light collects

i talked to the ex today.

and the world didn't implode and the stars are still hanging in the sky and everything looks just the same. i won't deny that i started shaking when i got his text message but i called back and everything was fine. i went into the conference room (all of our conference rooms are named after muni lines...f-market, j-church, etc. i was in l-taraval) and talked to him and everything was fine.

he's depressed which didn't surprise me. he sounded pretty bad and i felt the generalized concern that you feel whenever someone you care about is having a rough time, but i didn't feel that inward reaching-out, i didn't feel like saving him from himself, not anymore.

he is exactly the same.
i am exactly different.

all this time i felt a little (a lot) like a loser because i think you always do when the ex moves on really quickly and you're left standing there just wanting so bad for things to go back. but he told me about how he didn't end up applying for grad school and regrets it, and he sounded so defeated, and he's feeling old but it's so clear to me now that he's still not a grownup in any sense of that word and i realized. if there is a loser in this scenario, it isn't me.

i lost a relationship but that relationship made me miserable; there is honestly no point of it that i would return to. maybe moments here and there still grab me sometimes but there is no full week of it that i would relive. maybe he&i can be something better now. something not so overinvolved and like trying to fight a black hole. and just yesterday i was walking down the hall at work and i was completely suffused with a certainty: "somebody is going to really really love me again someday." and then i just couldn't stop smiling.

because someone else is gonna make me sparkle again.

and because maybe i already do, a little.