today is a better day for many reasons, and yet a pensive day for two.
today is the birthday of a friend who used to be a lover and is soon to become a stranger. i have, for this last month, tried to tell myself that you just don’t throw away an eight year relationship. eight years. a friend for six, more for two, and now… it is as if i never really knew them. today is their birthday. this last month has been little more than guilt trips and passive-aggressive accusations by email. occasionally by phone. it’s true, you know… you never can go back. i sigh… and i realise… i didn’t buy them a birthday card. i won’t be calling. the email that is sure to arrive will not be answered.
it takes a lot to really put me off something that i have decided to dedicate time, care, and energy to… but it is not impossible. and in the face of little more than selfishness and anger, resentment and guilt-trips, and an unwillingness to care for more than their needs, their wants, their goals… i am, at last, done.
in other news, the relafen given to me by a friend is working. i can move today… and the ol’ pain-o-meter has graciously moved down from a nine to the usual three. the thought of sitting at my desk for the day is not dreaded. i hear celebrex is a marvel, but i’m not willing to risk the side-effects.
in still other news, another friend has a birthday this coming sunday. what plans could be made for gifting have been. but the slow spiral into what can only be distance continues, sadly. more and more often, doubts and inferences that are pointedly negative and insulting in the face of the effort and patience given and it becomes painful even to talk to them for their unwillingness to do more than judge and look for ulterior motives that never existed here.
most recently, this friend has received good news. we spoke briefly by phone, celebrating. we exchanged emails, celebrating. along the way, in related emails, we hit yet another of the above mentioned misunderstandings and, this time, once more, the insinuations. they told me it seemed bizarre that, every time something good happened to them, we did not celebrate it, but seemed to get into some manner of argument. they actually asked me whether or not i found ‘this reality’ strange.
i managed not to be angry. simply replied that no, i did not find it strange at all, but that was very likely because i remembered that we had celebrated by phone and via emails… it hurt, this blindness, but i slowly come to accept that it is as it is.
they told me that when they did contemplate more than friendship, it was memory of arguments that impeded. as if relationships must be free of all such things or as if to expect that manner of perfection was somehow realistic. it was something of a splash in the face.
i sit here, having endured more than a few cuts from this person, those wounds never once initiating a turn from care here, even as they sometimes created anger for the carelessness with which they were (and continue to be) given.
i never expected perfection from this person. and it is something of a surprise to at last see they seem very much to expect it of … well, no, actually, they do not expect it of me… but they expect it of life, and of this impossible image of ‘the one’ they hold. which, assuredly and now, affirmed, could not ever, possibly, be me.
in the face of it, there is little room for other than this increasing distance…. a distance that soon will be as real figuratively as it is literally. saddest of all, it is too late here… i’m already on the hook. i actually love them. it feels strange to have an entire love affair that has ever only existed in one’s own mind. but perhaps that is reality, after all.
sometimes it seems that insanity would be a relief. but i’ve never been that ‘lucky’. sometimes it seems that i’d be better off to give up on the notion of ever having even that much of normalcy in life. i’m much too stubborn and never certain if it is for the right reasons.
i suppose that is why they call it ‘striving’. how would it be striving if you’re not feeling the pull?