Sometimes Being Right Sucks

The text came through at 12:30 am on a Sunday evening. Just about anything, at that time of night, makes my heart convulse. I groped for my phone.

“I need to talk to you. Can I come over tomorrow?”

Ugggggghhhhh! I rolled over attempting to ignore the message knowing slumber wasn’t returning anytime soon. I was way too exhausted, now exasperated and extremely hurt. Plus, I knew he was waiting for my reply.

“Sure. We’re leaving at 1:00.”

I tossed all night remembering how, just a few short months before, two beautiful children fell more in love with each passing day. It was one of the sweetest things I’d ever seen. As summer friends, it had been coming for years. 

But school starts up again every fall and long distance relationships are never easy especially when you’re young. There are far too many distractions.

Now, I was emotionally maxed out from a hellacious weekend spent listening to, crying with and emotionally stabilizing my daughter (who was away at school). It was her first, horrendously painful, inexplicable, dumping by a boy. A boy I loved and who felt like a son.

That next day, I anxiously waited for the clock to chime 1:00. 

Why does he want to talk to me? 

What am I going to say to the boy who crushed her heart into pieces so small I worried they wouldn’t go back together?

Just like a rolling reel from a bad movie, her sobbing screams played over and over in my head. “Mom, it hurts. It hurts so badly.” “Now I know how Robbie felt when I broke up with him!”

It’s difficult to explain to anyone how someone they love, who they thought loved them, now loves someone else. Let alone your kid. There are no words to express the pain I felt for her.

Watching him come up the walk, I met him at the front table. Hugging me, he said he was sorry; that he'd made a mistake. Then he just listened as tears streamed down his face. I said something along these lines.

“You are so young. Why are you falling in love so fast all the time? Slow down. We all make mistakes. Learn from them. You will experience heartbreak someday; unfortunately that’s a promise because we all do. Then and only then will you realize just how fragile a heart is and you’ll take better care because you’ve felt the pain yourself. But you two will know each other for the rest of your lives; your children will play together, so you need to figure out how to move past this. Time will help.”

I gave him a big hug telling him to come by next Memorial Day.

That conversation was two and a half years ago.

This weekend, my daughter showed me an email she received from him just a few days ago. It said something along these lines:

“I finally understand how you felt 2 ½ years ago when I f$#ked up really bad that weekend in October. It sucks and it hurts. I’m so, so sorry for what I did, how I treated you and how you felt. I get it now. I’m just happy we’ve been able to get back to being ‘sort of’ friends. Summer’s coming! Woo hoo!”

It does totally suck and it hurts badly. 

Sometimes I hate the idea of what goes around comes around.

And being right has never felt so awful.

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