Month: June 2012

 

A week later, supporting a friend and dwelling too much

I found myself sobbing last night in bed.  Six days after I cut Angie loose, the weight of the moment still hangs heavy on me and my doubts and fears still hold more swy than I’d like to admit.

It was sort of brought along by Bill.  God love him, he’s in the first real relationship that I have ever known him to be in. He’s dated at times over the years, but those usually went nowhere.  He’s pined for women he has worked with and pegged hopes and dreams on women that he associated with, but he wasn’t in a relationship with any of them…  And he fell flat when his hopes, dreams, wishes, and aspirations were defenestrated by said-womens own actions, choices and words.

This time around, Bill went out on a blind date at the urging of his friend Jesse and his wife, Elizabeth (whose friend was the blidn date).  And instead of pinning, instead of wishing, instead of empty dreaming, he’s got her now.  Hook, line and sinker.  They’ve been seeing each other for a month and …  Well, Bill is filled with doubts still with thanks to his past.

I’ve known bill since 1999, he’s cautious…  And he does not afford himself the chance to just let himself go.  He tempers things, and he expects the other shoe to fall.  He’s negative because of past experiences.  So, with Kelly in love with him – he’s uncomfortable.  He’s also not telling everything he’s feeling to me, which is fine and good…  But we got into talking about Kelly and how things are going last night…  And I found him veering off suddenly, talking about a co-worker who he had been crazy about.

Why?  Because he had a bigger build up with her.  He hoped.  He dreamed.  He worked for it.  “I still don’t know what happened there,” he said to me last night.  A few days earlier, he mentioned that he felt more with this non-relationship than what is going on now with Kelly.

What Bill felt was the thrill of the chase and pinned on the promise if things worked out.  In his situation with Kelly, as I already said, he’s got her.  There is no need to chase.

And that’s fucking with him something fierce.  Not that he’s going to screw things up with Kelly because of it.  But it’s feastering in his head.

He actually read Kelly as taking pity on him at one point.  At another, he thought she was faking.  And, in general, he can’t understand why she’s in love with him.  Isn’t that always the case when we fall  into a relationship or find ourselves loved in an emotional sense?  We don’t understand why the other side would invest themselves in us.

That reminded me of things with Angie, a lot.  It was a mutual self-doubt, though.  She expressed it directly, I expressed it indirectly and in confidence with other people.  But that was almost 2 years ago now.

Back to Bill, that tangent about Jamie (the co-worker he was interested In, in the past) made me go off on a rant a bit regarding her and other girls he had thought he finally clicked with.  There are names of other girls included with this…  Other women he hoped it’d work out with:

Bill:         I still don’t know what happened with Jamie.  I drove by the old office Saturday with kelly.  All I could think about was how many times I drove through there with Jamie.

John:     Same thing that went wrong with Meisha is what went wrong with Jamie – nothing on your end.  Though it’s hard to accept.

Bill:         I wonder what would have happened had we stayed at the old office.  We were inseparable.  She got scared after that day she came into my office and opened up to me.  She was in tears that day.  Immediately after that she started saying she couldn’t afford to go out to lunch or she needed to be on a diet.

John:     See, that’s not you.  I mean, whatever happened, happened on Jamie’s own time.  And she didn’t share it, and her own psychosises wouldn’t have let her share it with you.

You did everything you could, Bill.  Pat yourself on the back, because you did everything in your power.  You could say “Well, I could have done this or that” but…  Well, you were doing all the right things before that.  If Jamie was still scared, then there’s not much more you can do.  You could have laid down and done more for her and gotten walked all over while she still sorted herself out.  And she’s still sorting herself out, from the little things you tell me from time to time.

It applies to Meisha and Azuree too.  Forget the psycho stuff with either of them – you did everything you could.  Everything you were capable of.

Job well done, high five.

(And yes, I am telling myself that with Angie in order to move on – and it helps.  I did all I could.  I didn’t just do all I could, I did a damn fine job with it)

But it’s over.

What Kelly’s getting is proving “their loss” rings true.

Which brings me back to sobbing in bed on Monday night.  I’m cursed with self realization, I’m dominated by my own doubts and fears.  All I have are fleeting memories of love, being loved, and emotional happiness form the past.  M eand Angela wouldn’t have worked out, I don’t think (letting my head speak and not my heart).  That’s just going ont eh fact I’m more of a pacifist and she was a warrior.  I’m sickly and she’s an athlete.  I’m a romantic and she’s a whore.

…But I wanted that failure to happen on my terms, not on fate’s terms.  And now I have no path forward and must distance myself from what is in the rearview.

I did all I could.  High five.  *pat pat pat*  Job well done  John.  Damn fine job, at that.  Chin up, chest out, be proud of yourself.  It’s a lonely road forward, and you ought to walk it with some fake pomposity to fool the masses who observe you as you limp on down the road.

Bill will be fine.  I have no doubt about that.  If it works out – it works out.  If it doesn’t, it won’t because of a screw up on his part.

As for me?  A week later I’m still missing her.  The sobs were the realization how far she is, emotionally, from the girl I was with in December 2010.

S-A-T-U-R… Oh, for crying out loud….

My, aren’t we in a pleasant and chipper mood this merry Saturday Night! It’s the middle of June, there’s a tropical system dropping rain upon the Florida peninsula, and I’m being treated like a leper by every and all social contacts that I know.
No one, I mean no one, is talking to me… Sans Keith with a little hockey talk. Sans Gary Shelton — es, columnist Gary Shelton – on Twitter.
I’m haunted by thoughts of who is doing what. And, of course, how little I am on their minds.
Same shit, different Saturday.

Here's looking at Gru, kid

How do I preface this one?

You support someone who is deployed, and they break yoru heart. You go on supporting them because it bothers you to abandon them when you know they’re not enjoying what they’re doing and the entire environment being miserable…

And when they get home, they’re able to get back into their world but they keep you out of it… and yet, keep you in it in an impersonal way.

I can deal with her being involved with someone else. I’ve accepted that. What I can’t deal with is seeing her and reaching out to her in the most casual of personal fashions – asking “How are you” via email – and being ignored… While she publicly displays having time on her hands, including tagging me in images on Facebook after I sent said email.

So, for my own sake, I had to shut the door. This is an unsent email follow up to the aforementioned, ignored email.

Angela –

The lack of reply (to this and that letter-scan that I sent weeks ago on Facebook) gives me the hint. After all that’s been said and done, I’m sorry for latching on and involving myself to the point you’d rather keep a distance. I don’t regret, though.

I’ll be quick to admit I hadn’t exactly reached out socially much since you returned home, and I guess maybe that’s just put off this inevitability. It’s hard for me to try to normalize things between us as friends if all we’ve got are quick remarks on Facebook and an awkwardness when it comes to any personal contact. Life is riddled with too many uninvolved friendships and acquaintances that falling into another one, with you of all people, just doesn’t appeal to me.

You know how to reach me, down more avenues than one, if you ever should need someone to talk to or confide in. And you don’t need to hear this, I’m saying it more for me, but for what it’s worth – I forgave you long ago for things. I tried to say as much in a subtle fashion through email, letters and poems, but subtle in the black-and-white of the float didn’t seem to translate, or at least got no response.

Best wishes and good luck to you, Jaden and Aaron, wherever the journey of life should take you.
John

I keep clinging to people who have one-way relationships with me: their way. And the reason is, for a time, they tried to get themselves involved in my world – and I accepted them with open arms and love.

After this instance, after she traveled more than 15,000 miles and was reached out to with 38 letters (all of which she did not receive) and care packages… After giving her space and time upon arriving home… I just have to let her go. My patience is gone, my big heart keeps trying to make an excuse for her – one that doesn’t exist.

I removed her from my Facebook friends list today. She knows how to contact me in more ways than one, though. But she won’t. She’ll blame herself when she realizes what happened (if she reacts at all)… There’s a chance, then, that she’ll contact me, perhaps lash out at me… But more likely she’ll just stew before digressing and moving on.

And me? I need to move on. Christ, I’ve needed to move on for a year… Fate, it seems, will not afford me the opportunity though.

The weight of their worlds

Lay their hardships unto me
Their doubts, their fears
Their degradations

Lay their weights upon my shoulders,
Threats and harms
Leave them be

Steer them straight, right, and true
Deliver from evil
And to the promise of the now

Yes, lay their hardships unto me
And through my suffering
Spare them all

An open letter to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA Execut5ive President Donald Fehr