i feel like the more i know you,
the more i’m who i want to be.
but i’m caught in a willingness
to be however you might want me.
My hands are cold this morning. Friday was a tempestuous day. I received an email in the morning, the first I had heard in three months, from a young woman living in New Hampshire with whom I had been corresponding. The jist of the message, summed up in the last sentence of the email, was, in so many words, “Don’t call me and don’t visit me when you come up to Boston next month for your cousin’s wedding. It’s probably just better that way.” She gave reasons, and I could provide what I think (in my mind) are very worthy rebuttals to her reasons, but it’s fairly clear from her tone and from her lack of communication in the first place that she’s not interested in friendship anymore. It’s good to know this. I mean, at least she was forthcoming and open enough to only keep me hanging for three months, right? It could have been a lot worse. Donald and I visited her and her friends back in March when we took the trip to Boston. Conversation wasn’t exactly the easiest I’ve ever had, but I don’t do the group thing very well anyway, and…well, there are lots of mitigating factors and reasons that caused the awkwardness. It’s just…I’m just…sad. Disappointed. Deeply. I felt like we had a lot in common, and if only we had had a chance to spend half an hour alone, just talking, things would have been different. Or perhaps they wouldn’t have–I don’t know. I’ve learned enough through previous situations like this not to get too emotionally attached in a relationship of this nature, but I still feel at least a fragment of the sting of rejection, especially when I think about the hundred or so emails sitting in a folder, or the pictures she sent, or the letters I wrote from Chicago and by candlelight in December and on the ski trip in February. My conjectures at this point are limited to four: She didn’t like the way I looked, she didn’t feel like we hit it off/had any chemistry, she’s incredibly busy and doesn’t have time for anything, or there’s another man to whom she’s devoting her time and attention. Which one is it? I really don’t care. I’m just tired of the whole rigamarole, the whole ordeal, everything. I’m tired of it. And this wasn’t even a romantic relationship in any sense of the phrase. It was just a friendship, and I’m…disappointed, again.
Caught me on Friday and you would have heard a lot more… The weekend’s put a buffer between the now and the moment on Friday when my heart sank. Screw it all. Just…forget it. Forget everything. Any romantic overtures, any poetry, anything and everything. It’s just me, and that’s how it’s going to be for a while.
Insomnia is great. I’m a big fan of it. It took me a full hour of tossing and turning to finally conk out last night. My mind was motoring along in top gear. And now I’m paying the price of tiredness. I’ll write more later.