Looking Back 43 – The old is still new

I somehow managed to finally fall asleep. The weather was cooler than normal, so it was nice to be in bed resting.

I didn’t immediately get out of bed upon waking up. I knew well what had evolved the previous night: he wanted to drive all the way over here and show up (not exactly unannounced); better yet, surprise me on Valentine’s weekend.

You’re probably thinking why I didn’t go for it when I keep saying that I should get exposed to these type of situations.

As stupid as it may seem, I wasn’t up for it last night. Blame it on my comfy bed, me being tired, or perhaps that I had washed my hair and didn’t want to get it messed up.

It just gets to the point that if you know nothing else will evolve here, why put your time and emotions into it?

I know I could just do it for the fun of it and later remember the incident as one that made this particular weekend unique.

But as weird as this may sound, perhaps the real reason is that I unconsciously felt this would be a grown-up version of what happened during high school.

The memories are limited, but between what I’ve learned from his stories and the little I remember, the scenario is just the same: he’s into me, but not enough or interested to taking it further.

That I could have had a jolly, good time (and maybe more) is true. But at this point in my life, I’ve learned to do that with my girlfriends, but most importantly, on my own, without the need of having a guy next to me.

And then, at exactly 10:10am, the beach guy resurfaced.

‘Good morning. You know I would have driven there for the day,’ text he.

‘But you’re with your daughter.’

‘She’s 17 and her 18-year-old brother is here. They will be fine overnight or for the day. I could have even left late last night, but you were so stubborn about your address. I guess you didn’t get the hint.’

‘I fell asleep. And thought you couldn’t leave your kids home alone.’

‘The little one is out of state and the two I have with me are old enough to be alone.

‘You can still come here. I have off tomorrow.’

‘I have to work tomorrow and I’m not driving there just to be with you for a couple of hours.’

See what I mean? It felt just like the good old days. He would spend a few hours with me at the beach and off he went. The day would have evolved the same, minus the location.

I was sort of still questioning myself about my indifference, but not any more. You realize what I did? I rejected him!!

Wow! And maybe for the first time, the sand blew up to him and hit him hard on the face. Nice!

This is definitely one memory I’m surely not forgetting.

Putting Yourself Online 31 – The hard truth

I made the call and about 4 rings later, got his voicemail, not with his voice, but those who are automated (‘You have reached the mailbox of…).

I’ve always hated those, so impersonal and robotic. Besides, he’s a guy and the voice is that of a woman. Why aren’t there other alternatives that might ‘personalize’ it somehow?

So, in my usual manner, I left Ivan the same message I always do. “Hi, Ivan, it’s me, Emma. Just calling to say hello and know how things are going with you. Hope all is well. Call me if you can.”

He called me back about 3 days later while I was at work. That’s what usually happened; he would either never return my call, or do so at a day and time it would be difficult for me to give him my undivided attention, forcing the call to conclude quickly.

I know he’s always busy and returning my call it’s done in-between the little free time he has. But the real reason he would do it this way is because he’s not much of a talker, especially with me. He knows I will tell him the truth about his existence and, when I do, I’m not nice.

But this time around, I was the one who needed to be listened to. It was almost the end of the year and this one had been particularly difficult.

On top of that, I was still without a guy, would have been my 20-year anniversary, as well as my late father’s birthday.

At work, things were complicated as well. My boss was giving me a hard time and the other assistant couldn’t take the heat from her either.

Every day that I would walk through the door, this person would have a long face and would immediately start bitching about the boss.

Everything just piled up and I was reaching my breaking point. I didn’t know what to do. Beyond feeling that life was unfair to me, I felt time kept going by and I was stuck in the same place as always. That moment of great change hasn’t happened and was wondering if it would ever do.

“Hey, Ivan, how are you?”

“Fine, sweetie; how are you? Sorry I’m calling you at work.”

“It’s all right; I can talk for a few.” Lucky me, my boss wasn’t in the office. “Actually, no, I’m not that well.”

“What’s going on? Talk to me.”

“Question is, what has not happened to me.”

And just like that, this need to cry out all my emotions suddenly overwhelmed me.

No turning back now. Have to let it all out.

Putting Yourself Online 30 – What will move me

I think I finally called Ivan around 11pm on a weekday. Sometimes he does answer and when he does, he sounds like he just got out of hibernation.

He’s in this world, but so tired I can tell by his voice that he wished he were ‘in a place far, far away’.

Well, I don’t blame him. Don’t we all feel this way sometimes?

Starting with me, I’ve thought about this many times. Even some people have encouraged me to do so. They have suggested that I should consider moving to another state and start over.

They all ask me the same question: What is holding you here?

I may not have much of a life here with my so-called job, few friends and family, and almost non-existent social life.

But I’ve made of my space the best thing possible, enough to make my daily time worthwhile without putting too much thought into it.

I won’t deny there are moments when I totally despise every part of it and wonder what my future holds. I also know that others have it worse than me and I have much to be grateful for.

But, I have visited other cities and, for some reason, none have given me that indicative that this is where I should be.

I have made of my current location home and it seems it will be that way for a while. In a weird, inexplicable way, I sort of like it here.

Is it really or is there something else? Am I fooling myself when the real reason behind all this is that I’m scared of making another drastic change?

Not sure. Some years have passed since I became single again and feel pretty good about myself, so why not go for it?

Maybe that extraordinary experience that I’ve been waiting so much for could actually happen soon. And if I leave, it won’t.

Fine, call me a dreamer or whatever crosses your mind. I think it’s not time, not just yet. When will that be, if that?

I’ll just say, I’ll give it some more time.

Friendship Above All 29 – Timing is everything

I took the courage to finally make the call and sort of hoped it would go straight to his voicemail, but it didn’t. He answered almost right away.

“Hey! How are you?” said he very enthusiastically. I wasn’t expecting such a warm welcome.

It was so unexpected I had no idea how to respond. I took the easy way of instead talking about our lives since we last spoke up to the present.

I let him do most of the talking to gain some time while I organized my thoughts.

When all was pretty much said, I knew it was ‘now or never’ to say what I really needed to.

“Listen…the real reason why I called you was because things did not end the right way and that’s not really how I like things to happen.

I know it has been some years, but I’m sorry for whatever I did to you that probably hurt you. It all happened during a difficult time for me and I just didn’t know how to handle the situation.”

I had just finished my sentence when he quickly responded, “if it was a bad time for you, it was equally for me.”

Wow, now that I didn’t expect! So that’s what’s it came down to. It wasn’t our time. Question is, could it be now?

I felt a huge sense of relief and more of a reason to make an effort to renew our friendship.

The conversation ended well and he said he would call soon to meet up one day. Sounds good to me. Hope he does.