Mutually exclusive (adj.) : related in such a way that each thing makes the other thing impossible : not able to be true at the same time or to exist together
This term is usually used in math to describe a scenario in which two possibilities cannot exist simultaneously. For example, you cannot roll a three and a five on the same die. It’s always one or the other, never both. I tutored business calculus for three years in college - I was very much accustomed to teaching this lesson. Mathematically, it was pretty much straight forward but what I didn’t know was that this lesson would carry over into my life… my life with you.
You and I were two separate die, constantly being rolled until one day we landed on the same number. It was an innocent and harmless incident - we weren’t fully aware that this roll, this encounter, would lead to something great… and then something heartbreaking. The beginning was easy. We would roll on the same similarities. Then we roll on our differences. And through it all, we began to exist together. Our lives began to roll in sync - soon we could predict every roll, every single time.
But the thing with playing dice is that even our best predictions can’t prepare for the unknown, the unforeseen curveballs that come with gambling. In this case, we were gambling our love. As time went on, our lives began to go down very different paths. We stopped rolling in sync and lost the rhythm of the game. We always said that although we were from different worlds, we’d always find our way back to each other - but the truth is, you and I realized we existed in the same world - the same die - just on different sides.
Our two dice became one. Our lives became mutually exclusive, you and I became mutually exclusive. That was the heartbreak, and it took us a while to truly accept it. You and I wanted to believe that we could stay in sync, that losing our rhythm was a part of being in love. We failed to realize the ratio of rolling the same number to rolling two different numbers was catastrophic. We put those moments, when our lives were in sync, on pedestals - we romanticized our relationship so much that it blinded our judgment. We became addicted to the game, to the idea of being in love with each other. It took a monumental event to shatter the rose colored glasses we put on our relationship to see what had become of us. And in our last simultaneous roll, we knew that we would never roll on the same number again for, you cannot roll a three and a five on the same die.
