Disclaimer: Two-thirds of this post was written weeks ago & has been sitting in the virtual drawer our parents always told us to use before we sent the letter we wrote when we were upset about something. I fully intended to leave it there until a friend suggested I post it to purge any residual feelings I may have. I don't know if I believe that or not, but I do know I need to do something to stop kicking myself for wasting so much time (and for what??) yet again.
The Dear Jane
email finally came – five moths after he walked out my door essentially never
to be seen again. As overly dramatic as
that sounds now; it as close to the truth as I can be without… well sounding
overly dramatic.
After looking for several years he’d just landed not only a
full-time job, but one that was in his field (even if not exactly what he is
going to school for). It was perfect and
he would have time to continue to study for his Masters while at work. He came over the weekend before his first day
& we hung out just as we’d been doing for the last year and a half. A little while before he was getting ready to
leave there was a “change in the air”.
It wasn’t anything concrete; nothing either of us said/did but I could tell
something wasn’t right. I pressed him to
tell me what was wrong but he gave me the same generic answer he gives me when
he’s not ready to talk. Against my
better judgment I let him leave. I had a
pretty good idea what was on his mind and I knew I was just going to have to
let everything play itself out. Besides,
why worry about it now, we had big plans for the next weekend.
Five months, several forgotten plans made long ago, more
canceled dates than I can remember, not to mention more random FB chats about
his ex-wife later and the Dear Jane
email arrives.
No I wasn’t surprised by the email – no that’s not exactly
true. I was completely taken by surprise
that after all this time of complete radio silence on his part he would contact
me practically out of the blue. I will
admit to being blindsided by the explanation as to why 1. we wouldn’t work as a
couple (although he did finally admit that we had been in a relationship all
this time & silly me thought we were doing just fine) or more importantly
to me 2. as friends. WTF?!?! Seriously??
Believe it or not, I felt like the relationship was over
when he left in September; admittedly I did hold out hop we could remain
friends. We promised each other no
matter what happened to our relationship we wouldn’t let our friendship go. What brought us together in the first place
was the fact we both understood what it felt like not to have the ‘one’ person
you could call in the middle of the night “just because”. We were friends before we were more than it
we were supposed to be friends no matter what. It is pretty difficult for me to
realize that the person I felt knew me better than anyone on this planet really
didn’t know me at all. … but here was
unmistakable proof in black and white right in front of my face… he really had
no clue who I was, what I wanted out of life or what I felt about him—nor did
he care.
…oh well… for what it’s worth as the song goes… for once I didn’t disengage…*
♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠
The other weekend a male friend and I were talking about the
Dear Jane email and how much it
reminded him of how he felt he was being treated by the woman he was currently
interested in. “She is constantly
pushing me away, but then sends me texts saying she misses me, cares about me,
and asking me not to give up on her.” I
had to ask if there was the slightest chance she was seeing/or was interested
in someone else (yes hindsight is 20/20). My friend (whom I always tease for
being the White Knight) insisted there wasn’t anyone else “but she’s having
problems with her ex-husband” he added quickly.
I busted out laughing… “Remember what you told me when I
told you I had feelings for ?”
“But this is different” he laughed.
“How so?”
“Because it’s happening to me!”
…hey if you can’t laugh…
♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠♠
The last few days I’ve been getting Facebook messages from
my Dad’s son. (We were never close, but
he stopped being my brother when he refused to accept my phone call regarding
our mother’s impending death.) I haven’t
seen him in over 20 years and frankly I have no desire to at anytime (I only
have him on Facebook in case Dad changes his mind and wants to see him.).
Last year I started getting Facebook messages (I’m starting
to think Facebook is EVIL) from friends of his from high school (he was two
years behind me), and a woman he used to work with years ago informing me that
“something was wrong” with him, that ”he needed his family right now” and/or
“I’m extremely worried about him & I was hoping you could put me back in
touch with him.”
It was very easy to tell his high school friends basically
to f*ck off because they know the majority of what happened years ago. Hell they probably know more of what went
down between him and my parents than I do.
It was this random woman that made my blood boil. She started telling me about their
relationship, how she’d given him money, taken him in…yadda yadda yadda… all
because she felt bad for him because his family turned their back on him! WTH???
She went on to say that according to my former brother, no
one bothered to tell him that his mother had cancer and/or had died. (Since I
was the one that told him she was dying from lung cancer & I was the one that tracked his ass down
in order to get him home before she died I know
that was a lie.) She went on to tell me
that the reason she tracked me down was because the last time she talked to him
(he called her) he called to say goodbye because he had an inoperable cancer (what
and where he didn’t tell her) and had only been given six months to live. She was worried because his cell had been
turned off and she couldn’t get in touch with him.
That was a year ago… and here he is showing up on my
Facebook page asking if I’m ever going to talk to him again. He still hasn’t explained why he wouldn’t
take the phone call when I tracked him down at work to tell him to get his ass
on a plane (Dad had a ticket waiting for him, just like he did for me.) and until then I
have NOTHING to say to him. Now that I know he’s been using Mom’s death
in this manner …. I can’t think of anything that would put him back in my good
graces.
*”What You Own” from RENT
