Joke's on me

Ok, the joke's on me I guess.

What a stupid, naive, foolish idiot I have been. About two weeks ago, a friend of mine at church tried to warn me, in a very serious manner, that I might be in danger of losing Leah to a particular someone who had his eye on her.  Namely, Nick.  Here is the message I sent to my friend as a reply to that warning:

"If you happen to be talking to this person who has designs on my girl, and if he happens to ask, you can tell him that I said this:  I do understand how other guys could be attracted to such a beautiful, smart, witty, and desirable person as my Leah, with whom I've shared a relationship for the past 17 months. That being the case, for the impossible predicament in which you may find yourself... I sympathize; as unrequited love can be a painful experience.  Unfortunately for you however, the relationship which exists between myself and Leah is of a nature which precludes any possibility of hope that you or any other gentleman might have of garnering Leah's affection. In other words, we love each other. Therefore I must offer my condolences to you, as any designs that you might have toward acquiring a relationship with my girlfriend - with the obvious side effect of dissolving the relationship between Leah and myself - will have to remain forever unrealized, as it just isn't going to happen, ever."

What a delusional collection of retarded ramblings. How blind I was when I composed that steaming pile of bullshit.  And do you know what's really funny? I actually believed all that garbage I wrote about Leah and myself. I mentioned unrequited love, and how it must be hard for people to deal with when they just can't have the girl... specifically, my girlfriend, Leah. Unrequited love... wow, such irony that it now lands on me.

I trusted Leah. I actually trusted her with all my heart. What an idiotic fool I was. We had been talking about marriage as recently as Lent. She told me how Fr. Justin had asked her about how things were with the two of us, and she said, "Good." Fr. Justin then mentioned how, after my baptism, it might be a good time to start thinking about marriage. Leah told me all of this, and the implication was that we were going to talk seriously about marriage after my baptism.

As it turns out, I guess everybody knew about Leah and Nick except for me. What a gullible shmuck I am. On the day she broke up with me, that night I had believed everything was so good with us. We visited places where we had shared our first realization that we loved each other. On that day, the day she broke up with me, she made a joyous deal out of finding three of my rings that I had given her, special rings of mine that she had left at my house for a while. Those rings were the first things I'd ever given her when we first started seeing each other, and she reclaimed them with an authentic display that added to my unshakable certainty that she actually cared. On that day, we took a long walk together, talking and laughing, and she was being affectionate. I was so damn confident. Of course, after walking and laughing and enjoying each others company, she suggested that we should go visit Nick. Hey, why not? I like Nick, he's a friend of mine.

It was after that visit, during which she had spent all of her time talking with Nick, laughing at his wit, and listening with captivation as he played his guitar, that I began to suspect that something might be amiss. I asked her about Nick, and at first she said that there was nothing between them. I asked her to please tell me the truth, and that's when she admitted that she was attracted to him. At that moment, it was over between us. All the "I love you's", all the talk about marriage, all the good times we'd had together, everything I had done for her, all the love I had poured out to her... all of that was just a nuisance to be swept away so that she could be free to run to Nick. The last year and a half we spent together, as it turns out, was completely worthless. She threw me away like a piece of garbage, without so much as a "Thanks for the memories."

I trusted her, I believed her, I loved her. We were talking about marriage. She said she loved me, and I thought that meant something... but with no compunction whatsoever, without a stitch of real regret, she tossed everything we had together into the garbage without even a glance back to see if it landed in the trash can.

I'm not saying that everything was perfect between us, but I just didn't expect this at all. We were going to work through our problems. We were going to figure it out. We had been together for a year and a half. We were talking about getting married.

I feel like such a pathetic, idiotic loser believing all those things I professed, and for believing, with absolute certainty, that my relationship with Leah was rock solid, and that anyone who had designs on her should just forget about it. I actually believed that, because I trusted her. I wonder about her now. How easy it was for her to destroy me... and without a second thought or a moments hesitation... and for another guy she barely knows. What does love mean to her? Anything? I grieve for my lost naivete, when I actually thought that love between two people had value.