Fat Chance at the Heartache Motel

FAT CHANCE at the HEARTACHE MOTEL

January 1st- some year, sometime, somewhere.

A door opens, Gin gets sucked through and finds herself in a world she’d not looked forward to finding.

She’s always known that this world was possible and had dreaded it with much horror.

The horror played out on the day Gin broke up with Harry.

It was a strange day, mostly as the break up was more or less a complete figment of Gin’s imagination. 

Well, truth be told, the entire relationship had been a figment of her imagination.

She'd built a very complex world, complete with wonderful scenarios that outlined a marvelous relationship with Harry.

She did a fine job of following the script.

She'd did her best to write Harry’s part as accurately as possible.

He lacked compliance.

Harry was a rather strange duck and refused to play out his part.

Obstinately. 

Gin’s wonderful script, perfect direction and prompts, failed to take root and Harry remained just out of her reach.

It was frustrating, being the Master Craftswomen she knew herself to be.

Harry’s lack of cooperation and pigheaded refusal to play his part properly, caused Gin some loss of sleep. Not to mention a slight weight gain from the consumption of more caramel chews than were good for her figure.

Ginny did her best to stop loving Harry. 

She knew from years of experience that falling out of love with someone was not an easy task. It certainly seemed to take a lot of energy and was more painful than many of the medical surgeries she’d experienced in her life.

In fact, she knew that if there were an operation that would cleanly, surgically remove the infection, she’d gladly endure the process. 

Sadly, life seemed to require that she simply endure the torture until that magic day when she would realize that the object of her adoration no longer occupied her every waking moment, and most of her dreams.

Harry was a bit of an enigma. 

Ginny hadn’t been immediately attracted to him and certainly had no idea that she would come to love him with an intensity that rivaled and then surpassed any of the loves of her life, mostly unrequited.

In fact, her thoughts when she first noticed him were “What an odd duck”.

It was in a rather strange way that she began to notice him and if attraction didn’t quite explain what happened for her, it came closest to describing the experience.

She’d first noticed him when he lived across the street from her. Though her initial observations were that his physical looks did not appeal to her, she knew that there was something about him that caught her attention.

He walked with a gait that was familiar and there were strange memories that came to her mind as she watched him. They seemed to roll across a landscape that took her to places from long ago. 

Some essence that spoke of this person’s inner being surrounded him with an aura of familiarity. A familiarity which spoke volumes to Gin and set her on the alert.

Something inside her knew that this ‘strange duck’ was beginning to cast an irresistible spell and as it wove it threads around her heart his strangeness became the lure that caught her attention

Ginny’s love life over the previous 70 years, had been a fabric woven from a number of experiences, most profoundly with her grandfather and grandmother, her mother and father, siblings and various family and friends.

Her early attachments had formed and shaped her future relationships.

Relationships which would prove to be catalysts cementing default patterns persisting well into her adult life.

She was stricken to find that unrequited love was well played out in human psychodrama. In fact, a drama indulged in by 97% of human beings.

The many tales of unrequited love cluttered the music market, theater, literature and every aspect of human interaction one could imagine. 

Popular songs and movies bombarded Ginny from the time she was very young.

At 10 with little understanding of what she was really hearing, she’d sway along to songs like Jody Reynolds ‘Endless Sleep’, her heartbroken sympathy with the girl who walked into the sea after a lover’s quarrel.

It seemed that most songs and many movies told a story about the angst of unrequited love.

Ginny cried the day she looked up the actual meaning of the words. 

“Unrequited love - one sided love, love not openly returned or accepted by the adored. Indeed the adored is often unaware of the admirer’s deep and strong romantic attachment. In the worst case scenario, the love is consciously rejected.”

It seemed to be the story of her life and with Harry, she found herself yet again pining for a love that seemed more distant than the first object of her fondest desire when she was only three years old.

That had not been a very fruitful yearning, in fact the tragic nature of the love struck deeply at her core.

At three she knew that her experience with the one she’d adored was not right. And though she never disclosed to an adult until she was well into her 30’s, she’d always known that what had happened to her was an act of sexual assault and not love.

She might have survived this devastating trauma had the circumstances in her life been a little different. 

Had her role models in life worked a little harder to ensure her self-confidence and sense of self-esteem, she might have staved off the insidious voice that whispered in her ear, telling her that she was somehow defective and badly in need of becoming other than the person she was.

She’d grown into womanhood never really understanding what she wanted from life, what she was entitled to and what she had a right to expect. In fact, the exact opposite became the standard by which she measured her life choices.

The sorrier the choice, the more destructive the potential, the more abusive the character she was able to find, well, that became her choice and the fondest object of her desire.

She always believed intensely, that she had the capacity to reform the object of her desire. 

No one seemed able to convince her that she was making a huge mistake in her choice, and sadly, the more opposition she encountered, the stronger her resistance to common sense became.

She had firmly believed that things were different with Harry.

He was a 'good' guy who just needed a little nudging.

There finally came the day when she was able to let Harry go. 

It was in the late fall and as winter edged its way into her world, thoughts of Harry became less frequent.

She’d been playing Dido's - “White Flag” endlessly. 

Each line, each word pierced her heart. She wept as Dido sang - “I will go down with this ship - I won’t put my hands up and surrender. There will be no white flag above my door. I’m in love and always will be.”

All had seemed hopeless as she looked out into that void of endless enslavement.

A void that did not include Harry.

His neglect was that of a bad gardener.

His failure to step up to the plate and return the love she so generously lavished upon him finally took its toll. 

Like a plant left unwatered and neglected, the love she felt for Harry began to wither and dry up.

New dimensions began to form and the intensity of old feeling began to dissipate.

The cure came gradually and at the same time was like the final curtain, crashing to the stage floor, all the players looking about in stunned silence.

Somehow, for Gin it simply ended.

One morning she woke up, and realized that days had gone by without thinking about him. 

She knew she had been released from her obsession.

Again Dido’s words echoed in her mind…”and when we meet, which I’m sure we will, all that was there will be there still. I’ll let it pass and hold my tongue. And you will think I’ve moved on.”

Gin knew her experience was not to be played out this way.

She knew she would never again settle for this empty shadow of an experience she had sought her entire life.

Dido might not throw up her hands and surrender, but not so our Gin.

Was she willing to go down with the ship? Was she willing to sit quietly praying for Harry to come to his senses and realize what he was losing?

Was she willing to give up her life to continue the quest for unrequited love?

It may have been a difficult year, but for Ginny the light of fresh experiences shone bright. As the clock struck midnight, she knew the answer to her questions…FAT CHANCE!