Connections, Assumptions
I curled around my lover, my only lover at present, but sleep would not come. I found myself thinking, almost tearfully, of how thankful I am for him. He is my husband, and some of the assumptions in that title do apply to him. But he is my lover, and, most importantly, he is the only close friend I have whom I can touch on a regular basis.
Now that I'm cell phone-enabled, Bob and I are naturally drawing closer. And it will be good to catch up with my other favourite Purchasites in a more timely manner than before. But they're all clustered around The City, still, and I'm way up here. Perhaps doctorellisdee will email me his phone number, but he's even farther away.
It's not to say I don't have local friends. But there are sides of me that I just can't show Ezra or joker4gotham or gooph, and I don't feel completely at peace when I'm cuddling with them. They're nice people, but I just haven't gotten super-close to them, for whatever reason. I have more trouble opening myself up to friends than to lovers; perhaps that's the biggest reason.
I miss Otto, I miss my Best Friend. I think that's why I'm having so much trouble dealing with him in this post-breakup era of ours. He wants to hold me at arm's length (or on the other side of a ten-foot pole, it's difficult to say which) and I want to rush in, hold him like I used to, bite his shoulder and tweak his nose. He talks to me, now, in exactly the same way he talks to strangers, or other people he's intimidated by. Very quietly, very lowly, in a monotone, and with absolutely no expression on his face. It hurts. He told me some more reasons why we can't ever be lovers again. That hurt, too. Am I oversensitive? Too eager for the friends-that-once-we-were? Too pushy?
Something has to change, before we can hang out again, begin to regain a bit of what we were. I have to become less oversensitive, rebuild defense-walls (towards him) that I zestfully knocked down so long ago. Give him more breathing room. Or, he needs to find a way to be nice. Maybe lower his newly-sprung defensive walls an inch or two, so I can at least call out a hallo to the Otto I remember.
I love him still. I hated telling him to go away (see the comments of a few posts ago), but I felt like a scared animal, snarling back at the thing which had barked so unexpectedly at me. I have some friends who are going away from long-time lovers or saying farewell to old friends, and I feel my life in parallel. It feels like other people are better at this than I am, but perhaps that's an ease that comes with experience.
I certainly don't go through the hysterics that some friends do when one of my friends up and decides to not be my friend anymore! But it's different with a lover, particularly a long-term one. One of our friends in common said something recently that ended with "and I think people should do (blah) if they don't want to break up". Thing is, breaking up with Otto wasn't exactly a surprise. I could tell, in the first months of our relationship, that the length of this relationship would be counted in months or years, not decades. It had the feel of a bright, brief thing. I sensed that, I knew that, and I flung myself into it anyway. And I don't regret doing so. I've been spending a lot of time musing over the good points. When it was good it was really, really good. And when it was bad, it was still pretty good. A distance grew between us, perhaps starting in the doldrums this winter, and I broke up with Otto when the gulf got too wide and it became apparent he wasn't interested in sealing it up.
Why was it apparent to me, early on, that this would not be a lifelong relationship (if such things even exist)? Look at Otto! Look at how he treats the new things in his life! Be they computers, techie gadgets, camera parts, or people, the story is always the same. When they're bright and shiny and new, they fascinate him completely. His eyes are fixed wholly on them. As soon as they lose a bit of their lustre, or it becomes apparent to him that they aren't quite what he thought they were, he abruptly stops his intense interest. Lenses get smudged, gadgets get tossed in closets, computers get dropped or substances get spilled on them, people go away because it's obvious he doesn't give a flying fuck about them any more. I was lucky, to be able to keep a grain of that intense interest for an entire year and a half.
We had our time. I'm glad we had it. Could I have gotten more, if I knew how to listen to him properly, if I had mature reasoning ability and unutterable grace? Maybe, but I am who I am. And he is who he is. There's hope, still, that we might be friends again someday. Maybe almost as close as we once were. I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not going to try to build walls against him. He'll have to come to me, and come as a Nice Person. If he can figure out what that means.
Now that I'm cell phone-enabled, Bob and I are naturally drawing closer. And it will be good to catch up with my other favourite Purchasites in a more timely manner than before. But they're all clustered around The City, still, and I'm way up here. Perhaps doctorellisdee will email me his phone number, but he's even farther away.
It's not to say I don't have local friends. But there are sides of me that I just can't show Ezra or joker4gotham or gooph, and I don't feel completely at peace when I'm cuddling with them. They're nice people, but I just haven't gotten super-close to them, for whatever reason. I have more trouble opening myself up to friends than to lovers; perhaps that's the biggest reason.
I miss Otto, I miss my Best Friend. I think that's why I'm having so much trouble dealing with him in this post-breakup era of ours. He wants to hold me at arm's length (or on the other side of a ten-foot pole, it's difficult to say which) and I want to rush in, hold him like I used to, bite his shoulder and tweak his nose. He talks to me, now, in exactly the same way he talks to strangers, or other people he's intimidated by. Very quietly, very lowly, in a monotone, and with absolutely no expression on his face. It hurts. He told me some more reasons why we can't ever be lovers again. That hurt, too. Am I oversensitive? Too eager for the friends-that-once-we-were? Too pushy?
Something has to change, before we can hang out again, begin to regain a bit of what we were. I have to become less oversensitive, rebuild defense-walls (towards him) that I zestfully knocked down so long ago. Give him more breathing room. Or, he needs to find a way to be nice. Maybe lower his newly-sprung defensive walls an inch or two, so I can at least call out a hallo to the Otto I remember.
I love him still. I hated telling him to go away (see the comments of a few posts ago), but I felt like a scared animal, snarling back at the thing which had barked so unexpectedly at me. I have some friends who are going away from long-time lovers or saying farewell to old friends, and I feel my life in parallel. It feels like other people are better at this than I am, but perhaps that's an ease that comes with experience.
I certainly don't go through the hysterics that some friends do when one of my friends up and decides to not be my friend anymore! But it's different with a lover, particularly a long-term one. One of our friends in common said something recently that ended with "and I think people should do (blah) if they don't want to break up". Thing is, breaking up with Otto wasn't exactly a surprise. I could tell, in the first months of our relationship, that the length of this relationship would be counted in months or years, not decades. It had the feel of a bright, brief thing. I sensed that, I knew that, and I flung myself into it anyway. And I don't regret doing so. I've been spending a lot of time musing over the good points. When it was good it was really, really good. And when it was bad, it was still pretty good. A distance grew between us, perhaps starting in the doldrums this winter, and I broke up with Otto when the gulf got too wide and it became apparent he wasn't interested in sealing it up.
Why was it apparent to me, early on, that this would not be a lifelong relationship (if such things even exist)? Look at Otto! Look at how he treats the new things in his life! Be they computers, techie gadgets, camera parts, or people, the story is always the same. When they're bright and shiny and new, they fascinate him completely. His eyes are fixed wholly on them. As soon as they lose a bit of their lustre, or it becomes apparent to him that they aren't quite what he thought they were, he abruptly stops his intense interest. Lenses get smudged, gadgets get tossed in closets, computers get dropped or substances get spilled on them, people go away because it's obvious he doesn't give a flying fuck about them any more. I was lucky, to be able to keep a grain of that intense interest for an entire year and a half.
We had our time. I'm glad we had it. Could I have gotten more, if I knew how to listen to him properly, if I had mature reasoning ability and unutterable grace? Maybe, but I am who I am. And he is who he is. There's hope, still, that we might be friends again someday. Maybe almost as close as we once were. I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not going to try to build walls against him. He'll have to come to me, and come as a Nice Person. If he can figure out what that means.