The Road Not Taken

It was my intention to never write about Uberman again. However, Lara's post about accidental run-ins made me think of him.

As if we needed yet another reminder of how small this world is-- Uberman used to have a particular best friend and they were inseparable. However, they had a falling-out for complex reasons, and no longer speak to each other. Strangely enough, this Best Friend is training in my field, in my program, a year ahead of me.

Seeing the Best Friend every now and again at the hospital is a complicated experience for me. He has similarites to Uberman so I can see why they gravitated towards one another. And Uberman had told me so many stories about him-- I have a sense of their history, of what was and what no longer is. When I see the Best Friend, I think about all this-- the past which seemed so magical the way Uberman had described it, until it all went bad of course. The bottom line is, everytime I see him, it reminds me of Uberman, and I hate that.

Last week we were killing time in the hospital and I showed Best Friend an old text message on my phone from Uberman. "Why did you save it?" he asked. I babbled something about how I never use the textmessaging option on my phone so I don't get very many. The few that I got were from Uberman or my dad, and I never bothered to erase them. I'm sure it all sounded ridiculous and perhaps there really was a more meaningful reason for saving it.

The text message was sent in June, and ran along the lines of: "Dear Little One, I care about you and love you, and hope to marry you one day. This will make you happy-- I'll be in charge of breakfast. :-)" (He knew how much I hated to cook). I told you that he was delusional-- falling in love without us even having had a real relationship, without even knowing each other very long.

Best Friend read it slowly, his eyes lingering over the words. "He really cared about you," he said with amazement. He continued to explain-- Uberman had never felt this way towards anyone else before, and Best Friend had known a lot of the girls Uberman had been through.

Sometimes in life you have to make a choice, I said. I too had felt that I had met, in Uberman, someone who could have really been The Perfect One For Me. But I also had a fiance whom I loved and would never want to hurt: a long-term relationship I did not want to destroy. And when the two found out about each other-- well, Uberman (in his often delusional state of mind), was all prepared for me to leave the fiance for him, and the fiance was so pissed off he was ready to let me go. I could literally have gone in either direction, and it was surprisingly and shamefully one of the most difficult decisions of my life. But I made my decision and I've stuck to it.

"Decisions aren't written in stone," said Uberman's former Best Friend, suggesting that perhaps, this story wasn't over yet.

But I am sure it is.