Even the One Who Leaves

Jordan and I went to the T&T grand opening in San Jose today. There were still people lining up even in the last hour before closing — I guess Asian people really do love a line, and T&T's supposedly one of the best Asian marts around here, so I'm glad we ended up being part of it, part of the opening day. While we were waiting, a Chinese song came on — 後來 — and immediately I was just like, damn, this feels like me mourning Bryce again. About how some people in your life are just never meant to stay once you've been too immature, once you learned how to love too late and missed them in the grand destiny of it all.

And from there I started thinking about whether this is actually more generalizable — to me, and to people like me. I've always thought of it as the experience of being the one broken up with. But watching Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon breaks up with Amy and then feels so empty he adopts twenty-five cats, and Penny being the ESFP of course on and off with ISFJ Leonard — I realized the person doing the breaking up can feel this way too. The wondering of how it all could have gone, of how if you missed your chance with someone who meant a lot to you, you'd miss it forever.

I met Jordan four months after I finished things with Bryce, after I'd already cleaned up my dating and my whole relationship with myself. Bryce was crying when he let me go over the phone. He's someone who lets things go and moves on quickly — that's just his personality — but that moment stayed with me. He clearly cared, he clearly knew what it meant, but it had to be done and we both knew it. He told me himself he doesn't just date anyone, and part of him clearly thought I was special, a real possibility. I was just too much of a mess to actually be one back then. But I lived and I learned. I was kind of faking it til I made it, the way I always have, because it's the only way I've ever known how — faking confidence when I was a nervous wreck, faking stability when the foundation was shaky, faking English as my native language when Mandarin was my first, striving toward someone I knew I could be but simply wasn't yet. That's just how the story goes, isn't it. You cross out of your comfort zone, you learn, you fail, you get a little better. I learned a lot in that brief relationship with Bryce that I'll always keep close.

Part of it is the wisdom that we don't actually get to decide whether someone's grown up or decided to move on. Jessie says it so well in the mid-arc of Toy Story 5 — which we also saw today — when she makes peace with the fact that kids grow up and their connections get transformed. I was bawling. It was so beautiful. I thought of Bryce, and of what it means to actually love someone: when the time comes, you let them go, gracefully, so they can find what's best for them. And you find your own meaning in the time you had, in what it changed in you, and in the moving on.

Then I looked at Jordan tonight — the only white guy in a thousand-plus person line, holding my hand, making small talk as we slowly inched toward the front — and I just felt safe and calm and light, like I didn't have to prove anything. I told him about the song, and I asked him if he'd ever been in a love that was fleeting but wonderful, the kind where you'd have wondered what it could've been, where if you missed it you'd never find it again. And without a beat he said he's already found it, and he's not letting go. I was at a loss for words. I kissed him, sweetly, genuinely glad that he thinks so, all while searching myself for how I actually feel about it, whether it's true — and then I realized I don't really need to second-guess anymore. Or at least, I shouldn't be second-guessing, bracing for the worst, when every sign points the other way.

So I let the night go on. Earlier we'd seen on a reel that people were grabbing these giant Japanese ramen cone boxes, so we went looking for them inside, and a kind young woman who worked there took a liking to us and offered to check the back — and she actually went and looked. I joked to Jordan that she only went in because we're a likeable interracial gay couple, so of course she had to check for us. She came back empty-handed, though she warned us it was a promotional item that had sold out early in the day, lol. Jordan still got a bunch of the soft steamed pork buns he likes, and I grabbed a pile of cheap dumplings and other food.

We got some sweet deals too — golden kiwis for seven bucks that are fourteen at Costco, things two or three times pricier anywhere else. A good night, in an ordinary shape.