The lurking past.

My high school sweet heart called today to let me know that he is now happily engaged. He usually calls to tell me things like he's number one in his medical school class, that his parent's bought him a brand new $100,000 car, or that he moved into an amazing beach front condo. I don't know why it is that he does this, as if to say, see, you could have had all this? Or because he's looking for approval or some sort of validation that these things make me think more highly of him? Is it some sort of misdirected attempted revenge for the way I unkindly and very publicly broke up with him in college? I'm never quite sure.

This phenomena is not so rare in my life, most every guy who I dated seriously or not, still calls or texts or emails on a somewhat regular basis ranging from monthly to every year or so. It's something that my family makes fun of me for and that my friends find utterly bizarre, for any allure I have left in the hearts of these former lovers is completely lost on them. Sometimes I respond, sometimes I don't.

With the exception of the high school guy, most of my breakups have come to a sort of anticlimactic, fizzling end and perhaps it's this sort of indeterminate conclusion that keeps a standing invitation for contact on the table. Who knows.