Little Match Girl

Is it too late? Have I spent the better part of my young life wasting it on him?
I'm now 31. I loved him for nearly 8 years and now he is engaged to someone. She gets to wear the ring, she gets to share his life, and I just feel stupid.

I met him years ago, at a party, he was with a girl whom I was repulsed by. He was not anything special, physically. A curiosity had me later ask my friend what someone like him was doing with that girl. My friend mentioned that he had a funny website, and so a month or so after, I visited it. A blog before the age of blogs.

He was chubby awkward boy who lived upstairs from his parents and slept in a twin bed. He ate Little Debbies nightly and had a weird line on his chest from being bent over his keyboard all the time. He drove a Subaru and shopped at Structure, at Staten Island Mall.

I was the worldly girl from Michigan with more style and substance than anyone he'd ever known.

He once told his sister he would never again date anyone as beautiful as me. His confidence--I always told him he would be someone, even when he was working for others. For a long time he didn't believe me. So many nights, conversations at dinner, laughing with him, encouraging him, boosting his ego.

I was there at the hospital when his father died. I was there for him when his sister tried to kill herself. I was there through the hard stuff, when his father flipped the coffee table over in Florida, because we wouldn't take him to the track. He'd gambled the family's money away already. I was there when he was distracted by his family's nightly fights.

One night I waited for them all to come from somewhere, alone, on their porch, in the dark. As their car pulled up the drive, I thought to myself, they must just see me as some wayward Jewish waif. And now, years later, I realize that perhaps that is all he ever saw me as: the poor little match girl, happy to collect whatever scraps he drops, which must be why he must have thought it was okay to let me clean up after their meals and carry the fucking pizza boxes.

I feel like because it's been so long I cannot stop loving him, wanting him.

How do I make it go away?