by Donnie Casto II
“To err against those that have our best interest at heart is unimaginable.” – Brandy Sosby Puckett
“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the bed, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. I wasn’t looking for or even interested in a hot moment of flash in the pan sex, like in those movies or television shows MTV shoves in the empty spaces of the minds of American youth. I merely wanted to open myself enough to wrap my arms around her and melt into the warmth of her being. I wanted the comfort of knowing for a moment there was another human being that I could melt into one with and securely and safely fall asleep with at night.” Jacob Monsen thought to himself when he thought of his beloved Abigail Sayre.
Jacob, however, lacked the courage to fully open up his heart. Abigail, it seemed, had her heart set on another, and despite the evident connection they had with each other, it likely would always be left to ‘what might have been.’ Jacob Monsen was skinny, insecure, and nerdy. Abigail was gorgeous, confident, vibrant, and stunning. He was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating.
With such a plethora of thoughts running through his mind, Jacob Monsen walked back to his living room and threw himself on the couch. He poured himself a healthy gin and tonic thinking that “If people were rain, I’m a morning mist and she is a raging hurricane.”
“She was a love that I lost myself falling into,” he muttered to himself. She was the Hadley to his Ernest. For all the passion Jacob and Abigail awakened wanting to burn the world around them in their love for the other, there were demons far beyond their control and understanding that neither could handle.
Jacob went from a life lived on the edge of one moveable feast of excess after another, to a quiet life that no storm could break in the shelter of Abigail’s arms. She was always in transition from one temporary destination to another. It always seemed while Jacob had his eye on the present moment, Abigail always looked for the next opportunity she couldn’t allow to pass by.
He wanted the feeling of complete freedom in surrendering his heart to her, and she wanted her heart to be completely free. They were a paradox of polar opposites. Two passing ships that docked at a port far longer than time intended.
“She would always be the one that I love, loved, want, and wanted. But she will never be the one I can love the same again,” Jacob Monsen thought to himself.
All the photographs and memories of a love and a woman that he thought would always last were just that, memories of the past. Like Gatsby chasing his beloved Daisy, these two souls in the 3:00 a.m. lonely night were doomed for failure.
It’s the imaginative hopeless romantics in life that are left to die alone in the wake of those who will give everything to another for comfort and security, save only their heart. Jacob once had everything he could have wanted with Abigail.
Her time, the warmth of her body in his bed, the smell of jasmine and lavender as she walked by his desk with fresh coffee or an ice bucket with his gin and tonics to get his writing gears going and a smile that Di Vinci couldn’t do justice. Despite doing everything that one would, should, and could do for a woman of Abigail’s pedigree, he never could get her to surrender the one thing he wanted most, her heart.
Jacob had lived a life based on redemption and second chances. Despite the peace and forgiveness others had given him and the changes he had made to show he was sincere in wanting it, the only forgiveness he could seem to give to himself and that he felt he had was in the moments he captured and fought for with Abigail. The moments of life together with her, where he truly felt the freedom in unlocking the door of this proverbial prison of the human heart, that Abigail, and Abigail alone, was the warden of.
It had been well over six months since Jacob had seen Abigail. Remembering times where fate, choices or circumstance drove Abigail into the temporary retreat of the arms of another man, at first, very nearly had killed Jacob. Seeing the woman he loved being comforted, or as often in Abigail’s case, being used by another, very nearly destroyed his sanity and faith in humanity.
“Of all the women in my life, I have known the pleasure of their bed, but never the treasure of their heart, except of Abigail and Lyn-Marie.” Jacob reflected on. The oddity of love is how blindly it causes us to see only the beauty found in the rose colored glasses of an illusion. Jacob Monsen was no different than any other hopeless romantic in that aspect.
That’s not to say there was no virtue or hope to be found in Abigail. There was much to love, to treasure in a woman like Abigail. Her intelligence, random quirks and the utter peace her touch could bring to calm the chaos or writer’s block in Jacob’s soul was the equal of the touch of Jesus. But like a red rose in bloom, it was easy to get smitten with the vibrant color and heavenly scent while ignoring the numerous razor sharp thorns that would lay your fingers open to the bone.
Such was the hard truth with Abigail. She blew away Jacob’s world of poetic isolation like a regal shield maiden on the verge of becoming a great and mighty queen. The reality, once the illusion of physical beauty and well intentioned words wore off, was that this queen of the kingdom of nothing was a lonely princess always looking for another prince or king to rescue her from dragons of her own making and a prison of choice of which she alone held the key.
Abigail often lamented in the past how she had screwed up. But what she failed to understand or accept, was that life wasn’t solely based on how badly she screwed up. It was also based on how they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and went back at it. While Jacob made the hard right choice of changing and adapting from the pain of his mistakes, Abigail chose to be a victim and to do to others what was done to her. She often spoke of change, but her actions never did.
“Jacob, all I ever wanted was to make you happy. But nothing I ever did was enough. I’ll always hold hope one day we can be together.” Abigail’s last words to him rang through the corridors of a road of broken hopes and dreams in his mind. Yet, finding her again residing with yet another man who used her as equally as she was using him, Jacob Monsen realized a profound truth about Abigail Sayre that made this woman he loved and would always love the greatest villain in the annals of romance:
Heartbreak and the end of a relationship of any kind can be a bitter pill. Emotional damage aside, what hurts the most is the reality that the person who enamored our past is gone. Jacob realized that the Abigail he loved over 10 years ago had died and gone away a long time ago.
“Let it go!” was so easily spoken by Jacob’s family and friends, and despite this truth he had found it so difficult to apply. For better or worse, the imprint Abigail Sayre left upon a very human heart would always remain.
The addictive perfection he felt when they shared their first kiss, the first time they shared a bed, he would always seek to be fulfilled. The very evident reality that Jacob had realized about Abigail was that it would never be. The memory of love always remains, but it’s never the same love more than once. He would weep, express anger, laugh at the good times, and know each day brought him closer to freedom and the ability to stand alone on his own two feet.
Jacob just hoped to have the wisdom to know the difference, that if Abigail should ever come back. . . would it be getting a second chance at a prize worth fighting for or would he be the proverbial dog eating it’s own vomit?
With a conflicted heart and mind, Jacob raised a glass of Jack Daniel’s finest to the unknown future in the great beyond. res ipsa loquitur. . . let the good times roll.
