M G’s Reviews > So Sad Today: Personal Essays > Status Update

When we think of our old lovers, and the people they are with now, we wonder what we did not have. We wonder collectively, as people, what other people have. A collective unconscious is formed, a cloud, and we laze around it and lie to each other. We tell each other we are better than one another, better than whoever he is with now. We tell it to each other, because we are well-meaning people.

The fantasy is no longer safe. It is a death valley. Reality killed it. I also miss the many months of uncertainty of not knowing whether we could be. The nebulousness. Now I know we could not.

That was as far as he would meet me. It was a beautiful place to meet me, but it wasn't the impossible, which was what I needed. I wanted to see what was possible. I wanted to see if the impossible could somehow be possible But when I asked for the impossible, the DNA dissolved…I became the pursuer and he became the pursued, which for me was worst of all.