For a full hour we sit and talk as if we’re old friends with no problems, like we don’t hate one another, like we’re pleased to hear the others voice on the phone. We sat for a full hour chatting about a friend who has three months to live and how crabby he is waiting to die of cancer. I don’t say how harsh it sounds for you to call him crabby or for you to say his 15 yr old daughter is being unreasonably angry about living with a father who has Schizophrenia and three months to live. Your voice fades into fog and I can hardly hear you but I add a few acknowledgments anyway.
I sit on the other end of the line busying my hands, tightening my lips. I think to myself how I hate you but it doesn’t come out. I just politely listen, the same as you do. Do you care if the two foster dogs are doing well? Perhaps but it’s not high on your list of subjects you’d choose to discuss. I can tell you’d like to rip my head off. You’d like to tell me about myself and how I’ve hurt you and that you’re leaving. You’re angry, I can tell but like me you’ve chosen to not talk about the important stuff. Like me, you’ve chosen to toss your hands in the air and let this end again….that is until one of us can’t handle the lack of pain in life and need a fix from the other.
I want you to know I spoke with other people today and that you’re not the only person in my life so I casually bring up having spoken to D from down the street. I bring up Holiday because I know you’re jealous of her, for what reason I’m not sure other than we’ve spent time together. It’s not that I greatly enjoy making you jealous I just feel the need to push you away. I want to make sure that despite your desires you don’t change to my bank, don’t start at my doctor’s office, don’t start leaving comments on my blog or my friend’s blogs. I want you to know we are separate people but I do so in rather passive aggressive ways. I can pretty much hear you seething on the other end of the phone. Because there is a tiny bit of backbone left in you that boyfriend of yours comes up. You’re having lunch tomorrow. I respond without anger, without alarm, without much concern at all. We pass little jabs like this for maybe 20 more minutes then offer well wishes for the night. Somehow I love you comes across your lips and I marvel at how fitting it is to end a wholly sick conversation.
UPDATE:
I push her away trying to make a clear division between her and myself. She doesn’t seem to know where she stops and where I start. I don’t think she should become my agent and promote my art site. I don’t think she needs to go to the same medical doctor I go to or switch over to my bank or go to my dentist or only go to the store on my side of town. I don’t think she realizes we are not the same person. Her favorites are not mine and mine are not hers but she sure tries to make it that way. In my efforts to claim what is mine I push her away.
She lays claims on things and really makes me angry. She purchased ink for the PC one time. According to her every piece of art printed from that ink came from her too. No, I don’t think so. I like using a Cola glass she gave me. She brings up how happy she is she gave me the glass. Perhaps I’m a bit too sensitive about her but I kind of resent that she’d feel the need to be part of most things in my life or make herself responsible or partly responsible for happiness big or small.
I absolutely NEVER told her she could call me Ducky or Little Duck. I had to put a stop to that. She can’t call my little one’s her “special little one’s” or her “friends”. The last thing she needs to do is attempt to get close to a little one just to say something hurtful. That wouldn’t go over very well at all. I have parts of me and parts of my life that do not belong to her but she doesn’t get that. There is no boundary line between me and her which causes a lot of difficulties. She’ll go through my journals, my closets, open closed keepsake boxes and things along that line as if she has a right to everything I own. I have major issues with that. I guess when I feel like someone is attached so much that I have to find a way to make a dividing line. I should do it in healthier ways though. Sometimes I think the only thing she understands if harsh words but you know, I don’t like talking to people like that. It happens but I certainly don’t like it.
Austin
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 - 12:43AM EST
hey austin! i just want you to know im still around, and tho i seem to jave so much trouble getting to my blogs these days, i still try to get by and at least read some of my favorite writers. i miss my daily visits, and look forward to getting back to daily posts/comments.
kïrstin☼
dont forget me
I know this old “dance of intimacy” so well: one partner pulls away just as the other is reaching to pull her closer, etc.
You and Blossom have years of shared history. It’s not easy to let that go, no matter how much disgust you may at times feel for one another. I do hope she knows that jealousy is not necessarily evidence of love. Most often it’s more about the insecurities of the one feeling jealous than it is anything else.
There are few things sadder than love gone sour. I could picture the two of you on the phone, wanting to say so much but holding it in out of wariness of going down that road yet again. I’ve been in that situation and know the varying emotions which go along with the shared burden of sour history.
Austin,
I am so new to your blog and am just getting the jist of the story with Blossom. I don’t feel able to comment at this point but wanted you to know that I am still here for you, still reading your blog everyday and sending you many, many wishes for things to all work out the way you want them to.
Tamara
Like Beauty said jealousy and thoughts of a person from the past are not indications of continued love or longing. Sometimes it’s just a missing of someone (anyone) to talk to or relate to or share a common laugh.