Moving On

This afternoon I've just returned from an overdue shopping trip to Safeway. I couldn't help but notice as I was loading my groceries on the checkout's conveyer belt that my choice of purchases already make me look like I live in a place called Los Angeles. Tandoori flatbread, light organic soy milk, spicy red pepper hummus, blueberry green tea, fresh avocado, raspberries, protein bars and dried raspberry granola cereal "to go." Granted, I've been eating like this since my teens, but in a town like Greeley, Colorado it hasn't exactly been "mainstream" to be a health-oriented vegetarian. I was in heaven when I dated a boy from Saudi Arabia during undergrad who was in the States working on his Masters at CSU (Colorado State). We would always go to a little Indian place called the Taj Mahal where I could easily find plenty of spicy vegetarian dishes on the menu.

Eventually we broke up because as good looking, well-kept, well-mannered and nice to me as he was, I just lost interest. For me, there just weren't enough sparks. For him, I was probably just a little too independent and unwilling to submit to a compromise of what he thought a "girlfriend" should be. That one only took six months to dispose of.

Today's latest casualty has taken ten years. Ten years because both of us never thought it was time to let go. Even though I was 23 and he was 42 when it started. And he had four children and an ex that wanted to take him to the cleaners. Then came the granddaughter "M" that his 16 year old found herself giving birth to. Not to mention my move back to Colorado and the years of late night phone calls and cherished weeks spent by the Gulf Coast. I thought about getting a job as a flight attendant so we could see each other more often while I lived at home and paid off my bills. Then I kept getting promotions at work and my mom said I had to move out.

So I got an apartment, a second part-time job and kept working really hard at paying off all those bills. After four years they wanted to raise my rent too high, so I bought my house. By then I had already signed on with "The Devil," earning more money that I knew what to do with and thinking, somewhat naively, that like all other places I had worked, I would put forth my best and be able to move up and out of that "get me in the door" position. In the meantime, I got other jobs, but didn't accept them for one reason or another. One would've potentially taken me back to Florida. He and I talked about that several times. After all, how could he leave a business he'd built up for years, kids that were still in college or just starting their adult lives, and a granddaughter that needed him?

I loved him enough to compromise. Somewhere inside my heart, I still do. But the pull towards a destiny that I've felt since I was thirteen has resurfaced and the feeling is stronger then I've ever known it to be. So I have to try. I have to go chase it. I have to move on. That means for now, he and I are done. My best friend, probably forever. Anything more is only promised for a few more weeks.

For now it'll be one last week of white sands, yellow-pink sunsets, hand-in-hand walks along the white foam crashes of a teal green tide and two hearts that will somehow store the moments of connection that shouldn't have to end. But life takes you in directions you don't always anticipate. All you can do is follow your heart's dreams and hope that somehow the feeling of being free is worth more than the compromise of who your soul was born to become.