Colette … My Life Spirals Out of Control

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In the summer of 1989, I met Colette.  I still remember the first time I saw her and what she was wearing.  There was a saying I heard once; goes something like, “It only takes a moment to fall in love and a lifetime to say goodbye.”  I don’t know if the moment was that first time I met her, but at some time in the next four years, there was a moment.  A lifetime to say goodbye?  Well, for now, the saying holds true.  Don’t misunderstand, I have a full life today married to a woman I love (who you’ll meet later), but there’s still a part of me that has yet to say goodbye to Colette.

She took a part-time job at my father’s pharmacy that summer.  She was younger – still in high school.  When I left to go back to school, after a summer of shy conversation, we became pen-pals which later blossomed into romance.  We spent four years together, planned to get married and then one day in January of 1994, she simply said that it was over.  There was no conversation, no discussion.  She cried, but that was about it.  Actually, that just about sums up our relationship.  I talked.  Colette made decisions and cried.

I know that all the textbooks will say that a relationship just doesn’t end like that, and that there had to be signs.  If I look back, I’m clear there were.  To this day though, I really don’t know what happened.  I mean really what happened.  There were just more questions to fascinate me.  Like how did I go from being the one to NOT the one?  Why did the community around Colette give support to her decision?  No one said to her, “Gosh you spent four years with him.  You talked of marriage.  Don’t you think you should at least talk to him, make sure he’s okay?”  

I’m clear that somehow, in some way being with me had become a cage for Colette.  One that she had to escape at all cost; I just wasn’t sure why I became the cage.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting I was a prince.  I had issues, but I didn’t become a wholly different person in four years.  I didn’t change in physical appearance.  She rarely made requests of me to be or do something differently.  I don’t know if my questions and observations about life became too much for her.  Regardless, for whatever reason, she was done and that was it.

I know this reads like these are still recent questions for me.  They’re recent to the extent that anything unresolved in your past comes up from time to time.  Most of these questions is the thinking of a devastated 25-year old whose life had come apart and was forced to live with the cultural answer, “You’re young.  She’s young” as if that somehow let her off the hook and explained away my pain.  

In fairness, Colette did eventually contact me eight months later.  We had some conversations about our relationship, but none of them ever bordered on real.  That experience began a process of humbling that continues today.  My fascinations, my questions, my desire to understand?  I knew nothing.  After all, if I knew something, then surely this wouldn’t have happened.  Little did I know, I was about to discover what I’d been searching for.  I was about to discover a little bit of something about nothing.

Before I can take you there, I need to fill in some significant gaps.

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