“No,” I corrected her. “You were hoping I’d become someone different. Someone with goals, a plan, someone who would be compatible with your high octane lifestyle.”
She looked down guiltily, because she knew that I was right. She wanted the best of both worlds. She wanted to keep me, and at the same time, she wanted me to be totally different from who I actually was.
“I never asked you to change,” I reminded her.
She nodded. “I know that.”
“Don’t ask this of me, not again. I’m fine breaking up if that needs to be done, but I don’t want to do that. This isn’t what I wanted. So please stop pushing me to try and change, because I’m scared I won’t say no to you. And if I don’t say no to you, I’m going to give up on my dreams for you. I’m going to become someone I’m not.”
And, really, it wasn’t as if my dreams were that unrealistic. I wasn’t one of those naïve twenty-three-year-olds who believed I was going to make it somehow. I didn’t expect to rise to celebrity status or be discovered. I didn’t want fame. I didn’t want to be rich.
I only wanted to make a living with my music. With street performances, making beats for other aspiring musicians, doing live performances, just my guitar and me. I was even open to doing lessons for children in the future, to both teach them what I knew and have a steady stream of income.
So it wasn’t as though I wanted everything to fall into my lap. I just wanted music to be a part of my career. Really, I wanted music to be a part of my entire existence. I wanted to live and breathe music.
No, that would never make me a rich woman, which I fully acknowledged. But I didn’t need to be rich to be happy. I just needed to be a person who could pay her bills. A person who was free to live her life without the constraints of a job that she hated. My end goal was not to make a ton of money, and I was really, truly
fine with that.
But Julia never would be. She liked high-end, especially now that she was making a ton of money. She wouldn’t ever be happy with a partner who made a meager living giving guitar lessons to kids.
“I just don’t know what comes next, Kaitlyn,” she said to me softly.
“Next comes both of us moving on with our lives. You finding a person who fits your lifestyle, me finding someone who fits mine. Before that will likely be a lot of heartache, but eventually we’ll both find redemption in someone new.”
She nodded but didn’t say a word. Like me, she knew it to be true, but she didn’t want to allow herself to believe it. She didn’t want to truly believe it was over, because that meant the pain would begin. I felt similarly.
“Why Rosebridge?” she asked, seemingly only because she wasn’t ready for me to leave.
Although I was being offered a temporary free room in Rosebridge, that didn’t make my reason for choosing the location immediately obvious. Julia knew that I had plenty of friends from all around the country who I’d met while traveling. And, not to toot my own horn, but I’d always been quite charismatic. I would have no problem finding a room with plenty of other people.
But I had chosen Rosebridge for a reason.
“I really liked it when I visited her. It had a nice vibe, as most college towns do. It seemed very liberal, and my friend said that there were quite a few popular street performance groups. And that’s where I need to go, somewhere people might be willing to throw a couple bucks at me to hear me play some amazing music. I need to go where I could potentially make a living.”
Although where we currently lived was a college town as well, it didn’t have much of an arts community. It was where you went for a business degree or law school. I couldn’t even think of a place where street performance might be appreciated. It just wasn’t that kind of city.
“Right, of course, because you couldn’t make money doing anything else…” she said bitterly.
Now I was starting to get annoyed. “What did I just say? Don’t do this, don’t guilt me for being me. I’m not the one who changed, you are. I’ve been the same person as I was the day you met me. I’m the same girl you fell in love with. So don’t push me to be another person.”
“And am I not the woman you fell in love with?” she asked.
I didn’t know how she could ask it. I didn’t know how she couldn’t already know my answer. And I probably should have refrained from the answering the question, but I couldn’t.
“No,” I said softly.
Her jaw dropped. “But you said…”
“That I still love you,” I finished for her, “and I do. Because I continued to love you after you changed, but… you really did change. You’re the one who messed this relationship up, not me.”
It was quite the accusation, but it was true. I had refrained from saying it, because I hadn’t been looking to hurt her, but she didn’t seem to care about my pain. And, maybe, as I was walking out the door was the best time to express how I really felt.
“It’s really over, then?” she asked. “You truly don’t want what I do at all? Not even a little bit?”
I looked at her skeptically. “Did you really think there was a chance that wasn’t true? You really think I’d be moving out and on with my life if there was any way I could see myself fitting into your vision of the future?”
“I just don’t see what doesn’t appeal about it to you! What’s wrong with steady jobs? What’s wrong with steady income?”