Taxi pulled over at her apartment shortly after and I barely managed goodbye.
At the café in NYC, things went well with Evangeline. Sometimes when I am alone, I try to remember the events of that day but I have never made it past the image of Evangeline blushing at the very first compliment. We haven’t had any fights yet and that worries me, it is important to know how someone fights before making any significant emotional investment. Things are going a little too well but I am choosing not to question the Fates and live in the moment.
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[Next up in the series: St. Petersburg]
