Melancholy (standard:drama, 643 words)
Author: jazz3	Added: Aug 22 2002	Views/Reads: 3416/4	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A story of a woman reevaluating a relationship.

Melancholy 

by jazz3 

Everyone has a price to pay.  Every action has a reaction.  Lola thought
about holding everything together.   About all the endless errands - 
all the mechanisms that went into keeping the wheels rotating; keeping 
a family going.  'Here comes Lola - the phenomenal one-woman team with 
the other players looking on from the sidelines as, Lola, once again, 
comes through in the stretch.'  Recalling old times, she chuckled 
softly to herself.  Not one to easily give in to self-pity, she 
sometimes played the guilt card; it had seldom worked.  She reflected 
on how she'd struggled with her conscience and with fear of the unknown 
and after all of this she had arrived here in an empty room ready to 
start over. 

Love is such a strange thing.  There are the times when you smile fondly
to yourself and remember all the silly, private jokes shared that aid 
in the continuity of a relationship, the familiarity and cohesiveness, 
the sense of couple-ness.  Then there are the times when you grit your 
teeth in exasperation at numerous, thoughtless actions - wondering how 
you arrived here - are you even from the same planet?  Unfortunately, 
there had been far too many of those irritating moments in recent years 
and a great deal less of the smiling fondly moments. 

Of course she went through the middle of the night nervous stomach - 'oh
shit! - is this really the only way?' period.  She thought how she 
entered into a romance - not expecting to fall in love.  She was a 
single mother when they met.  Actually, in the beginning, it just felt 
nice having someone who pulled out her 'baser instincts' - it was 
something physical and pleasant and Lola enjoyed being with someone who 
made her laugh after a period of profound sadness.   They were both 
healing; the timing could not have been better.  Their conversations 
grew longer - emotions more intense and then they were in love.  Or as 
close to it as either one had ever experienced. 

She contemplated the irreversibility of her actions.  How difficult to
walk away from a life because he was not the person she wanted him to 
be.  Coming to the realization that he could only be who he was meant 
to be - or better still (taking a page from one of her endless 
self-help books); the person he chose to be.  Take your lumps, take the 
bitter with the sweet, etcetera, etcetera.  Truth.  He was not a 
God-awful human being and neither was she.  She just had this sense 
that they both needed to be alone and regroup.  And, perhaps, if they 
were blessed with a second chance at love, they would be with people 
better suited to their separate personalities.  The bitch of it was, 
through all the contemplation, sleepless nights and angry moments, Lola 
did still love him.  And on some level she held a small thread of hope 
that it wasn't too late; change was still possible - that they weren't 
out of chances.  She was not naïve; she was not searching for some 
romantic ideal.  She just wanted someone to lighten the load - to share 
the everyday mundane-ness of life - to confidently place something in 
his hands with the certainty that it would be handled.  She had so 
wanted the selfishness of his character to kindly vanish - it would 
have made their lives so much easier.  Lola felt like such thoughts 
betrayed them.  Betrayed their years together - but it was only the 
unvarnished truth.   Sometimes, love just wasn't enough - the scales 
were always unbalanced; more often than not, she carried the heavier 
weight.  These words sounded cliched and trite in her own ears - but 
she could not summon up a better analogy.  And that is how she arrived 
in this empty room.  Starting over. 


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