The End?… / A New Beginning…

by Foxx

The End?…

            It all started around three and a half years ago when the woman I loved told me she was leaving. I was devastated. Although we never had the perfect relationship, I thought we were in love and it didn’t matter. I was wrong.

Her explanation for leaving seemed weak, nothing that some counselling couldn’t take care of, but I felt there was more behind it. I never got an official reason why she left but I did notice that we started becoming more distant when she started doing internet chat. I didn’t give it much thought at that time because she referred to them as just “friends”. I let it go. Mistake. Over time, I noticed she seemed more interested in chatting than in me. I didn’t do anything since it was giving me more opportunity to do the things that I wanted to do. We were both being selfish. I caught her a few times involved in something “racy” with her “friends” but we worked it out because I didn’t want to lose her. Another mistake… I had the opportunity to seek professional help and I blew it.

The words came from her lips… “I’m leaving”… it felt like a red-hot dagger shoved through my chest into my heart. I couldn’t focus on anything. My world came to an end… or so I thought…

A New Beginning…

            It took me about two years to get over my ex… one year to get over the pain… another year to get over the anger… and although my heart was still healing, I knew that it was time to move on.

            It was hard though. I was in a relationship for so long that I had no idea how to meet someone. I wasn’t looking for a one-night stand or a short-term relationship… I wanted to be back in love. I knew that bars and taverns would be awful places to find my true love… friends even suggested I look at the supermarkets or church to find someone… I knew I’d never have the courage to do something like that. I needed to build confidence before I could move on… well, I used to chat on the internet and although I had some resentment towards internet chat for obvious reasons, I thought that maybe it would be a good place to start.

            Several years earlier, my brother sent me an invitation to a social networking site consisting of people who shared stories and pictures of their travels. I never really paid any attention to it for a long time but I thought I should put some work into it to see what happened. It wasn’t long before I started receiving viewers and friend requests. I ignored these. I knew nothing about the person so how could they be requesting friendship? Then I received a message from a woman in my country. She wanted to exchange e-mails and chat. I thought that this would be the opportunity to try my conversational skills so I thought I would give it a try. By the end of that chat, the woman sounded like she was ready to take me to bed! NOPE! Not what I was looking for! I was scared to death at how fast that woman moved… so that was the last time I talked to her.

            Time went by… more friend requests… ignored. Then I received a message from an Irish beauty. We talked back and forth for a while but we were rarely online at the same time and it looked like she was only interested in “flirty fun”. I moved on. More friend requests and again, I ignored them. I was starting to get frustrated with trying to find somebody to chat with, until I received a friend request from a pretty girl… not that the other girls were not pretty, but this one was different… something drew me to her. I sent her a message displaying my odd sense of humour to see what her reaction would be. A little while later, I received a message back from her.  I was blown away by her intelligence; I knew I had to talk to her. I responded, letting her know that I would like to be friends. We started chatting back and forth. We talked as friends for a while but in my heart I knew I wanted more. Because of the distance between us and not wanting to damage our friendship, I tried to ignore the feeling, but found myself getting jealous whenever she mentioned another guy, wondered what she was doing when we weren’t talking, looking at her pictures over and over again… I couldn’t get her out of my mind. One day she questioned me about my feelings toward her… I had never lied to her and even though I knew it could damage our friendship, I couldn’t deny to her or myself what I felt. I revealed my true feelings to her and with my heart in my throat, waited for her response. To my delight, she revealed that she felt the same! Years of pain, anger and heartbreak were stripped away in that moment. I had found HER!

            Though we are a world apart and have been through some trials, our love for one another burns brighter with every passing day. I know it’s just a matter of time before we are together… FOREVER…