The Truth About Goodbyes by Keith Kareem Williams

The Truth About Goodbyes

By Keith Kareem Williams

This is probably the first time I’ve sat down to write about this. After so many years on this earth and the questions I’ve been asked lately, I suppose that now is as good a time as any to explain something that I’ve avoided explaining.

I’ve never feared a woman telling me that she loved me. I’m not a man who measures love by gifts. Sometimes I think that gift-giving often serves as a smokescreen to mask true intentions, not always necessarily malicious intentions but, they do often precede little white lies. In fact, I’m not a big fan of receiving them at all. Depending on how much thought is put into them, I don’t mind them IF we’re in a relationship. I understand a person’s need to show that they were thinking of you. I’ve never become nervous by the intensity of a woman’s passion, from soft love-making to intense fucking. I think I’ve done it all and experienced the entire spectrum.

What I have always been afraid of is a woman that loves me way more intensely than I love her. I’ve never. That never ends well, for either of us. Maybe I’ve gone about it the wrong way but, I’ve tried to protect women that I’ve cared deeply for, in my own way. Recently, someone from my past asked me a question that really made me sit down and think about this. You know it’s serious when I have to sit down and write about it. She pressured me to explain the nature of my goodbye and I couldn’t find the right words to explain why I had walked away the way I did. Eh, I always do better when I write things down. I promised her that I would and although she wasn’t pleased, she agreed to read my reasons instead. (At least she understood that sometimes my thoughts get muddled and confused somewhere in-between my voice and my head.) Once upon a time, I walked away from her without a fight, fuss, or an explanation. It’s been bothering her since then. I was just afraid to hurt her because the way she started to feel for me, at the pace she started to feel it, I wasn’t going to be able to keep up. She loved me so much that it would only be a matter of time before she saw in my eyes that it wasn’t the same. Not that it was NEVER going to happen but it would take me more time. Most people aren’t that patient. So I left it alone so that she could find someone that would love her back in the same way, right away. I’m not sure if she found that. I hope that she does.

Sometimes, not a smile, what she says to you, what she buys for you, not her kiss and not even sex tells you how a woman feels about you. All those things can be faked because most of us have had a lot of practice. Sometimes, all the truth is in the way she rests her head on your shoulder. I guess I’m strange because it’s the subtle things that most people ignore that I cherish more. How else am I going to see the truth clearly?