Resurrection of Eve

She met him during her senior year in drama club. Roger was a recent graduate of theater arts from UCLA. He'd been asked to help them put on a production of ‘The Mikado’. I remember her going around singing: “You are the reason I've been waiting all these years” She was a fine soprano but a future Hollywood starlet ..probably not. She wouldn't stop talking about him like he was some kinda' golden boy and I could tell she was way beyond being just into him. He lived in the in-law quarters of a Malibu estate where he worked as a caretaker. She joined him after graduation and they spend what she describes as the most blissful summer of her life together. In September he left to take a position with a theater company in New York. Devastation ensued. At college, she was like a zombie. I don't know why she couldn't go with him but I figured maybe she didn't feel like it was her destiny or something (!?) I suppose I really didn't give it much thought. I ran into her in town a little while ago. There still seemed to be a lingering fog but I could sense some clearing. Then there was a breakthrough. It went something like this:

 

“I couldn’t get beyond the idea that I’d been abandoned by Roger.”
“In my mind I was like the victim because I wasn’t able to get him to stay.”
“I seriously believed I was the best I could be with him - I was nothing without him.”
“When he left, I felt like a failure ..like I wasn’t good enough ..he wanted someone better.”
“I realize now that he wanted to better himself.”
“Now I’m like, what the fuck …who’s to say I didn’t abandoned him?”
“I got a lot of things wrong back then.”

 

So did I, I told her ..I still don’t get it right.