This is not a poem. This…… Is A Fumbler’s Confession.

One of the many things I've heard people say when they fumble a good one is "Maybe they just aren't for me, mine will come." And for the longest time, I've lived with those words, until I met Jide, and then, I lost Jide. At first, I lied to people months after our breakup and said, "well, he ain't the only good man, my own will come." I know right? If the people who get fumbled can say that, why can't the fumblers say same? But like they say, you can lie to everyone else but you can never lie to yourself. Do we really get another shot after we've fumbled the one true love? I have a theory that we only get one shot at a "one true love," and the miracle of getting another shot might only come after true self-redemption, or........it just may not come. Nobody is perfect, but Jide was the perfect man for me, or maybe could have been. How do I explain that a man could see through me, and still love me, let me be me, give me my space when I want it, stay loyal to me even when I wasn't loyal to him, love me deeply and never made me feel like I was such a terrible lover, even when in fact I was. I was young, but Jide was young too, yet he carried the love for us both, and me? What did I do? I shared my own part of the love amongst other people and neglected him because I thought I would always have him, or I could always have another him. But it's been 10 whole years, and another Jide hasn't come. No one gets me like Jide did, no one makes me laugh like Jide did, no one has cared for and loved me as deeply as Jide did. One of my carefree nights, I had called him, extremely drunk at the club, my female friends had left me all alone with my date, only for my date to abandon me to go chill with his friends. Of course, Jide had no idea that I had gone out with another man, he had no idea that I had even gone to the club that night, but just about 30 minutes after I got off the call with him, I saw his car drive in, while I was outside the club, drunk and all alone. I wonder if he ever found out how disloyal I was, and I wonder if I hadn't called things off 10 years ago, changed my phone number, blocked him everywhere and moved to a different city, would we still be together? I wonder if I hadn't called him boring hours before leaving his house and sending him a breakup text, would he still be here? So even now, when I see people share the story about how they fumbled a good one, and end it with "maybe she just isn't mine." I shake my head, remembering how I said the same thing and meant every word of it. The truth is, we've failed to see the reality that certain people are irreplaceable. That you can't fumble something rare and simply wait for the universe to hand you another one exactly like it. Because it doesn't work that way. Rare things don't come in multiples. And the hardest part isn't even losing them. It's the quiet life you live afterwards, where everything reminds you of what you had, and nothing quite measures up to it. It's seeing a man hold a door open for his woman and thinking of the way Jide used to do it without being asked. It's laughing at something and turning to tell someone who is no longer there. It's the decade of measuring every new person against a version of love you threw away with both hands. We've failed to see the reality that certain people are irreplaceable and that we can't fumble the good and expect things to go perfectly for us. Yes, life is not a movie, but like I said earlier "You can lie to everyone else, but you can't lie to yourself." So, I ask again, "Are They Really Not For Us, Or Did We Lose A Good One?"