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The Time Was Never Right
In school, you chased the popular boys and the athletes.
You didn’t notice the studious one.
As a young adult, you were entranced with the “bad boy” type. Life was awhirl with parties and dates and glitter. You lived for the moment, if not in it.
You did not see the quiet professional.
Self-certifying your own maturity, you married too soon, had children and embarked on a life together with a partner too casually chosen.
My life went on, alone.
Time ground inexorably on and that bad boy did not improve with age. You couldn’t acknowledge the superficial basis for your choice so you told the world that he simply hadn’t grown as you had.
As a single, I continued on the road less traveled.
Your children moved away and your life’s partner was a stranger. You sought a new beginning so you cast him adrift, wondering what it was that you had ever seen in him. In truth, having provided genetic material and financial support to fund your biological imperatives, he’d served your purpose. When younger, you were vociferous in condemning ‘commitment phobic’ males. Apparently, commitments too easily assumed are also too easily abrogated.
Still, I was invisible to you.
Each time you sought out a new partner, you applied the same criteria that you had employed before, with predictable results. Since your judgement couldn’t be questioned, it clearly had to be the failings of the other gender. You didn’t notice that the only common element in your botched relationships was you.
I watched from a distance as you spent your youth, your beauty, your enthusiasm and your future.
At long last, you have condescended to talk to me.
Everything looks very different here on the other side of time. For both of us, the hormone driven frenzy of youth has passed. Like you, I too have finally realized that I was chasing a chimera. We have also seen that the much hyped “soul mate” is a very shallow, transitory reinvention of what a spouse was supposed to be, and once was.
Now you seek companionship and someone to grow old with. Growing old, however, is a process halted only by death, not a destination to be sought out and I, unlike you, have adapted to living a life of one. The promise of companionship no longer has an appeal. That’s a role adequately filled by “man’s best friend”.
We’ve reached the end of act three and the scene is fading to black.
The time will never be right.
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