16. Circles:

Confessions Final Chapter

It’s funny how it always ends the same way.

Or maybe it isn’t.

Maybe it’s just predictable, inevitable even, like watching the final scene of a movie you’ve seen a thousand times.

I keep expecting the plot to twist, for some miraculous revelation to change everything. But it never does and it’s foolish to expect otherwise. It’s always this, a half-empty glass, a half-hearted goodbye, and me, away as if I have somewhere better to be.

I see the same patterns, play out the same scenes, every time I meet someone new. It begins innocently enough. Her laughter, the curve of her smile, the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. A spark, the thrill of discovery, the intoxicating rush of potential.

I tell myself this is different, I tell myself that the right one will change me. I tell myself that I’m capable of something more. But then the questions come, those nagging doubts that chew at the edges of every beautiful thing.

What do I really want?

…

Then, predictably, the distance grows.

We begin to fumble through the motions like actors who’ve forgotten their lines. Her gaze shifts looking past me as if I’m already a memory. I feel myself pulling away too, I’m careful to make it look like she was the first to leave.

A habit of mine, or a defense mechanism. Or maybe just my own emptiness, pulling me back to the void before I get too comfortable, before I get too close to feeling anything real.

I want to hold on to it, stretch it out into something lasting.

And yet, I already know how it will end. And does that make me cynical? Perhaps. But it’s hard to ignore the pattern when repeated with such precision. Every ending feels the same. It’s like pressing rewind on a film I’ve seen before, watching the frames flicker backwards. The laughter fading, the arguments muffling, the intimacy dissolving.

I walk away, leaving behind another almost-love, another could have been.

Another face added to the gallery of fleeting encounters that clutter my mind.

It should hurt more.

It should feel like a loss.

Instead it feels like a relief, a breath of fresh air after holding it for too long.

I’ve been through it too many times to lie to myself anymore. We say our goodbyes, we promise to meet again soon knowing full well that we never will.

…

The more I take, the emptier I feel.

And the more I give, the less of me there is left.

Is it me who’s broken? Or is it the concept of love itself that’s flawed?

You’d think that if you just tried harder, if you just found the right person, you could make it work. But I’ve been running in circles, I’ve been chasing shadows of my own making, I was never going to catch them. I think I knew that since the start. It’s about the impossibility of filling a void that has no shape.

And then what of me am I left with?

If the search is the only constant, if the cycle never ends, then what does it all mean? A reminder that I am but a powerless, helpless being.

…

No answer, no grand revelation, just the endless return, the cycle lives on forever.

Constant.

I’ve been tracing the same line over and over expecting it to lead somewhere new, but that line is a circle.

It always leads back to the same place.

Here, alone, again.

Here, absurdly enough, where I once met her.

…

At a corner café, I’ve sat by the window. Funny how it looks the same, yet everything about it feels different. Or maybe it’s just me who’s changed, though I doubt that. I think I’ve been trying to outrun this place, this memory, this woman who has never really left me.

So everything else was a distraction.

Her favorite spot, the seat across from me. Empty.

A piece of furniture that, for a brief time, held the weight of something more.

And now, it’s vacant again.

I order what she used to drink. Dark, bitter coffee she’d let go cold while she talked. I never understood why she liked it that way, almost unpalatable.

I watch the steam rise from the cup, spiraling upwards before disappearing into nothingness. As our conversations did, as our shared moments.

And what was it all for? I wonder if she remembers this place. I wonder if she ever thinks about me, and about us, and this place. Or was I just another face in the crowd for her, another fragment of a life she’s long since she left behind.

It’s easier to imagine that I was the one who felt more, that she’s long since moved on while I am stuck here, shifting through the ashes of what never was.

She is not here.

She is long gone now.

And ever since, I was never searching for love, I was searching for something to distract me from the fact that I’ve already given up on it.

Let it wash over me, this void isn’t something to be filled but something to be lived with. That’s about the only freedom I’ll ever have.

I sip the coffee, it’s cold, it’s bitter.

…

I finish the coffee, letting the bitterness linger on my tongue. It’s a familiar taste, a reminder of all the things I tried to forget.

There’s a comfort in the familiar, even if that familiarity is pain. A bitter taste of an expected disappointment.

I stand up, leaving the cup, and the table, and the chair behind. I don’t look back because I know I will be here again.

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week or month.

But someday, surely someday.

Because that’s just the kind of person I am.

A man running in circles, even when he knows there’s nothing left for him to find.

And that thought doesn’t scare me. It’s almost reassuring.

An endless return, a cycle I know too well to break.

This is my life.

…

The Confession, Sir Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853-1928)

Confessions Chapters:

• Intro

• 1.The Absence of Her

• 2.Letters to No One

• 3.Half-Truths, In Full Bloom

• 4.What She Doesn’t Know

• 5.In Another’s Arms, a Stranger’s

• 6.Petals on the Floor

• 7.Feather in the Wind I

• 8.Feather in the Wind II

• 9.The Art of Leaving, Again, and Again

• 10.A Night That Belongs to Nobody

• 11.In the Company of Indifference, the Loveless

• 12.Smoke and Silence / Going Nowhere

• 13.In the Search of Absent Lovers

• 14.Inertia’s Embrace

• 15.Almost

• 16.Circles