Well, here I am. As I write this, two weeks have passed since the events mentioned in my previous post, and I have yet to hear a peep from my transgressor. No attempt to discuss what happened. No attempt to explain “why.” Not so much as a hint of apology. All of this inaction leading to one simple conclusion: there is no remorse.

This wouldn’t be so painful if not for the fact that everything I knew – or thought I knew – about her led me to believe she (whom I considered first and foremost a very good friend) was a genuinely caring, considerate person. Is there anything as devastating as the moment you discover the person you held in such high esteem is, in fact, just like the others? After all the conversations she and I have had about humanity, the woes of the nation, and the many things we as people should and could be doing for one another, how disappointing to find that once it was all boiled down to a one-to-one situation, there would be so little compassion, so little common decency. I would never, not in a million years, have thought it possible.

But then, isn’t that always the way? No sane individual meets a person and thinks “wow, they are a horrible person…I think I would like to spend more time with them!” Rather, we see the good in someone – the very best in them – and focus on that. The rest is unseen, and comes as a galactic shock somewhere down the road. This thought having come to mind, I began to reflect on past “relationships” as I meditated last night.

I recalled the woman I dated for six months, and who broke up with me saying she just didn’t want to be in a relationship. She wanted time to focus on just herself. Two weeks later, she was in a relationship.

I remembered the woman who said things would be different if not for the fact that we lived a thousand miles apart. Soon after, she was involved with a guy on the east coast.

Some twenty years later, and I still can’t believe I drove all the way from Kalamazoo, MI to Houston, TX, only to discover I had been lied to for nearly a year.

Then there’s the woman who broke things off because I have “too many female friends.” Let me tell you something: my friends are incredible. Especially with all that has transpired over the past couple years, they’ve been right there to support me, and get me through the darkest of times. Try to make me choose between you and my friends (yes, including my many amazing female friends) you will lose. Every time.

And now, here I am. Two weeks hence, and all I have to show for it is a Pavlovian eye twitch whenever someone says the word “camping,” as a result of my meticulously planned surprise having been torn asunder by a spontaneous camping trip that never happened.

So I don’t think I, as someone recently suggested, seek out the wrong kind of person. It seems, for the most part, that I am attracted to fabulous women. I do think, however, that I need to get better about seeing the whole person. The sum of her parts, if you will. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will get the opportunity to put my newfound clarity to use. For as I sat there that day on the edge of my hotel room bed, the noon-day sun filtering softly through the window as I received her evening-canceling texts, there was an audible “snap.” Whether it was my heart being cleaved in two, or the back of the proverbial camel, I do not know.

What I do know is that part of me died that Saturday afternoon. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps one day I will once again find the courage, the desire, to ask a woman to dinner. To buy her flowers. To send her little notes letting her know I was thinking of her. Perhaps. But right here, right now, two weeks hence…that part is dead. Left to rot on the hotel room floor where it fell. And I have no desire to go back.