A Sorta Fairytale: story over or chapter closed?

        Monday night as I lay in bed, about to doze off to sleep, I was brainwhirling. I returned to my studio Sunday night to find no trace of my FWB. I had not been able to return to Paris early enough on Sunday to say goodbye as I had planned: the dad of my girl charges cancelled taking them to a production of Cinderella in Paris on Sunday afternoon, which meant I had to bring them back on the train at 17h30 as per usual, and which meant I did not get home until 19h. I had text messaged my FWB to warn him of this and to tell him to leave the keys in my mailbox if he had to leave before I returned.

        Keys were in the box, but then nothing. No text, no thank you. I was stunned. I tried not to read into it, but I am, after all, a girl, and a trained analyst at that. I tried to get it out of my system, along with my intense sense of anxiety about it all, by skyping friends and family on Sunday night. Until three am. And then I outprocessed some more  at weekly apéro with one of my good American friends here on Monday evening.

        But on this Monday night, on the edge of sleep, my blackberry beeped. I had an e-mail. I figured it would be one of my many LinkedIn notifications, as I'm now subscribed to five bajillion French employment networking groups that send me messages allllll dayyyy long.

        Wrong.

        It was from my FWB. He thanked me for letting him stay at my place again this weekend, updated me on his week ahead: finished his required full time internship for his Master this week, has a day long interview for a job in France on Wednesday,  another skype interview for a VIE in the States, and plans to finish for the cruise he's taking with his grand-mère, as they leave next Monday. Then add finishing his Master's thesis, more networking, and all the CVs and cover letter writing that entails.

        To this he added things I have heard from many other gentlemen before:

       ¨You are a super sweet, thoughtful, and charming girl...¨ ...and then came the BUT...¨ but I realize that I'm not at a suitable point right now to get into a relationship with all these changes and projects to come.¨

         At that point I started bawling. Not this again not this again not the BUT not the BUT not the BUT. Started crying harder than the Parisian rain which is currently hailing down upon the 7th arrondissement and torrentially soaking the courtyard off my studio. Dripping dripping down the pipes and in the gutters like the tears on my cheeks.

         The BUT is gut wrenching. The BUT is a hard pill to swallow. I'm a firm believer that if a guy is into you and wants to make it happen, he'll make it happen, and everything else is just an excuse.

           I am now rethinking that. Rethinking it mostly because I wonder if for this instance, the but really is a legitimate BUT. I was at the end of many BUTS in college (no pun intended), about guys changing jobs and moving appartments and how it was just too much to handle for a relationship, and I always considered it as the nice, gentle way to let me down. To say ¨hey i like you, but not THAT much, because you're not worth the effort its going to take to be with you.¨ However, it is hard for me to believe that the FWB's but is like all the others I have received before, given the past two weeks.

         I cannot be mad. I am not mad at all. I am overwhelmingly sad.  I am sad because I feel like for once, truly for once, what I have with this one is not ordinary, it is nothing even in the range of ordinary, and I am (was?) willing to risk seeing where it could go. He is worth it to me.  It's the not having the chance to see where it could go that kills me.

        He then added, in a rather existentialist and open ended way, and much like he did last year when he left:

       ¨ But who knows? In life all can change.  I will stay in close contact with you, it'd be my pleasure. You will always be welcome in the South if you ever want to get some sun ;-) ¨

        Then the tears came falling harder. They fell harder because I am not mad at all. I am recovering from a punch to the heart, a punch delivered not by a calculating young fool, but by someone who succeeded, through his sincerity and goodness, to steal my heart. He is not a jerk or an ass or anything near it at all.

         I responded after a bit because I needed to, for my own sake. I needed to tell him that I understood, because I too am trying to figure out where my life is going. What country it's going to involve. How he is someone special to me. How I only want the best for him and want to say in touch as well. He made it so sweet.

          Writing is also how I process. It's more than half the reason I am writing this right now...this Cinderella had to write the suite of the now sorta-fairytale. 

          And so the grand question is this: is this simply a chapter closed or is the whole story over?

     

             You tell me.