19 July 2007 - The end of the affair (part 1)

Things were looking up for T6.
Looked like he would get his lecturing position, the school was really impressed with him.
Being in advertising was never his long term goal.
He didn’t want to live out his life as an adman.
His passion was to teach and groom future marketers and strategists – like he groomed me.

I was going places, building my career that he’d never had the opportunity to build.
I believed he lived vivaciously through me.

I always told him, he should’ve left the agency when headhunters came a-calling with promises of iconic accounts and fat paychecks.
But he believed in loyalty and obligation to the ones who gave him his breaks.
Highly emotional and idealistic, which was rather annoying.

He was adamant to rough it out with the struggling agency to the best of his abilities.
It was a relief when situation at the agency also seemed to be improving in the 2nd half of the year.
It was time to follow up on a promise.
A promise he made to me in 2005.
A promise he never intended to keep.

In April 2005, I made up my mind to leave him.
He begged me for a year to sort out his issues.
I relented, I was weak then…..

A year passed and everything was the same.
Nothing changed, nothing moved.
I contemplated reminding him of his promise but I couldn’t do it.
The agency was in a bad shape.
He was in a bad shape.
I was his only source of strength, the only bright spark in his life, he said
I told myself that he needed me so I stayed on to cheer him on.

Another year went by.
Every time it approached my birthday, I’d be reminded of his promise and that another year had just passed by.
Another year of hope lost.
Another year of youth lost.

Things seemed to be looking up so I had lesser reservation about broaching the topic now.
Even in leaving him, I placed his priorities before mine.
How silly, some would say but I did not regret.
When I give, I give my all.
That was the problem with me, I gave without reservation, without demand for anything in exchange, without complaints…..

The straw finally broke the camel’s back when I fell extremely ill earlier part of this month.
I had high temperature for 3 days running, I thought I was going to die.
As usual, he could not be at my side which was extremely upsetting.
This was when I finally steel my heart.
I was always there for him but he was never there for me.
I could not go on like this.

He didn’t take it well, not that it was unexpected.
But it seemed that he saw it coming.
He knew he’d been avoiding the issue, half hoping that I would get sudden amnesia and forget about it.
Well, for the record, women don’t forget about such things.

Today, I ended my 7-year affair.