The One That Got Away

Do you ever wonder if someone out there thinks about you as "the one that got away?" One of my good friends is the "one that got away" for a college boyfriend. The funny thing is that he broke up with her. Yet, on at least two occasions, I have had late-night Facebook conversations (alcohol infused, I suspect) wherein the gentleman in question (married to someone else now) has asked lots of questions about my friend, asking if she's happy, etc. A decade later, and there's still some weird torch, "what could have been," and "if onlys" that obviously plague the guy. Ugh.

For me, if I were the "one that got away" its probably for someone I never dated, or even thought about as anything more than a friend. I was loyal as a retriever, and couldn't even think that anyone else was interested in me back then. Unfortunately, that resulted in getting yelled at by a boy I stopped by to see at his university when I was visiting some other friends. Holy cow, was he mad. Mad that I didn't know how he felt, mad that I didn't feel the same, and mad that being friends with him was interpreted as wrongly held hope. Wow. There might have been a little temporary crazy there. I could be that guy's "one that got away" but it would be more like "ran away screaming."

Not to say that somewhere in there, my teenage self doesn't sometimes think that it would serve an ex or two right if they found me on Facebook and realized that I was "the one that got away." (Ok, more likely their mothers would find me and think I was the one that got away. I was a pretty wholesome high schooler!)

Not that I care about any of them anymore (seriously, old memories, now devoid of emotion and, thank God, teenage drama.) The reality it that some of them are doing well,  (ok, one took a really, really long time to move out of his parents' house, and I suspect is still a little failure to launch.) I wouldn't, however, have wanted to end up with any of them. None of them were right for me, no matter how desperately I wanted that to be true at the time. It feels good to have my personal "right one," and not have to worry about the "one that got away."

I'm glad I don't have that kind of regret. And that fact may be better than being anyone's "one that got away." (nah, nah.)