The lure of narrative, the dull weight of the now

So F and I have realized that the vivid narratives of an imagined future we were weaving together had overtaken the possibilities of the now. I feel very foolish in many ways -- just two weeks ago, when I was in New Mexico, I said blithely to L "I'm happier than I've been in a long time, buzzing with all of this excitement and possibility." And then the plane hit the mountainside of F's existing commitments, his recognition that he can't let go of his current entanglements to really reach for the heady whispered stories we uttered in the dark and through our feverishly tapping fingertips. SCRITCH. Paper ripped from the typewriter and crumpled into the corner.

It feels so... jagged -- there were so many points of intersection, so many places to nudge each other's words and ideas and flesh into places we were both a bit afraid to go to, a rhythm of nosing each other just a little further into delight, held gaze, deep recognition, an edge of difference that illuminated. A truly rare dance. Wrong timing, maybe. I don't know what would have unfolded, been written, if we'd both come to this untangled. But this... this was an overwhelmingly raw opening up, an abrading shutting down.

From the perspective of narrative psych, you can call this kind of deep connection a lot of things. Love. Shared imagination. Excitement at new possibilities that seem to fit. Uncommon chemistry. Predestination. Whatever terms, mutually crafting the story should make it real...and it's flattening when the shared story that seemed to capture us both equally fragments and the so solid possibilities just dissipate into the ether.

I always feel like the powerful story should be enough for faith, for optimism that it could happen, should bulldoze over other obstacles. But, stories collide, that's the point of multivocality. They're never straightforward.

Being with him was... tauntingly connecting, such a fit in so many ways. It's flaying to lose that verdant shaping something that I've yearned for for a long time -- this particular kind of connection that includes a dream of a life on the ocean, shared ideas, provocative physicality, seeing the world. It's about F specifically, and a more general, long-set yearning. A narrative I'll never be able to let go of, not really -- that desire for the side-by-side gaze.

I'll be fine, I'll focus on school, scan the space around me for new stories to write, drink beer and flirt and live in my network of tight connections. But. It was a big story, one I've wanted for a long time, one I thought I'd finally found a co-author for... and it's wrenching to let it go.