The love of your life is not dead and other stories

I returned a rather ominous-sounding call from Cindy today, to find out what "information" she had for me.

Did you read your Marist magazine yet?

No.

Naz is in it. You're going to be upset.

The love of my life is dead. Oh dear God. I stopped walking on Canal St. I stopped breathing. I just…stopped.

Okay, I thought she was about to say he was dead. The real news is, he had a baby. With his wife. Who is not me. The announcement was in our college quarterly update magazine thing. I took this news much better than I took the wedding news, although I did ponder whether the baby was better or worse than death. Does that make me a bad person? When I received the wedding news via a mutual friend, there was gin and crying and regret and misery. This time, I wailed Who is this girl? Why is she not me? Why is that not my baby? a few times, but I think I'm going to be okay.

I don't usually bother with regret. I don't have time to beat myself up for everything in my past. Whatever. I did it. Next. But Naz was different. I never loved anyone before him so fiercely, and I haven't loved anyone like that since. That love was completely unhinged and terrifying. We never dated. We were friends. We slept together at the point where it would have been impossible not to. I lost my shit, completely. Every time we got close, I lost it. I think part of me knew there was no way I could handle the heartbreak of having him and then losing him, so I did everything in my power to sabotage any chance we might have had. I hurt him very badly. I hurt myself very badly. I did Very Bad Things. And six years later, I'm still kicking myself in the ass for not being the girl he's having babies with. And I fucking hate babies.