Set back, not a step back...

So, I did something you’re not supposed to do.

Its not bad, its just not … helpful. To me.

I looked up the ex.

Just on Insta – nothing else. I was shopping on the street we used to live on together and all the memories and nostalgia just kinda came flooding back. I just wanted an update. And oh, did I get one. Travel, fiancé, baby… like - whoa, ok. That’s a lot to take in.

One because (naturally) I’m wondering if I’ve missed out. If I made the mistake that I will live to regret forever (I know, dramatic). And even though at the time we broke up, I was sure it was right and knew that he just wasn’t the person for me… now… four years down the line, still looking for my person, wanting marriage and the works, and even a just a body to wrap myself into every night, I can’t help but ask if I was just too… eager?

Too naïve. To wait. To be patient. To let "what could be” turn into itself.

And then there is the part where, everything I saw for us, and wanted for him, now is – with someone else. (And I know we all say that, but I believe that it’s a fair statement. Because I think breakups force us to look at ourselves, and question if we really could have done more, or better by our partner. And he was very much the type who listened and reflected on his own time, long after the lesson was had.) Anyway, it seems like he finally decided let go and live a little. To make plans, to travel, to enjoy his time off; and just let life happen.

And it’s a bit frustrating in a “this could have been us” kind of way, because, as women, we just know things. (And I don't mean that in any away against men, its just true.) We see things., before they happen. We love hard enough to see our man’s future and potential and we do very much, in a way, live in that possibility. We lay the groundwork, putting up with the now with every intention of paving the path to his, to our, later.

So when you see that later finally being lived (happy for him) but with someone else (kind of a bummer for me), it puts a little knot in your heart. Because you saw that. You felt that, and for a long while, you worked for that, for "us". And yet, its wasn’t for us. It was for someone else.

And there is no love lost, there is no misery that I feel or wish for because of it… but there is a thought that maybe, if I just stuck with it, I would be where I so want to be right now.

…

I don’t know, it’s a tricky one. I just have to trust that I knew what was what back then, and made the best decision I could when I did.

In the meantime, I just gotta keep thinking that what’s meant for me must just still be cooking… yeah.