I should be so lucky

It's come to my attention that someone close to me is getting married. Yeah, it's come to my attention through him sending me an invitation to the wedding. It's white, it's of shiny cardboard with handwritten silver text across the front, posh lettering, embossed flowers... silk paper... rsvp.

"You are a part of our lives

please be a part of our celebration

of life and our commitment"

What do you answer to that? And whom should I address my rsvp to? Her? Or him? Him being someone I used to... yeah, what? Used to plan a life with? We never got that far. He wasn't quite the one that got away, even though it might have seemed like that back in the days, but it was definitively one of the relationships I'm actually reminiscing.

I don't do that a lot, I'm more of the coldhearted bitch (that some of those pesky little people commonly known as my ex-boyfriends refer to me as) that moves on. Without pondering and wondering and going through the stages of what-ifs.

But hand on heart, with the little note he left me one of those mornings, when I woke up, in a big, empty bed, with sun in my eyes and that lovely feeling inside my stomach, a sunny content that spread throughout the day throughout my body -

"Love fills a moment

A moment fills a lifetime

A lifetime begins eternity

Our eternity begins here,

You and me"

So what do I answer? What do I reply? "I would love to participate in the celebration of the love you share, now and forever"? Could I? Should I? Would I....?

I remeber how we met. His eyes caught mine across a crowded room and for a moment, I felt like it was only the two of us in the entire universe. Something tingled in the pity of my stomach, and even though I don't believe in love at first sight, then tingle was too far up to be just simple lust. Lust came with the territory, and oh man, could he rock my world...?

He used to stirr is coffee counter clockwise. And smile crooked when watching me, when he thought I didn't notice him staring. And beat me at tennis, even though he claimed it wasn't his game. And let me fall asleep on his arm, even though he knew he would have problems with tingly arm afterward. And open the door for me, for other women, for older ladies...

Once, he jumped a fence and ran out onto the street to help an older guy that had fallen off his bike.

Once, in the middle of a fight, he picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and carried away with me, putting me down before the small lake, where swans floated around, and happy couples walked over the little bridges in the park, just loving one another. "The world is too beautiful for you to be mad with me. I'm okay with it, I probably deserve it. But you loose too much energy on something that's not worth it" he claimed.

He made sense, and God how I hated it when he made sense.

Once, he told me he wasn't in love with me, but if I'd walk out of his life today, I'd take his heart with me. I didn't know what he meant by it, I still don't, but in retrospective, I wasn't in love with him either. He just moved in, into the void inside my heart, filling it for a short time, occupying it but never settling.

I haven't heard from him in years. We drifted apart, even before we drifted away from one another. We stopped being - stopped being together, stopped being right from one another... maybe we had just been a safetly-latch for each other, a net to catch you when you fall, a security that clicks in when you need it the most.

So, what do you say, to a wedding invitation from a man you never loved, never planned with, never held on to? But that nevertheless still has a few boxes off stuff in that void inside your heart he never came to fetch and you never had the heart to throw out?

How about:

"Heart of Darkness would be delighted to attend the wedding and reception to celebrate the love between the young couple"

I was a politican. I know how to bite together, put a honest smile on and endure. That's what you do in life - you endure.

And, considering I'll never get married myself, I should at least attend one wedding before I die...