I can ‘t

My entire life everyone has told me that I can’t. You can’t make it in the music business. You can’t take a four year break and expect to still come out on top. You’re a musician you can’t act. You’re a musician and an actor you can’t design clothes. You’re a musician, an actor, and a clothing designer, what do you know about running a tequila business?

The entire world has been telling me I can’t since I was twelve years old and I’ve been forced to prove that, well yes actually I can. And when you have that many people telling you no and expecting you to fail you don’t have the luxury of saying I can’t, or even thinking it really.  Those words don’t exist to me. I guess that’s why when she said them with me kneeling in front of her, the rose petals staining the knees of my slacks that I didn’t quite grasp what she was saying.

“What do you mean ‘you can’t?’”

“I’m… I’m sorry Justin. I just… I can’t.”

Even when she started to turn away I didn’t move, still holding up the ring box like a goddamn idiot, still trying to wrap my head around those two little words. She left and didn’t come back so I left too, went home, sat in my mother’s kitchen with the ring box between us on the table. “It’s beautiful,” my mother said even though the box was closed. She helped me pick it out so I know I didn’t get that part wrong. 

It’s been two weeks and she hasn’t called. I don’t know if she’s giving me space or if this is one of those things we’re not going to come back from. The thought literally makes me nauseous. We’d hit a rough patch a couple of months ago. She gave me an ultimatum and I walked. I don’t know if she knew I’d come running back but that’s what I did. I thought this was what she was after. I thought that after four years together, ups and downs, birthdays, Christmases, family vacations that this was the next step.

And I was finally ready to take it. Because as much as it scares me to think of forever; of babies and love eternal and promising before God and family not to fuck this up it was never in my mind that I couldn’t do those things. I just had to be ready.

I carry that stupid ring with me everywhere. The one that everyone thinks should be there on her finger in the red carpet photos, the one that will never reside there because she called me last night to say that it’s over. That she loves me but she can’t see herself spending the rest of her life with me and I can’t understand it.

I can’t see how she could spend four years with me, weather the ups and downs, celebrate the birthdays and Christmases and go on all those family vacations if she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with me. I can’t understand why she took me back, made me believe that we’d just hit a rough snag only to rip it all out from under me a few months later. I can’t believe I spent that much money on a ring that’s going to sit in this box in my pocket for god knows how long.

But really what it comes down to is that I can’t fathom my life without her in it.

I just can’t.