My How the Times Have Changed

When my last boyfriend broke up with me - in a very similar manner as all the previous ones - something changed in me.  Not broke.  I think a switch flipped and a hazy resolve started to form.  I was done.  I was done with men and love and relationships. I gave up and was ready to move forward down a different path.

But.  There is always a but with me.  I wanted to know if at least one of the men I'd been with felt anything for me more than just a place to dip their stick. I doubted it, but the need to know was fierce. I tied some sense of self worth and value to the knowledge.  Wrong and dangerous I know but I'd just broken up and wasn't thinking clearly.

If you believe in a higher power, you could say this was the push time had been waiting for to set me on my correct and future path. When I break up with a guy, I remove everything about them from my life. Delete them.  There is no reason to hold on to that past. But I didn't completely do that with my first love.  Hidden, deep within my computer, laid a small file with my first loves email address.  Why I kept it, I don't know.  Why I remembered I even had it is beyond me.  But had it I did.

I had no intentions of trying to rekindle the flame. I wanted the closure I never had with that one relationship.  I wanted to apologize for not handling the break up up to my standards.  I wanted to say - no hard feelings. I wanted to know if we had ever really been friends.

I sat for a while typing and re-typing the simple one paragraph email.  Finally I hit submit. I doubted the email account was even still in use.  I didn't expect a response and I headed out the door to run enough errands to make me forget my pain.

And, I did a pretty good job.  I returned home several hours later carrying several bags of new clothes.  I walked in to my office to check my email - completely forgetting that I had even emailed my first love.

Imagine my surprise when I saw not one but two messages from my first love.  I was shocked.  It took me a moment to remember I had emailed him.  I paused just a second before I opened the first email to read it.

I read it once, twice.  Then opened the second email and read it.  I went back and re-read the first email blinking.  Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this.  In a nutshell it read - I made the biggest mistake of my life when I let you go.