Make a left down the wrong aisle at the grocery store and you never know, you could turn right into a blast from your past and a trip down memory lane. Or so it was for me.
As I'm standing in the midst of all the cleaning supplies, I hear my name. I glance up to see a familiar face, a face from long ago, the face of the best friend of one of my old flames. With a feeling of dread, I knew the conversation would soon land on the old flame and I was right.
"So do you still keep in touch with T?"
"No. We haven't spoke since shortly after my wedding--seven years ago." (When he called to see if I "went through with it" as he so eloquently put it.)
"Speaking of weddings, he just got married last summer. She's a real sweet girl from the next town over."
I don't know what else was said, though I'm sure we carried on polite conversation for several minutes before parting ways. I do remember the bottles of yellow, orange, and green cleaning supplies flashing before my eyes. It was as if I had turned into the liquid cleaner in one of those bottles. My thoughts were whirling inside my head, the room spinning before my eyes.
I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach twice, the wind knocked out of me. And I was completely weirded out by my reaction to the news that I really shouldn't care about. I hadn't thought of T in years, and when I think of him it's never with regret or longing for what could have been.
I was even more weirded out by the fact that all those old memories were now all I could think of.
So, WTF?
I guess I just never thought he would grow up and settle down. Anything resembling normal was such a reach for the person I knew years ago. And all those feelings of rejection from spending so much time trying to make things work out between us, replace the fact that I was the one who finally grew tired of my exercise in futility and ended it with no remorse. I ended things with him, but yet somehow I now found myself wondering why he couldn't get his act together for me back then.
What was wrong with me?
Of course, I KNOW that it was never meant to be, as I'm happily married to The Hubby. That's the maddening thing about Memory Lane--you can't control where it takes you. And it doesn't have to make sense.