Duck Duck Goose

We've all been there whether we want to admit it or not. We've been chosen as the goose and have had no choice but to get up and chase the tagger around. We may not have been interested in Tagger, may have even closed our eyes and silently begged Tagger not to choose us but if you get tagged, you have to chase.

That's how you play the game.

At one time or another we have all been tagged. Tagged by the one that is charming and cute in such a way it makes you nervous but excited at the same time. But also the one that you try to picture hanging out with your friends, attending your family functions knowing in your gut, in your heart of hearts, something doesn't quite fit because Tagger is going to be the one that you know deep down will never be the person you fully intend him to be. You may have thought that he showed some promising characteristics at the beginning but in the end he confirmed that he is unchangeable and will forever be a non-committal, probably cheating, frustrating, cute as hell tagger.

My tagger was someone who I was never attracted to in the beginning. I'm not blind so I knew he was good-looking but his arrogant attitude was enough to annoy me to the point of steering clear whenever he was around. I was able to bypass him for quite a long time before the unexpected, inexplicable night came when I thought maybe, just maybe, Tagger had something beneath the surface that hadn't yet been discovered. Here let me interject and say, it is never a good idea to compare a guy to one of the Seven Wonders of the World. They don't need to be discovered. There's nothing so deep below the surface that you have to dig for years to find the hidden secret to a revealing past. If you haven't found it by now, it's probably not there. It still doesn't stop you from searching though, through the arrogance, through his selfishness which was only his way of protecting an earlier hurt which you had no part of but since it is female nature to want to nurture those who are hurt, I thought that if I gave it a try, was patient and understanding enough that the wall he had worked so hard at building up would come crumbling down and everyone would see the kindhearted person who hid underneath. This did not happen.

Shocker.

It's not that Tagger was intentionally hurtful but, his thoughtfulness was only revealed on his own terms, on his own time and I'm not one for these kind of conditional situations. Yet, I kept trying and waiting, going back and forth, even giving up the chase always having the game lead me back to him. But just like any blinded attraction, I finally saw the truth, accepted it when the explanations failed to convince me that being involved was sadly not worth it. The end comes when the game stops being fun. The one thing that may have turned it around would be his acceptance of his damaged ways, which he finally admitted to but also his intention to fix them, which he didn't wholeheartedly agree to. He said he wanted to try and change but it wasn't enough. I was done with the chase. Game over.

If I sound like a fool, then maybe I was. But you can be the most level-headed, confident person and if tagged, you can turn into someone who feels like you have failed in some way because far beyond any romantic feelings you may ever have felt, it becomes more of a need to fix something that you didn't even break. You will feel like you didn't care enough, didn't wait it out, didn't have enough faith eventually realizing that it is them, not you. You'll realize it's their responsibility to stop using their past hurt as an excuse for their present behavior because we have all had our heart broken in some way, maybe mulitiple times and if we all chose to dwell on that alone, lamented about being misunderstood to everyone that crossed our path, then we would be on a way to a very lonely and miserable existence.

What can I say? I was the goose. Sitting there wasn't an option. We long for the excitement, the thrill of the chase. Otherwise, we'd take ourselves out of the circle and then what fun would that be?

Because really, who wants to miss out on the game?