The Pace of Emotion
He always told her she was too fast.
The words were a joke that became a worry, and later materialized as a break-up.
She left him for a world that better matched her pace.
The break-up itself?
Quick, simple, and easy.
The detaching of his soul from memories of the past?
Long, arduous, and painful.
In the quiet of the night, he sometimes asked himself:
Was she too fast, or was I too slow?
In time, he found another girl.
Gentle and quiet. Kind.
Perhaps boring.
Slower in pace, and slower in emotion.
He thought about this idea a lot — the pace of emotion.
Impulsive. Quick to anger.
Confrontational. Quick to judge.
But also, forgiving. Quick to understand.
Joyful. Quick to laugh.
He missed these things.
In all relationships, give and take.
Sometimes more of one than the other.
Sometimes only one.
And sometimes, balance.
But sometimes even then, it still didn’t work.
“Don’t go,” she said. “I love you, and I don’t know what to do.”
He nodded.
“You don’t talk to me. About how you feel. About what you want. The future. Us.”
He nodded.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, said nothing.
Long hugs.
Relaxed conversation.
A lingering, longing, loving gaze.
But also, simmering rage.
Slow-boiling paranoia.
Persistent, mounting expectations.
Slow, it seemed, wasn’t always easy.
He saw the future as a fog.
Thick and impenetrable. Enveloping and endless.
He never knew how fast he was running.
He only knew to keep going.
Love was a three-legged race. An exercise in teamwork.
He chose a partner, and they ran.
And every time, they fell.
Inevitably, a fork in the road.
Something like a choice between love and freedom.
The present and the future.
Reality and dreams.
Slow and fast.
Never as simple as the words suggest.
And never enough time to make a thoughtful decision.
In hindsight, he would think of the relationship as slow to start, and quick to end.
The very opposite of the previous relationship.
But exactly the same results.
And in the quiet of the night, he sometimes asked himself:
Was I too fast, or was she too slow?
But it was never as simple as the pace of emotion.
Never as simple as fast and slow.
Somedays it was one, and somedays the other.
He just never seemed to know which.
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