Beach Walk

I attempt to record a conversation. Mentally anyway. Having dreams about Ocean Beach. Because the other day he said, “let’s take a walk on the beach.” Everyone goes to Ocean Beach except for me. I don’t because I don’t think of such place is called beach. Permanently windy, permanently cold and permanently dreary. Once, I remember, vaguely, a boy I once liked took me there. He tried to kiss me in his car, and I kissed him back. We had sushi that day. It was nice. I always thought that why would he want to be with me? He liked heavy set / robust white woman. I am neither. We then drifted. No hard feelings, just that we no longer saw each other, and nothing would be the same, except that I would occasionally try to remember that day, at Ocean Beach, something happened. And then nothing. Nothing at all.

“Hi.”
“Hi, is this xx?”
He asks the obvious question.
I answer.
“No.”
“I know it’s you. You have that cute voice. Hi Cutie Pie.”
How did I go from a name to Cutie Pie? When did I become a pie? I’m a person with a name.

“So are we doing this all not?”
I try to arrange for a trip.
He says, “How about 8 in the evening?”
“That’s too late. We had said 10 AM.”
“But now you are staying the night. That’s a lot of time.”
“I sleep when I spend the night. I don’t spend time with you. That does not count.”
He proceeds to tell me the work he has to do over the course of the weekend. He’s going to a BBQ and he won’t be able to work one day, so the day where we were going to spend sometime, are now used for working.
“8 PM is too late. I want to go and do something active, like hiking, walking, running.”
“I have work to do.”
“Fine. How about just forget it? I won’t come up at all.”
Silence.
Negotiation is done forcefully.
“Okay. Come at 5. We will go to Ocean Beach, walk, watch the sun set and then eat in Richmond, Chinese food.”
“Fine. Ocean Beach, then eat at Richmond. I’ll be by.”

I then realize that I am doing the things I have tried to avoid. A romantic walk on the beach and then watching the sunset, hand in hand. I have restarted the trend like million years ago. Activities, then food in Richmond. That was always how I ended a weekend. A meal in Richmond, some restaurant that served Asian food. After a long day out. It was a routine I was familiar with and it was a routine I had made all the boys follow. And soon they did, on auto pilot.

Then one day it stopped. I stopped all my activities and I stopped going to Richmond for food. Chinese food, sushi, Thai, and anything else in between. It had been fifteen years.

Now it appears that it is starting again.
How did I get here?
How could I rewind?

Is this how it feels like when one's heart has been broken and life has been reset for her?