Ghost Chaser

Truthfully, it was upsetting. Plain and simple. I wanted a man I couldn’t have, and for so many reasons shouldn’t have. It hurt me to be chasing after a ghost, not because he didn’t want me but because he couldn’t love me. I was waiting for the right answer, detrimentally undecided. It was like Gone with the Wind and I felt like Ms Scarlet. Those words of Rhett Butler, you’ve had a boy and an old man, and he was going to be the one to love her right, how she was meant to be loved. I’d had the boy, now this ‘old man’. He was offering to love me right, whatever that means.

I wanted to dispense with him. My resolve was iron strong until I saw him again and then it was right back to where I started, hopelessly caught up. He was exactly my style, tall, thick build, and a dark complexion. A personality that unequivocally announces “I don’t take shit” but all the while dignified. A gentleman. He also had a girlfriend, an ex-wife, and children closer in age to me than I was to him. Who knew how many other women were ready and willing? I could guess.

I wondered if the fact that I couldn’t have him made him more tantalizing than he actually was. It was the definition of conflict, while I felt the loss of his absence; I wanted nothing to do with him. I wanted him at my own terms, to push away and draw close as my whims dictated without consequence or justification, unrealistic. I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too, upsetting. He spoke to me like he actually liked me. He was a shallow man and my vanity accepted his attention proudly as a feather in my cap. Not because of the romantic moments but because of the quotidian inanities that pass between us. It was the moments of genuine friendship that drew me in further than I ever meant to go. I wanted to believe he liked me. The more drawn out things became the more I was convinced he did. The more convinced I became of his appreciation for who I was as a human being.

Part of me felt this was plausible but another part of me felt this was nothing more than a quaint fantasy. It could never go anywhere. There were too many obstacles between us… and by obstacles, I mean, women. It hurt me to know I would walk into a relationship knowing I would never be the one and only. That would be an Olympic dive headlong into emotional suicide.

He was the initiator, the one on the move, making direct and calculated moves toward me. I had legitimately and diligently avoided it, up until now. He didn’t know I was weakening… yet. I didn’t want him to know because I didn’t know what I wanted and still don’t. He became angry with me if I didn’t give him the attention he felt he deserved. I couldn’t decide if it was endearing or psychotic. Another reason that kept me to the sidelines. I wanted, and deserved more than this, more than the status of a second thought or one of many options. Believe me, he had many options.

Still, somehow, I was more than happy to settle for him.

But… I refuse to settle. Pride or wisdom?

I don’t want to waste precious time on an empty soap bubble of an ideal. Is it an obstacle? In the grand scheme of things did this decision actually have an impact on anything? Was this non-entity an obstacle to my own moving forward? I was clinging to him. I didn’t want to.

I needed to take the first step to do what needed to be done. I just couldn’t lift my foot. I needed to stop chasing the ghost.

It was all very upsetting.