I kind of had that figured out a while ago. I mean, when you’re with a guy like Mark for three years-ish, you get the idea. But Erik? Really thought that might be different. Turns out it’s just a hard and fast rule and apparently.

So, what’s all this about you ask? Well, it all started this very afternoon when Erik called to let me know he wouldn’t be able to come over until eight o’clock. I was, and perhaps stupidly, disappointed and it was obvious in my voice. I didn’t yell at him, didn’t deride him, call him names, or even object to what he was doing, which was working. I was just disappointed. And from this, the whole stupid thing devolved.

I told him I would go and hang out with my brother and sister since he was busy and that was the end of our conversation. He was frustrated with me for being disappointed. Over the course of the next couple of hours, he texted a couple of times to see what I was up to and somehow got irritated with me for going shopping for paint with my roommate. But the truth is that he’s often been upset with me for hanging out with my friends. Almost as if I’m just supposed to sit around and wait till he gets around to me.

But that isn’t the biggest problem, which is that he doesn’t talk to me when there’s a problem. If I text him, he doesn’t answer. Instant message? Same thing. If I call, I get voice mail, again and again and again. But this isn’t the first time this has happened. It happens every time we have an argument or an issue that’s tough to resolve. I want to fix it, he refuses to face it. It’s enough to drive me crazy.

Because how in the world are we ever supposed to get to the other side of a problem if he won’t even talk about it? How do you cross a mountain if one of you won’t admit it’s there? It seems obvious to me that maturity begs for unblinking realizations. It seems that putting it under a rug doesn’t get your house clean and only makes it more likely for you to trip.

. . .

I love Erik. I really do. And there are moments when I look forward at my life without him and I panic. He’s wonderful in so many ways. Thoughtful and generous and handy and kind. Talented and skilled and hard working and sinewy. He’s made of firm stuff and would try his best to try his best for almost anyone it seems. So what’s the problem then? What is the problem? It’s just that he . . . won’t budge.

There are so many things that I think we’ve gotten resolved and then ten seconds later, there they are again and we have to go through the whole rigamarole all over. We have to go through what we feel and why we feel it, what we think should be and what is, and what we want from the other person that we’re not getting. Again. And again. And again. Everytime I think we’ve come to a consensus I feel blindsided when it comes right back, the same problem, all around us again like a smog. I wish there was some way that I could make it work on my own, but the sticky thing about a relationship is that it takes two.

I want Erik. I love Erik. But I also want to have relationships with my friends. I also want to be able to express my emotions without being criticized for them, without them being stored up for ammunition. I want to be able to apologize and have apologies respected and returned, not just someone appreciating the fact that I’ve seen how wrong I was. I want to feel I only have to apologize for things that I do that are really and truly wrong.

I just got out of my three hour French class, and it was divine. I think I’m in love. All those “c’est”s and “voudrais”s. Heaven!

And as I was walking down the stairs and out into a cool spring evening, it struck me suddenly that I knew these stairs. What is it about a college campus? The way the air smells, the non-skid strips on the linoleum steps, the weight of books carried over the shoulder. It’s like being in a Meijer: once you’re inside, they’re all the same place. And it was a good familiar feeling strolling down the overwide sidewalks basked in dim street lights. L’amour, my friends, l’amour!

In other news, I still haven’t heard from Simon, so I thought I’d do a poll. YOU vote! Yes! You! Can!

Here are your choices. Simon hasn’t talked to me in three months because:

a) He was a victim of that vile creature, The Economy, and is on the street, looking so bummy that they kick him out of the library computer lab

b) He joined a religious cult that forces him to handle snakes and accidentally got bitten by one that paralyzed his vocal chords and/or all of his limbs

c) He’s rebuked society and decided to live off the grid, building himself a shack in the wilderness and refusing any kind of technology

d) He was kidnapped by alpacas who took him to a remote part of India where he freed himself, slaughtered them in their sleep, and is now in foreign prison and/or on the lam, or

e) He’s more of a jerkwad than I was expecting

Personally, I’m leaning towards b).

But when it really comes down to it, what are you going to do? Pay some private eye to track down his whereabouts, sell everything you own to emmigrate to Europe, show up one night at a place he frequents and when he rebuffs you, break into his house and put up pictures of yourself all over the walls and furniture and burn love threats into his lawn? Pleeeease. That never works.

So I’m going to be blase, because what choice have I got? Besides its wasting too much of my time and I’m too hot and awesome to pine. Pining is for trees and cleaning solvents, and I’m neither.

So the downside of things is that I recognize that some of my efforts are futile. But in the plus column, I got to talk with Ellie this morning while I was cramming French into my brain! Which was really nice and I remembered how much I used to enjoy his company those few months we were nestled together in that square mile of space at UUJ. He’s still one of my favorite people. Unfortunately I’ll never get to hang out with him ever again as long as I live.

My Best Part Time Friend

Every once in a while, you suddenly appear!

So maybe it’s just when you’ve drunk too much beer?

But whatever the reason, I know soon you’ll prob’ly

Show up all witty with a short email volley

And then all at once disappear off the planet

A word here, a sentence, and then suddenly vanish.

Now I’m trying to figure what all it’s about . . .

Say, are you secretly married and your wife just found out?

Do you cyclically go into hiding or something?

Are you a dangerous criminal  who has to keep running?

Did you remember you’re Amish and can’t use a computer?

Are you ashamed to reveal you were recently neutered?

Did you fall off a bridge, as I so casually offer?

Were you kidnapped by pirates or your long lost real father?

Regardless, I hope your adventures delight

And when there’s a lull, I’m sure you will write.

And I’ll be as baffled as always and then

You’ll return to being my best part-time friend.

]]> http://ubermarianne.com/2009/03/23/yet-another-baffling-boy-you-know-who-you-are-maybe/feed/ 0 http://ubermarianne.com/2009/02/23/things-i-shouldnt-have-said/ http://ubermarianne.com/2009/02/23/things-i-shouldnt-have-said/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:36:32 +0000 Marianne http://ubermarianne.com/?p=204 Alright, alright. I admit it. I shouldn’t have been such a jerk to that-erp!-man I was lamblasting yesterday morning. Not sorry enough to take to down though, I guess. No alterations. No going back and changing the past, even when I could and not have to worry about that whole paradoxical killed-my-grandfather-on-accident type of thing. I should be honest. And the honest truth is apparently that I’m kind of cruel and have an anger problem.

No, really, I’m as shocked as you are.

And, in the spirit of being upfront about things that I don’t want to admit, I should say that I’ve also been missing Simon. I broke down and asked him to call me. Argh. Why do I have to be me?

I just don’t understand it. I don’t know what happened. And I keep wondering, have I handled it all wrong? Have I only made it worse? I hate that Simon can be even more stubborn than I am. I used to put the townsfolk to shame but I’ve gone soft in my old age. Determination? Yes. Discipline? Of course. But stubbornness for it’s own sake? Useless.  Life is bone crushing enough without holding on to any sort of pride or anger or bitterness or even hurt. Every day holds enough difficulty and need for the intervention of God without adding to it the hardheartedness of yesterday. Matthew said it nicely, Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

But maybe that’s not what this is about. Maybe stubbornness has nothing to do with it. Maybe Simon’s just gotten wise. Maybe he’s just thinking that he trusted me when he shouldn’t have and now he won’t trust me when he finally should. I was too good at lying, being a hypocrite. I thought I could sneak by but now it’s time to pay the toll.

I just can’t believe that this is happening, somehow. Yes, I’m a Slow Learner.  I just honestly didn’t know he would do this. I just . . . I honestly thought  . . . I just can’t believe he would let me go through all of this by myself. I can’t believe he would recognize the anguished depths of being so completely left, and then up and leave too.

JOLT.

It’s a pretty surreal experience. Firstly, because I’m sitting here in my underpants. (I apologize for the imagery.) And secondly, because he’s a jackass who I haven’t been interested in coming across in years and who, in effect, ruined most of my romantic relationships and might even be said to have gotten me into this mess in the first place.

He still looks approximately the same, sort of a cross between a Greek philosopher and a Great Ape. He’s married these days, isn’t that wonderful? I’m sorry. I’m being bitter. It is wonderful. It’s just so strange, and jarring, and off putting too somehow. It doesn’t seem fair. I suppose these kinds of things never do.

But this is a special case. And one I’m afraid that I’m too afraid to reveal much of here. It’s funny. I tell women all the time that they should never be ashamed of what has happened to them, only take responsibility for their choices. Did I have a choice at that time? I don’t know. . . I . . . I don’t think I knew enough then to know even that a choice was presenting itself.

I don’t guess I’m really that bitter afterall though. I mean, this is the plan, right? This is what’s happened. So what’s the use in thinking to myself that I should have that and he this? He should have what he has and be what he is. Because he has it, he is it. Maybe he’s changed. Maybe he hasn’t. Who am I to say what anyone else deserves?

But I wish sometimes that I’d never met him. I say it was because of him, and I don’t mean to imply that I was without agency or wasn’t making up my mind and choosing what I chose. But if it hadn’t been for him, if I’d never known him . . . wouldn’t I have been the blushing bride that Simon wanted? Wouldn’t I have had my children and raised them? Wouldn’t I . . .

Or would I? Is there any way to tell what might have happened if what happened was something else? All I know is that . . . trauma . . . trauma makes its mark on a body. Trauma changes a body’s course. Trauma makes a body forget that it’s more than a body, that it has more to offer. It makes a body think that a body is all it is.

Who do I blame?

I used to not blame anyone. I used to not admit it, even to myself. I wrote about it, briefly, when it first happened, and then I forgot. I forgot. I kept having these strange feelings, and these bizarre compulsions, and I forgot. I didn’t understand, because I forgot. I forgot and I kept forgetting and all the time I knew something was off. I found what I wrote. I’d forgotten how hurt I was. I found what happened, and suddenly things started to make sense.

Who do I blame?

Maybe we all blame ourselves at first. Maybe that’s the way to make sense of it when we don’t want to recognize what it was. Chalk it up to a mistake. My bad. Maybe I blamed myself for not being more savvy. For not “getting it”. For not understanding what was happening.

Maybe I blame him. For not recognizing who I was and that I was more than the summation of my parts. For not thinking about anything but what he’d been taught to think about. Maybe I think he doesn’t even remember that it was me he did this to. Maybe I think he didn’t even remember it happening just a moment later.

And maybe I blame the rape culture. Maybe I blame a culture who shows the world that a woman is a collection of pleasure ports and always available, that this is how she really likes it, that coersion takes the place of connection, that it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Maybe I blame a culture that portrays man as subject and woman as object, woman defined by that which acts upon her, woman made into some thing that can be taken and then left. People make light of women’s bodies being used for profit, especially if it’s someone else’s profit. Other’s don’t get what the big deal is about watching women strip in “gentlemen’s” clubs or being sexed on film by strangers and all the while they are exposed again, and again, and again, and again, to this constant idea that where a woman is, there sex is also. Woman equals sex. And a woman who doesn’t does not compute.

A woman who doesn’t is treated like she does.

Insert Jarring Subject Change Here.

I was talking with Stephen tonight after we saw Fireproof at the Danberry Dollar Saver (not as bad as I thought it might be, I’ll be honest). He was remarking on how some (private and not to be disclosed here) things in the past had really injured him but that he wasn’t angry over them, and I mentioned that it’s very difficult to be hurt by someone or something and not become angry. I know this because I’ve been in that place before and had to recognise the true source of my upset. I know this because I’m there now.

You see, Simon and I are on the outs. I really don’t know why. I mean, there are lots of reasons to choose from for his writing me off, but all of those have come and gone at least four years ago. There is nothing current I can find to make him suddenly change his mind. So what gives? What IS all this?

And, yeah, I’m angry. I want to take him by the shoulders and shake him. Lucky for him, he lives an ocean away. Lucky for him, he doesn’t have to take the initiative to make it right unless he wants to. I have no way of holding him up to honesty if he doesn’t feel like it. And it seems so unfair.

Maybe I deserve it. I probably do. But I don’t like it and I expected more from him. I didn’t expect him to scare so easy and avoid so adeptly. Maybe he isn’t the person I thought he was. But then, at this juncture, how can I really tell what he is? I feel so disappointed. Disappointed in him, yes, and disappointed in our friendship.

So I’ll say here what I can’t say there, which is this: You want to be my friend, then be it. You may not like what I used to be, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a responsibility to behave like my brother in fellowship no matter what I’ve done that you didn’t like. Maybe you have a difficult time trusting again, but the Lord has done a work in me and how can you discount that? Especially when you’ve mentioned yourself that you recognize the fruits of God’s labor. This isn’t about me, this is about bitterness and fear, and I don’t accept either. You have been indecisive, inconsistant, and dishonest. So forget you.

I won’t really forget though. I need to talk to him and get things clear between us. But how do I make him stay and listen to all I say? And for that matter, how do I keep a wave upon the sand?

I said: “Wow. You should give a seminar.”

I thought: “I know you’ve been hurt. But will you ever see what He’s made me? Will you? It’s a matter of will at this point, you know.”

He said: “You have forgiveness, but you also have consequence. And not everyone is going to see what I see when they look at you.”

————————————————————————————————–

he said: “I don’t want to get distracted. I’m just trying to sit back and see what He has for me, if you know what I mean.”

I said: “That’s wonderful. I want to do that too.”

I thought: “What He has for you may not be what you want Him to have. What He has for you is up to Him.”

He said: “I told you before. I have a purpose in this. I have a purpose in everything.”

————————————————————————————————–

he said: “I have to think about it. I just don’t know.”

I said: “Tell me one way or the other. You don’t not know. If you don’t want to, then you don’t want to. If it isn’t yes, it’s no.”

I thought: “You’re afraid and you have every right to be. You’re afraid, but you won’t get any further until you aren’t.”

He said: “Forget everything else. My will will be done.”

—————————————————————————————————

So I don’t know if or when or that I’m  going to visit Simon. And it’s devastating. Ridiculous.

It’s stupid. It’s such a little thing. It’s so small. I try to compare it to the heart dropping valleys of these past months and it seems so inconsequential. But it aches so deeply. I don’t understand.

Simon thinks that I’ve only had these past few months of waiting. But it’s been four years. It’s been four years of wishing I had been different, more aware, more in tune, more . . . not what I was. Everybody knows. Even Mark said I was in love with Simon. But what’s it matter? What difference does it make? None, as I’m finding out. What’s done can’t be undone. And he will never trust me again.

I don’t mind answering all the probing questions he can come up with. I don’t mind proving myself. I asked him to test me. I asked to be set to a task with full confidence that the power of He who is within me would take me to it’s righteous conclusion. But he has no test to give. He has already made up his mind.

I fear I’ve been a fool. But, no, I think, no, I’ve been prayerful about this. I have consulted with my Lord and this is the answer I’ve come up with. I have tried to be as mindful as I could and I come over and over again to the same place. A place where I pin my hopes on the resolution of our past relationship and the beginning of one that is honest and edifying and an encouragement and help to us both. Have I got my heart set, to the exclusion of Divine Instruction?

I let it lie for the moment and return to my life. I grieve.