Haunting

Grey turning up like that had taken me completely by surprise. I wasn’t thinking about him before that. I had no reason to think about him. He was just another guy from my past. Hadn’t he made sure of that himself? I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said, though. It was haunting me. He was haunting me.

I didn’t know what to do.

On one hand, Grey had hurt me so many times already. We’d hurt each other, I suppose. Let’s not pretend that I was an angel back then, or smart. I’d let myself get carried away with the fantasy every single time, but I knew better now. The pattern had repeated itself one too many times. If I went back to him, if I agreed to dump my fiancé and go back the friend-with-benefits that I’d loved so deeply, I’d be giving him permission to repeat all of those painful mistakes again. Right? Him turning up like that wasn’t a one-time mistake; he’d done it repeatedly. He had repeatedly fucked my love life up at that point.

But I loved Grey, too. Deeply. Soul-crushingly. I’d loved him for a long time, even before I really knew it. I could see a future with him, a life with him – the full happy-ever-after, combined with the best sex of my life. The what-ifs were haunting me. What if I was meant to be with him? What if he was ‘the one?’ I’d chosen Whisky… but as the hours rolled by, I wanted to go back in time and re-choose Grey. But again, hadn’t I already done that? Wasn’t it time that I learned?

So, I decided, it was best to stick with my original answer: Whisky. No ask-the-audience; no phone-a-friend. Suddenly, though, I wasn’t so sure about him, either. Hadn’t Whisky hurt me already, more than just emotionally? I had accepted his apologies and chosen to forgive him… but… well… as grim as this sounds, I didn’t realise that I had another option. Would I have said yes to Whisky if I had known that Grey was soon to return? Honestly? No. I don’t think I would have done. But maybe I would have? Oh, who knows? I don’t suppose it matters much. We’re right here, right now, and I’ve got a big decision to make.

With a decade-and-a-half of wisdom and hindsight on my side, I know now that I should’ve ditched them both and just chosen myself. There’s a big part of me that wishes I’d done that… but there’s also a very big part that wonders if I would’ve had the same great adventures without the decisions I made then. Would I have eventually gone to a War Zone, then The Other Side of the World without Whisky? Perhaps I’d have had different adventures, but still great adventures, nevertheless? I can’t know how my life would’ve turned out, but I often wonder what might’ve happened if I’d chosen Grey over Whisky, just like I’d chosen Grey over The Lapdog. What if that one final time was the time – the time that we finally got our shit together and embarked on a proper relationship?

What if I’d chosen the wrong man?

What if I should’ve chosen Grey?

It’s haunting me. 

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: A Wedding in a Castle.