Stickman Readers' Submissions February 16th, 2010

Saying a Final Goodbye Sucks…Period

You know it has to happen. You avoid it like getting a double root canal at a dentist, hoping against hope that you aren't the one who has to endure it, but inevitably, like death and taxes you have to deal with reality.

Let me set the stage here, then if you wish, you can stop reading or simply fill in your own experience with this when you were forced to say goodbye to someone you desperately didn't want to. Letting go of a once in a lifetime relationship,
as it turns out, really is hard to do.

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I met her in Pattaya in a chance encounter and everything seemed so very natural. This mature Thai lady possessed that just right combination of beauty, conversation, respect, humor and sensuality. So hot! On that fateful May night when we
first met we talked openly for several hours and things clicked, way quicker than you have ever remembered them clicking with someone else.

After the first time we became intimate I said to myself, "WOW, I truly want her to stick around after the sex" instead of that first impulse of crafting an excuse of getting her to leave. I didn't have that knee-jerk, prison-break impulse,
but actually wanted her to stay, to talk to her and hang out.

And sure enough, something started to blossom and her spell over me had me mesmerized. Romance starts. The kind you always swore you were either against, wasn't ever going to happen to you, or simply didn't exist. You find yourself
saying and doing things that caused you to cringe and shudder only months ago at the mere thought of it. "Are these flowers in my hand? Where did I get them? Am I seriously concerned about the hangover she has from too many Singhas or Leos
from last night's drinking binge? Wait a minute, why am I in the Soi Buakhao market looking at dresses, make up and ladies shoes?" Suddenly your doing all these things, and you swear it's not you, but it sure looks like you.

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For the first time in my life I felt fully human having believed I finally had a relationship based on trust, honesty, intimacy, sacrifice, and personal integrity.

Your friends start noticing. "What's up with you lately?" "When did you get those new threads…did she pick them out for you?" If only my friends knew that we showered everyday together, cut my hair, shaved me, cut
my toenails, trimmed nose-hairs and not to mention her never ending stamina, charisma, and energy when it came to bedroom activities!

They smirk and laugh, some a touch bitter at your sudden personality change, most are actually happy for you.

You start complaining less. Mornings aren't wretched, migraine fighting epic struggles any longer. You switch to tea. You know something's wrong, you can tell this just ain't you, but by God, you feel…..happy?

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When it hits you, you just didn't expect it, you sure as hell weren't looking for it, and now that it's finally dawned on you, you start to understand how the guy who found Tut's tomb must have felt. "I knew this
shit was down here, but really, I didn't think I'd find it."

You're in love.

Those first few days / weeks / months when it hits you like that, you might as well have a morphine drip in your arm at all times, because NOTHING can bring you down. The sound of your alarm clock in the morning that used to make you wish
inanimate objects could feel pain? Music to your ears. Traffic, poor service at shops / restaurants are no longer annoyances. Everything so it seems in life is tolerable.


You never thought it could happen to you and now that it has you're as happy as a pig in shit. Happier even.

Then you're reminded of the golden rule of life. The only constant in life is change. Things start to gradually fall apart. Suddenly your happiness gives way to uncertainties and depression when you see her "true colors" chomping
at your soul shredding it into a thousand pieces.

You know in your heart of hearts the relationship is over, but you can't face that. You fight like bloody hell, passionately debating her, explaining how things can be, desperately trying to do the impossible, trying to force her heart
into feeling the same way as yours does.

Everyone who cares about you in your life tries to help. Buddies line up to drink with you, smoke with you, laugh with you, tell you to move on, buck up, go get laid and forget the bitch. Family supports you, whispering ageless sentiments
into your ear like "it wasn't meant to be" and "the right one will come along." You believe none of it, of course, but you appreciate the effort. You post on all the Thai forums and well intentioned strangers sympathize
with your plight…

With all the people who think they understand your affliction, it dawns on you…"it's not helping." You want two things desperately; her and if not that, than to be alone, most likely with booze, and to be left that way until
things are different, or you're drunk, or both.

Time drips by like maple sap down a tree trunk. Days seem unending as you silently torture yourself with past visual images of her and the awesome memories that were created. Life becomes one long, garbled, confusing mass of sadness.

This goes on and on, for longer than you thought possible, and it seems to get worse, not better.

You remember that last kiss as if they're the last lips you'll ever taste, and as far as you're concerned at the moment, it is.

Then time passes. The raw, bottomless pain that encompassed your life softens a little. It doesn't pass, but it eases in intensity, you begin to scrape out something like the life you had before, all the while continually entertaining
the foolish, self-defeating dreams of her coming back to you. "If you love something, set it free, if it comes back, it's true" becomes your new motto. You almost convince yourself it's going to work out, even though you know
it's over.

But you refuse to say goodbye. To officially move on. To wish her the best and take a step in the other direction. It's too hard. It's too final. It's too….real. It was not supposed to end this way.

And so you stay, right in the little, decrepit hole you've dug for yourself, now comfortable in the misery you've become so accustomed to, too numb to live again.

And somewhere, deep inside, you secretly hope she is hurting too.

But she's not, because she has moved on. And you haven't. And in life, no one's gonna do shit for you. You do it, or it doesn't get done.

If you are still reading this, you are probably now wondering what caused this relationship to sour. Simply put, two reasons. MONEY and getting a negative answer from the following question I've asked myself. The question being: "Is the fucking
I'm getting worth the fucking I'm getting?" …Unfortunately, it's not worth the lies / BS, the mood swings on her part or the anguish. As Eric Clapton wrote in one of his songs years ago, "had enough bad love, no more
bad love"!


It's as simple as that. Doesn't make it any easier, unfortunately.

In closing, she made the biggest changes in my life without barely stepping foot into it. I don't know if I should thank her or hate her, but one thing I'm sure of, I will never ever forget her.

Stickman's thoughts:

Touching. I think we've all been there. I loved the first sentence of the last paragraph. Eerily familiar.

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