The World is No One's Dream...
Apr. 17th, 2006 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookofmirrorsLots of things happening in the past couple of days. Some I can't share here, because they haven't been made public knowledge. Some are already public knowledge. But it would seem that a lot of changes are happening.
Yeah, I know it's a tendency in a lot of communities to toss more meaning into a few random happenings than perhaps is necessary. And maybe that's what I'm doing here. But, since I seem to be part of this whole thing, I think maybe I want to think that I'm not in this alone. That, even though the circumstances are different, a lot of us are going through some shit right now, and, even if it's private, we aren't really alone, even though we might feel like it at the time.
One of the things that got brought up in a conversation this morning with a friend whose mother died on Friday, was something she said about the Vedic astrology new year. I'd make a link to it, 'cause she said there was one, but she hasn't sent it, and I couldn't Google it. Anyway, she said something had moved into Aries, and that there were "going to be a lot of divorces this year". Although I know of at least one instance of that specifically, I think of the term more broadly, in the sense of the changing/evolving of relationships. And certainly, I've been thinking a lot about the important relationships in my life recently.
Most are going splendidly.
LuneNoire and I are relating better, and I think on a more real level, than we ever have, with more planned to come. My conversations with Leo on the phone have been just as much conversation as phone sex, and I'm really enjoying them, and have great hope for our friendship for the future, and his ability to find happiness. (Note to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boastful: His post-divorce experience was very much like yours. There is hope.) My relationship with 
BlckwngdOrcl is blossoming in ways I was barely willing to hope for, and then some. (That one's hard, let me tell you, but I feel more and more blessed every day to have him in my life, and "blessed" is too weak a word.) I'm seeing more and more clearly how I contributed to the demise of my relationship with Fig, and coming to terms with that. And, honestly, our last interaction was a positive one, full of love and tears, so I can't really say that he hates me, back in Illinois. (I'm not counting Craig and Jess's wedding as our last interaction.) I'm slowly, slowly starting to interact with friends I haven't really been in touch with in quite some time. There is much good, and much love, in my life. Things are most certainly on an upward trend, even though I still have a lot of fear about a lot of things. Those fears are becoming less and less founded, though.
So, why, then, in the face of all that, do I focus on
Logomancer, on the one relationship that I feel has gone?
I don't know, really. But I think about it more and more lately, and it weighs heavy on my mind. It has all day, and many days before this. Which is why I'm here typing, and not in bed with the man I love, curled up naked against his warm body, the scent of him surrounding me.
But, as I sit here, I don't know where to start. To give a play-by-play for those just joining us seems trite, irrelevant. For a change, I'm not inclined to write up the backstory to make this easier to read and understand for those who don't know what we were at one time, what we meant to each other. Anyone who felt like going through the tedious work of reading all my back entries might piece it together, but I'm not going to go back and tag those entries as such, 'cause I don't know which entries they are, either. I suppose the short version is that we're Harry and Sally, in reverse. Even when I was married to Leo, and in every relationship since then, he's been my best friend. Only my current husband has surpassed that, and I can't tell you how significant that is. For many years, we were each others' best friend, confidante, the first one each of us turned to when we were having problems. We moved from the superficiality of high school dating to the long-distance relationship ...oh... of Beaches. They fought too, later, I remember that now. *sigh* I hope he doesn't have to die for us to reconcile. But I'm being melodramatic, and I don't mean to be. It's just that comparing our letter-writing years to Beaches made me think of it. Anyway, the letter-writing became phone calls became emails became IMs (all mixed up, of course, since we didn't limit ourselves to one method of communication), and among them all, the once-a-year visits, even in the face of my (at the time) homocidally homophobic first husband. Leo actually asked me to give up my friendship withLogomancer. I was so fucking codependent, and willing to do anything to please him at the time, that I actually sat down to pen and paper, crying so hard I couldn't see. I didn't get out a whole paragraph before I realized I just couldn't do it. I was technically still married to Leo when I eagerly let Logomancer try penetrative sex with a woman. Our high school fooling around hadn't gone that far.
And then... I moved down here. After much prodding fromLogomancer, I moved here, to be closer to him, to start a new life, to discard my old life, to run away from Fig, to do any number of things I felt I couldn't do in Illinois. To make a fresh start, and to be closer to the person I loved most in the world. Looking back, of course, this was naive, at best. We'd shared our most intimate secrets over the years, the deepest parts of ourselves. No one knew either of us better. But, other than the yearly visits, we hadn't known each other in real life for almost 15 years. We hadn't been there for the day-to-day foibles, the mundane existance of our daily lives. I don't think either of us would say that we had hidden anything from the other. I think we both felt we had shared everything, knew everything about each other. I knew his deepest despair when he was fired for the first time, and had called the cops on him when he was in a deep depression because I was afraid he was going to kill himself, but I didn't know how he liked his steak cooked. (That's a poor analogy. I do, in fact, know how he likes his steak cooked, what he's allergic to, how he takes his hamburgers... but you get the idea.) He had been there through a divorce and a break-up, and knew me better than I did myself, but didn't know if I liked creamy or chunky peanut butter. (Again, I think he does know that, since it's the opposite of his preference... but again, you get the idea.)
In real life, we couldn't be what we were to each other long distance. We weren't living the idyllic vacation existence where, when I visited, I was the center of attention, and the same was true of him when he visited. I came face-to-face with the harsh reality of not being first in his life. I think, at the same time, the burden of being first in mine was a heavy one for him. He was going to be my savior, I think I thought. Not consciously, of course, but I think that was the plan. I was still heavily involved in my own codependence, and wanted him to be my everything, and I wanted to be his everything. I resented it when I wasn't. *sigh* Looking back now, it all seems so childish. To make things worse, we were both becoming just aware enough to resent our roles, but not yet aware enough to deal with it well. I became angry at him for being critical, for acting like the punitive father, which was precisely the role I had cast him in. At the same time, I was angry and hurt that I wasn't the favorite daughter/lover/friend I had always been. He, on the other hand, was hurt that I had cast him as the villain after everything we'd been to each other. At the same time, he no longer wanted to be in that father role for me, and saw what an unhealthy dynamic it was. I was still clinging to it desperately.
So, he broke up with me. That's not an accurate phrase, of course, but it's the phrase I always use in my head for that first time when he said that he was instituting a hiatus on our friendship for a while, so we could find ourselves, and break those old patterns, and hopefully come together stronger for it. There was no easy way for him to do that, I'm sure. I can't imagine how it must have felt for him. If he felt half the emptiness in his life that I felt in mine without him, he was miserable. I think I can say that without aggranditizing myself. It's just what we meant to each other. He may have cut with a clean sharp knife, but the wound was still deep, and it affected both of us.
We tried reconciling after that once or twice. Ironically, it was my relationship withBlckwngdOrcl that proved the stumbling block. He despised him for the same reason my parents did; he didn't feel that he was good for me, didn't feel he was taking care of me. I think he saw me in the throes of the same codependent patterns I had enacted with him, repeating themselves in my relationship with BlckwngdOrcl. I say ironically because it was Logomancer who brought us together in the first place. Hell, years before I even was looking for someone to spend time with, years before I even considered moving to Atlanta, he said to me "you and Glenn would make good mates". It occurs to me as I write this that maybe he felt some responsibility for our relationship. I always credited him (and still do) for the relationship; maybe if you see that relationship as a bad one, "credit" becomes "blame".
Certainly he, like many other friends around that time, had many valid points about the disfunction of my marriage. To him, like everyone else, including and especially myself, I made excuses, turned a blind eye, did any number of things to make him see that my husband wasn't the bad guy. This frustrated him no end, and our attempt at reconciliation failed again.
The irony here, and this whole post is full of irony, is that now, when I'm finally willing and able to see my husband as the "bad guy" in our relationship... I also more fully realize how I perpetuated that dynamic, and how I'm also the "bad guy".
It would seem that I have a pattern now of husbands who, purposefully or inadvertently, create tension betweenLogomancer and I. NOT that I lay that responsibility at eithers' feet.
After a time (a year and a day, acccording to him, although I hadn't kept track), he contacted me with the idea of trying to meet in friendship again. At that time, I held him no ill will, but didn't feel I had fully resolved my issues, and asked for more time, which he was happy to give.
And then, the unthinkable happened.
I don't mean to be elusive, but I can't say exacty what "the unthinkable" is, because it infringes on the privacy of others who have specifically requested privacy in this area. Suffice it to say thatBlckwngdOrcl made some statements that were absolutely true to his emotional reality, and quite false in the physical reality. These statements directly affected Logomancer. As a result, I was stuck in the middle. I fully supported BlckwngdOrcl in his reaction, and fully understood and supported that, while he agreed intellectually with me about the nature of the situation, his emotional reaction was fully to the fore, and I was fine with him having that reaction. At the same time, still feeling I knew Logomancer better than anyone, I couldn't personally villify him in the same way that BlckwngdOrcl did. However, I could feel parts of me feeling like the tigress over her cubs, wanting to protect them from any threats, perceived or real. (Clearly, with those types of analogies running through my head, I was fully in my codependence at the time.) I recognized this as a possible barrier to reconciliation, and invited Logomancer (and the one other person involved) to dinner to discuss this. BlckwngdOrcl wanted no part of it, nor did I think it appropriate that he should be there. I explained what was going on as well as I could. I stressed that I wasn't villifying anyone in this situation. But I did say I was worried that my emotional reaction, however irrational, could adversely affect reunification, and I wanted all of it out in the open, so that he would understand where I was coming from if it happened.
Well, that went as well as it could have possibly gone. I couldn't have asked for a better scenario for a discussion that had the potential for extreme volatility and repercussions.
Except that the repercussions came later.Logomancer had his emotional reaction to what I said later, and it didn't bode well for our being friends again. He emailed me, I emailed him back. Other than a brief confirmation (upon request) that he received my email, I haven't heard from him since. I've emailed him once since then, basically saying I didn't want our friendship to end on that note, and I IMed him to express condolences for his dislocated shoulder when I read about it in 
Profundis's LJ. I got no response from either. I felt sad, and I think I mostly hid the hurt behind numbness most of the time. I've been sorely tempted to contact him on more than one occasion since then, and haven't. He's made it clear he's not interested in talking to me.
I think what has this weighing so heavily on my mind is following his move fromProfundis's house via LJ. I see him working so hard to maintain his relationship with Profundis after the fact, saw his work so hard to maintain it with Shayne after they broke up. It's a bittersweet thing for me. On one hand, I'm so pleased and proud that he can do that. I know how hard it is for him. On the other... well, why not me? It hurts.
I've tossed this scenario against others as sounding boards off and on throughout this whole thing. It was once suggested that an apology would be required. But honestly, I don't know what to apologize for. The only thing I can think of to apologize for isn't something I did. I accused him of nothing. I specifically said that I knew he was innocent, if that word even applies, since using it at all implies there's something to be innocent of. Misunderstanding upon misunderstanding upon poor communication upon old, frightened patterns. If I had accused him, blamed him in any way, I would gladly apologize. If there's something else to apologize for, then I'm truly at a loss for what it might be. And any apology that I could come up with to fit my version of the truth, to my mind, would come out as one of those backhanded apologies that aren't really apologies at all - "I'm sorry you misunderstood me". Which, if that's the case, I truly am, and without the sarcasm implied by such a statement.
If I'm sorry for anything, it's that it ended this way. It's that it ended at all. It's that the one thing I counted on more than anything else in my life (sans my parents, and later, my husband) was our friendship, and from what I can tell, it's gone now. It's that somehow, he thought so little of me as to think that I believed the worst of him. Although, I could see where he would think that, because some harsh words were spoken long before the dinner-talk issue came up. It's that he would think that I thought so little of him as to cast him in the light of the bad guy. Again, I did for a while, but again, long before that last conversation. And I am sorry for that. So very, very sorry. Inexpressibly so.
But what do I gain by that? I explored in a recent post my pathological need for forgiveness. I find it strange that I don't feel that in this situation. At least, I don't think I do. Partially, 'cause I don't know exactly what I should be forgiven for. Let me clarify that. I can think of lots of things I've done poorly in the past, since I've been here, since he initially "broke up" with me. I'd love to be forgiven for those things. But he was willing to talk to me after all those things. The breaking point was after "the unthinkable happened". And it is that incident that I'm genuinely confused about. The only things I can think of for him to be angry with me about were things I specifically said (and felt, and meant, and still do) were not the case.
I did say that I was in a difficult position. By fully supporting both
Logomancer and BlckwngdOrcl, I think both ended up feeling betrayed, since I'm sure it seemed diamtrically opposed. The "joy" of being a Libra is that I could fully support both of them, with no inner conflict about doing so. However, I felt the conflict coming at me from both sides because of it, strongly. Maybe he was trying to spare me that, by leaving again. Maybe he thought he had my best interests at heart again. There's part of me that would like to think that, because it would mean that he doesn't hate me, as I fear he does now. I don't find it likely, though, 'cause I figure he'd answer my emails if that were the case.
More irony... since having that discussion about the possibility of me feeling less-than-positive towards him... I never have. Not once, that I can recall. I could have kept my mouth shut, and avoided all this. But I wanted to be upfront and honest about it. I can't decide if I'm a saint (martyr?) or just plain stupid.
So, now what?
If he were to come back into my life today, what would that be like? If all wounds were healed, and we could interact again, better than before, without all the fucked up dynamics we had in the past, what would it be like? It's hard for me to picture that. It's hard for me to look beyond the pain I feel over it. It's hard for me to imagine/remember what is would be/was like for us to be together without that stress. But, if we were? *sigh* I'd be afraid that my schedule would make it difficult for us to interact. That my tendency to hole up and not interact would affect us adversely. I'm rolling around the idea of getting out more in my mouth, getting the taste of it. I'd like to think that, if it wereLogomancer, I'd make SURE to make time for him, for us. But I have other close friends I've barely seen for the past couple of years, and I haven't gone out of my way much to try to make time. Yeah, I'm getting better in very recent times, but would it be enough, soon enough? Would the transitions I'm going through in my life be accomodated? I don't know. I feel selfish even thinking about it that way. And certainly, he's going through a lot of transitions in his life. I see them on LJ, and it hurts my heart to know I'm restricted from being there for him. I know he has others now, but... I've always been there for him in tough times. Maybe that's still part of wanting to be an important part of his life. I'm not sure if that's too much to ask anymore. Certainly, it could be done better than before.
But, the reality of the situation is that the relationship is no longer there. I hate to say that, but it's the inescapable conclusion. I hate it. It hurts like hell. I don't want to have hope, because every moment that that hope is dashed, is painful. I'm hoping this entry helps me lay it to rest. But I know that I haven't locked the door and thrown away the key. More like locked the door and put the key away in a little-used corner, where it will likely get dusty, and fade in memory... but never, never, forgotten.
Yeah, I know it's a tendency in a lot of communities to toss more meaning into a few random happenings than perhaps is necessary. And maybe that's what I'm doing here. But, since I seem to be part of this whole thing, I think maybe I want to think that I'm not in this alone. That, even though the circumstances are different, a lot of us are going through some shit right now, and, even if it's private, we aren't really alone, even though we might feel like it at the time.
One of the things that got brought up in a conversation this morning with a friend whose mother died on Friday, was something she said about the Vedic astrology new year. I'd make a link to it, 'cause she said there was one, but she hasn't sent it, and I couldn't Google it. Anyway, she said something had moved into Aries, and that there were "going to be a lot of divorces this year". Although I know of at least one instance of that specifically, I think of the term more broadly, in the sense of the changing/evolving of relationships. And certainly, I've been thinking a lot about the important relationships in my life recently.
Most are going splendidly.
LuneNoire and I are relating better, and I think on a more real level, than we ever have, with more planned to come. My conversations with Leo on the phone have been just as much conversation as phone sex, and I'm really enjoying them, and have great hope for our friendship for the future, and his ability to find happiness. (Note to boastful: His post-divorce experience was very much like yours. There is hope.) My relationship with BlckwngdOrcl is blossoming in ways I was barely willing to hope for, and then some. (That one's hard, let me tell you, but I feel more and more blessed every day to have him in my life, and "blessed" is too weak a word.) I'm seeing more and more clearly how I contributed to the demise of my relationship with Fig, and coming to terms with that. And, honestly, our last interaction was a positive one, full of love and tears, so I can't really say that he hates me, back in Illinois. (I'm not counting Craig and Jess's wedding as our last interaction.) I'm slowly, slowly starting to interact with friends I haven't really been in touch with in quite some time. There is much good, and much love, in my life. Things are most certainly on an upward trend, even though I still have a lot of fear about a lot of things. Those fears are becoming less and less founded, though.So, why, then, in the face of all that, do I focus on
Logomancer, on the one relationship that I feel has gone?I don't know, really. But I think about it more and more lately, and it weighs heavy on my mind. It has all day, and many days before this. Which is why I'm here typing, and not in bed with the man I love, curled up naked against his warm body, the scent of him surrounding me.
But, as I sit here, I don't know where to start. To give a play-by-play for those just joining us seems trite, irrelevant. For a change, I'm not inclined to write up the backstory to make this easier to read and understand for those who don't know what we were at one time, what we meant to each other. Anyone who felt like going through the tedious work of reading all my back entries might piece it together, but I'm not going to go back and tag those entries as such, 'cause I don't know which entries they are, either. I suppose the short version is that we're Harry and Sally, in reverse. Even when I was married to Leo, and in every relationship since then, he's been my best friend. Only my current husband has surpassed that, and I can't tell you how significant that is. For many years, we were each others' best friend, confidante, the first one each of us turned to when we were having problems. We moved from the superficiality of high school dating to the long-distance relationship ...oh... of Beaches. They fought too, later, I remember that now. *sigh* I hope he doesn't have to die for us to reconcile. But I'm being melodramatic, and I don't mean to be. It's just that comparing our letter-writing years to Beaches made me think of it. Anyway, the letter-writing became phone calls became emails became IMs (all mixed up, of course, since we didn't limit ourselves to one method of communication), and among them all, the once-a-year visits, even in the face of my (at the time) homocidally homophobic first husband. Leo actually asked me to give up my friendship with
Logomancer. I was so fucking codependent, and willing to do anything to please him at the time, that I actually sat down to pen and paper, crying so hard I couldn't see. I didn't get out a whole paragraph before I realized I just couldn't do it. I was technically still married to Leo when I eagerly let Logomancer try penetrative sex with a woman. Our high school fooling around hadn't gone that far. And then... I moved down here. After much prodding from
Logomancer, I moved here, to be closer to him, to start a new life, to discard my old life, to run away from Fig, to do any number of things I felt I couldn't do in Illinois. To make a fresh start, and to be closer to the person I loved most in the world. Looking back, of course, this was naive, at best. We'd shared our most intimate secrets over the years, the deepest parts of ourselves. No one knew either of us better. But, other than the yearly visits, we hadn't known each other in real life for almost 15 years. We hadn't been there for the day-to-day foibles, the mundane existance of our daily lives. I don't think either of us would say that we had hidden anything from the other. I think we both felt we had shared everything, knew everything about each other. I knew his deepest despair when he was fired for the first time, and had called the cops on him when he was in a deep depression because I was afraid he was going to kill himself, but I didn't know how he liked his steak cooked. (That's a poor analogy. I do, in fact, know how he likes his steak cooked, what he's allergic to, how he takes his hamburgers... but you get the idea.) He had been there through a divorce and a break-up, and knew me better than I did myself, but didn't know if I liked creamy or chunky peanut butter. (Again, I think he does know that, since it's the opposite of his preference... but again, you get the idea.)In real life, we couldn't be what we were to each other long distance. We weren't living the idyllic vacation existence where, when I visited, I was the center of attention, and the same was true of him when he visited. I came face-to-face with the harsh reality of not being first in his life. I think, at the same time, the burden of being first in mine was a heavy one for him. He was going to be my savior, I think I thought. Not consciously, of course, but I think that was the plan. I was still heavily involved in my own codependence, and wanted him to be my everything, and I wanted to be his everything. I resented it when I wasn't. *sigh* Looking back now, it all seems so childish. To make things worse, we were both becoming just aware enough to resent our roles, but not yet aware enough to deal with it well. I became angry at him for being critical, for acting like the punitive father, which was precisely the role I had cast him in. At the same time, I was angry and hurt that I wasn't the favorite daughter/lover/friend I had always been. He, on the other hand, was hurt that I had cast him as the villain after everything we'd been to each other. At the same time, he no longer wanted to be in that father role for me, and saw what an unhealthy dynamic it was. I was still clinging to it desperately.
So, he broke up with me. That's not an accurate phrase, of course, but it's the phrase I always use in my head for that first time when he said that he was instituting a hiatus on our friendship for a while, so we could find ourselves, and break those old patterns, and hopefully come together stronger for it. There was no easy way for him to do that, I'm sure. I can't imagine how it must have felt for him. If he felt half the emptiness in his life that I felt in mine without him, he was miserable. I think I can say that without aggranditizing myself. It's just what we meant to each other. He may have cut with a clean sharp knife, but the wound was still deep, and it affected both of us.
We tried reconciling after that once or twice. Ironically, it was my relationship with
BlckwngdOrcl that proved the stumbling block. He despised him for the same reason my parents did; he didn't feel that he was good for me, didn't feel he was taking care of me. I think he saw me in the throes of the same codependent patterns I had enacted with him, repeating themselves in my relationship with BlckwngdOrcl. I say ironically because it was Logomancer who brought us together in the first place. Hell, years before I even was looking for someone to spend time with, years before I even considered moving to Atlanta, he said to me "you and Glenn would make good mates". It occurs to me as I write this that maybe he felt some responsibility for our relationship. I always credited him (and still do) for the relationship; maybe if you see that relationship as a bad one, "credit" becomes "blame". Certainly he, like many other friends around that time, had many valid points about the disfunction of my marriage. To him, like everyone else, including and especially myself, I made excuses, turned a blind eye, did any number of things to make him see that my husband wasn't the bad guy. This frustrated him no end, and our attempt at reconciliation failed again.
The irony here, and this whole post is full of irony, is that now, when I'm finally willing and able to see my husband as the "bad guy" in our relationship... I also more fully realize how I perpetuated that dynamic, and how I'm also the "bad guy".
It would seem that I have a pattern now of husbands who, purposefully or inadvertently, create tension between
Logomancer and I. NOT that I lay that responsibility at eithers' feet.After a time (a year and a day, acccording to him, although I hadn't kept track), he contacted me with the idea of trying to meet in friendship again. At that time, I held him no ill will, but didn't feel I had fully resolved my issues, and asked for more time, which he was happy to give.
And then, the unthinkable happened.
I don't mean to be elusive, but I can't say exacty what "the unthinkable" is, because it infringes on the privacy of others who have specifically requested privacy in this area. Suffice it to say that
BlckwngdOrcl made some statements that were absolutely true to his emotional reality, and quite false in the physical reality. These statements directly affected Logomancer. As a result, I was stuck in the middle. I fully supported BlckwngdOrcl in his reaction, and fully understood and supported that, while he agreed intellectually with me about the nature of the situation, his emotional reaction was fully to the fore, and I was fine with him having that reaction. At the same time, still feeling I knew Logomancer better than anyone, I couldn't personally villify him in the same way that BlckwngdOrcl did. However, I could feel parts of me feeling like the tigress over her cubs, wanting to protect them from any threats, perceived or real. (Clearly, with those types of analogies running through my head, I was fully in my codependence at the time.) I recognized this as a possible barrier to reconciliation, and invited Logomancer (and the one other person involved) to dinner to discuss this. BlckwngdOrcl wanted no part of it, nor did I think it appropriate that he should be there. I explained what was going on as well as I could. I stressed that I wasn't villifying anyone in this situation. But I did say I was worried that my emotional reaction, however irrational, could adversely affect reunification, and I wanted all of it out in the open, so that he would understand where I was coming from if it happened. Well, that went as well as it could have possibly gone. I couldn't have asked for a better scenario for a discussion that had the potential for extreme volatility and repercussions.
Except that the repercussions came later.
Logomancer had his emotional reaction to what I said later, and it didn't bode well for our being friends again. He emailed me, I emailed him back. Other than a brief confirmation (upon request) that he received my email, I haven't heard from him since. I've emailed him once since then, basically saying I didn't want our friendship to end on that note, and I IMed him to express condolences for his dislocated shoulder when I read about it in Profundis's LJ. I got no response from either. I felt sad, and I think I mostly hid the hurt behind numbness most of the time. I've been sorely tempted to contact him on more than one occasion since then, and haven't. He's made it clear he's not interested in talking to me.I think what has this weighing so heavily on my mind is following his move from
Profundis's house via LJ. I see him working so hard to maintain his relationship with Profundis after the fact, saw his work so hard to maintain it with Shayne after they broke up. It's a bittersweet thing for me. On one hand, I'm so pleased and proud that he can do that. I know how hard it is for him. On the other... well, why not me? It hurts.I've tossed this scenario against others as sounding boards off and on throughout this whole thing. It was once suggested that an apology would be required. But honestly, I don't know what to apologize for. The only thing I can think of to apologize for isn't something I did. I accused him of nothing. I specifically said that I knew he was innocent, if that word even applies, since using it at all implies there's something to be innocent of. Misunderstanding upon misunderstanding upon poor communication upon old, frightened patterns. If I had accused him, blamed him in any way, I would gladly apologize. If there's something else to apologize for, then I'm truly at a loss for what it might be. And any apology that I could come up with to fit my version of the truth, to my mind, would come out as one of those backhanded apologies that aren't really apologies at all - "I'm sorry you misunderstood me". Which, if that's the case, I truly am, and without the sarcasm implied by such a statement.
If I'm sorry for anything, it's that it ended this way. It's that it ended at all. It's that the one thing I counted on more than anything else in my life (sans my parents, and later, my husband) was our friendship, and from what I can tell, it's gone now. It's that somehow, he thought so little of me as to think that I believed the worst of him. Although, I could see where he would think that, because some harsh words were spoken long before the dinner-talk issue came up. It's that he would think that I thought so little of him as to cast him in the light of the bad guy. Again, I did for a while, but again, long before that last conversation. And I am sorry for that. So very, very sorry. Inexpressibly so.
But what do I gain by that? I explored in a recent post my pathological need for forgiveness. I find it strange that I don't feel that in this situation. At least, I don't think I do. Partially, 'cause I don't know exactly what I should be forgiven for. Let me clarify that. I can think of lots of things I've done poorly in the past, since I've been here, since he initially "broke up" with me. I'd love to be forgiven for those things. But he was willing to talk to me after all those things. The breaking point was after "the unthinkable happened". And it is that incident that I'm genuinely confused about. The only things I can think of for him to be angry with me about were things I specifically said (and felt, and meant, and still do) were not the case.
I did say that I was in a difficult position. By fully supporting both
Logomancer and BlckwngdOrcl, I think both ended up feeling betrayed, since I'm sure it seemed diamtrically opposed. The "joy" of being a Libra is that I could fully support both of them, with no inner conflict about doing so. However, I felt the conflict coming at me from both sides because of it, strongly. Maybe he was trying to spare me that, by leaving again. Maybe he thought he had my best interests at heart again. There's part of me that would like to think that, because it would mean that he doesn't hate me, as I fear he does now. I don't find it likely, though, 'cause I figure he'd answer my emails if that were the case.More irony... since having that discussion about the possibility of me feeling less-than-positive towards him... I never have. Not once, that I can recall. I could have kept my mouth shut, and avoided all this. But I wanted to be upfront and honest about it. I can't decide if I'm a saint (martyr?) or just plain stupid.
So, now what?
If he were to come back into my life today, what would that be like? If all wounds were healed, and we could interact again, better than before, without all the fucked up dynamics we had in the past, what would it be like? It's hard for me to picture that. It's hard for me to look beyond the pain I feel over it. It's hard for me to imagine/remember what is would be/was like for us to be together without that stress. But, if we were? *sigh* I'd be afraid that my schedule would make it difficult for us to interact. That my tendency to hole up and not interact would affect us adversely. I'm rolling around the idea of getting out more in my mouth, getting the taste of it. I'd like to think that, if it were
Logomancer, I'd make SURE to make time for him, for us. But I have other close friends I've barely seen for the past couple of years, and I haven't gone out of my way much to try to make time. Yeah, I'm getting better in very recent times, but would it be enough, soon enough? Would the transitions I'm going through in my life be accomodated? I don't know. I feel selfish even thinking about it that way. And certainly, he's going through a lot of transitions in his life. I see them on LJ, and it hurts my heart to know I'm restricted from being there for him. I know he has others now, but... I've always been there for him in tough times. Maybe that's still part of wanting to be an important part of his life. I'm not sure if that's too much to ask anymore. Certainly, it could be done better than before.But, the reality of the situation is that the relationship is no longer there. I hate to say that, but it's the inescapable conclusion. I hate it. It hurts like hell. I don't want to have hope, because every moment that that hope is dashed, is painful. I'm hoping this entry helps me lay it to rest. But I know that I haven't locked the door and thrown away the key. More like locked the door and put the key away in a little-used corner, where it will likely get dusty, and fade in memory... but never, never, forgotten.
