your ex-lover is

I'm gonna tell you what you need to hear
And I'm a little too late
By three or four years
And it may not make much sense
Now that we are apart
But I'm going to stop pretending
That I didn't break your heart
-the eels

I saw him today for the first time since the night he realized the reason I had stopped ending my nights with him was because I had found someone else. And maybe even someone else he couldn't compete with. Of everyone in the room today, he was the happiest to see me, but when I went to leave he'd already gone and I still don't know how it's going to be. I've seen pictures of her, this girl who is his, and she's not like me but maybe she's pretty. Even though they see each other all the time, she writes him little xo notes that I never would have written, on his fbook. He took her home for Christmas.

There will always be that part, no matter how good it is now and how bad it was then, that wonders what she has that could make it work. There is no part that misses it, him, or us.

Without meeting her the feeling I get is that she makes him feel a way I didn't, but I was so focused on how he was making me feel I didn't notice. That was it, selfishness interspersed with abandon we might mistake for more in a time that no one made sense. And in what I want to know it's still about me, isn't it?

*

It's like I both wanted him to be happy and over it and simultaneously crushed.

*

The present situation is getting better. I pick little fights and he cares enough to stay. He comes over and says "let me rub your back" and rescues me when I don't need it but maybe it still feels good, like calling my building supervisor when I'm frustrated and locked out of my apartment. He trusts me. And while initially maybe I'd say that's misplaced, it makes me want to be worth trusting.