August 1st 2009
email from me
I have not slept. I am sitting here, freshly showered, naked and waiting for the baby oil to sink in, with a half an hour before I have to leave for the doctor’s.
I am slightly crazed.
So I am going to take this opportunity to ramble some stuff at you that I feel is hovering under the surface. Maybe I’m totally wrong, and there’s nothing there, but if that’s the case, then at least I’m getting my wierd manifestations out into the open where they can be properly disposed of.
See… I felt there was wierdness. Like a big wierdness was narrowly averted or something. And that’s a good thing.
But maybe to further the good thing I can (in a rational and non-adversarial sort of way) explain some parts of my thinking… of my interpretation… of my perspective….
And apologise for not being entirely… up front. About whatever strangeness I might have been giving off.
First, let me mention that… You sometimes become uncharacteristically vauge and tight-lipped about things…. compared to the way you generally discuss things with me. It’s sudden, and tends to stand out a bit. This is almost always when invovling the company of a woman. I noticed it most specifically when you were first begining to deal with some of the social frustrations of your friendship with <Random Chick> and her roommate. Because you’d normally refer to the client casually by name, or with some personal verbal mark of reference…. but with <Random Chick>’s roommate, suddenly you’d play the pronoun game and only refer to her as “client” in this certain and obscure way. Similar ways of speaking pop up when you end up spending an evening with a female friend. Or even a mixed event… if there’s a female present who isn’t immediately identifiable as the significant other of another, you tend to not mention her presence unless completely neccessary.
I don’t know why you do this, and you probably don’t realise you are doing it most of the time. It’s the sort of thing that…. makes one feel like, even if they weren’t, they SHOULD be suspicious of something…. but I’ve learned that you just… seem to speak that way. Maybe you’ve just learned to be more protective of your interactions with women from hanging out with dudes that think you are always getting laid. Maybe you got used to wierdly jealous women or something. Maybe you are trying to be polite to me.
Anyway…. my point is. you get vague.
And… while I’ve come to learn that it’s just how you are about certain things…. (mostly female things)
right at that moment… it’s still a bit off putting and takes a moment to calibrate. If that makes sence.
It’s… well…. it’s just wierd to be telling a close friend (me) that you went down to AC “with a friend” and refer to her only as “she” and only in the most vauge ways possible.
Conversationally, it’s common to mention someone by name, even if that person is unknown. I can’t figure out if yo do this because you think I might get somehow jealous, but if it IS…. it’s probably exactly the wrong tactic to take.
Like I said… I’m not wierdly jealous of women, and it’s rather against my nature to ever assume that just because a male and female are enjoying one another’s company that there’s anything beyond just that; enjoying one another’s company.
– – – – OK, so now it’s much later, I’ve gone to the doctor, slept, and now just woke up with mostly sorta working eyes again, and I think I’ll finish this email now – – – –
But being told in the most obscure and vauge means possible that you went down to AC “with a friend” was an odd and jarring thing. Like I said, I’d figured it was some sort of “Rock bonding” thing, annd I just wasn’t expecting that… The way you explained your trip was done in a FAR more secretive way than I’m used to you being with me….
And that stopped my brain in it’s tracks.
“….. oh.”
And then there’s…. the rest.
Keep in mind, just a few days ago I’d shown you the free hotel thing, and you’d been saying how we should go to a hotel just for fun. Keep in mind that for over a year you’d been telling me that we should go to AC, that you’d bring me down there…. and I’d suggeted it a few times, even… And I’ve never BEEN to AC, and you’d assurred me we’d go, said that you didn’t LIKE AC and it was a waste of time, but that you’d go with me and would have fun there togehter not gambling
So does it bother me that you went off to AC with a lady friend who isn’t me?
Of course! Really, how would I not?!?
Does that mean you shouldn’t have gone?
Christ, no. If you want to go, then you should.
Does it eat away at me that I can’t provide you with the escape from your house for a few days that i used to – that for you to get away you need to look to others because I just can’t offer you anything anymore? Oh, yes yes yes.
But… you still want to escape.
Christ, you deserve someone else footing the fucking bill for a change; all the paying and covering and taking me out all the time that you do…. you’ve fucking earned a night of someone else taking care of the cost and the car… But of course it further bothers me that I can’t be that person. That it’s someone else.
Was I sitting awake, and sleepless, worried and freaked, wishing you online, or willing to talk on the phone Thursday morning? Desperately so. Was I a bit surprised I didn’t hear from you until the wee hours of Friday, (since i’d had that doctor appointment planned and had mentioned it to you a few times)? Yeah, I was a bit. But I’m not your responsibility. I’m not something to be looked after and coddled. You aren’t expected to be available for every bump in the road or scrape on the knee.
Had I been wishing, the moment I found out I was a finalist for this competition, that I had you, first and foremost, to tell? Gosh, yes. But you were already off in AC, a place I thought we’d be going to, and were there without me. This, to me, said it was “non-Rachael time” and i figured it’d be best to wait. To give you your escape time.
But, so…
Yeah, I might have been a bit wierd.
I don’t think my feelings of oddness are outside the realm of being understandable emotional reactions given the situation….
But logically, there’s nothing to be done. It’s not like there’s any offense. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not angry in any way. Or offended. Sometimes the way the world goes isn’t the way I wished. Nothing I ws feeling had anything to do with questioning your “loyalty to our friendship” or anything.
I’m not going to ask you the particulars of your AC trip…. but it does make me feel strange and quarantined to be suddenly …. explained things in so minimal and tightlipped a manner. You just don’t usually do that with me, and i just didn’t think we operated like that, and it’s offputting and a bit sad. We kinda just tell each other stuff. But that’s your every right to be as private or secretive about anything you want. What the fuck am I going to do, MAKE you want to share?
Soooo…. I’m sorry. I probably was a bit wierd, but really, had I said anything, it owuld have come off as accusatory… like you weren’t SUPPOSED to go to AC, which isn’t the case… or that you SHOULD HAVE done this or SHOULDN’T HAVE done that, etc etc etc… which isn’t the case at all.
Nor am I jealous (aside from the fact that I’m jealous that i’m not the person I wish I were so I could be the person to depend on for things sometimes).
Nor am I angry.
It does, from time to time, slightly wound me when you become suddenly and obviously withholding about certain lifebits suddenly. I’m not trying to crawl inside your head and get your deepest desires or make a map of your brain… but sometimes there’s a sudden distance in places that don’t seem private, neccessarily, just “off limits” for reasons I can’t comprehend. But that’s not anything I have right to comment on, really. like you said “you don’t have to understand, that’s the beauty of it”. But… i feel like I should understand. That I’m lacking.
Maybe I tell you too much. Maybe I’m supposed to do the same?
Or… y’know… I just care too much.
I care too much and simple small things get under my skin in ways that just aren’t normal. Because…. you matter to me in so many stupid small ways.
I know that there’s always lead locked box of ‘no one shall enter” in the center of you (i have one too, but it’s smaller)…. but I kinda thought that box was buried deep inside and you and I got to peel off our skin and wrestle about with each other all bloody and naked like that…..
Y’know… and I miss you. There’s that. There’s a lot of that. I miss being able to hole up all dark and comfy somehwere and just be comfortable and not have people to carter to or worry about nearby. I miss long hours of summer dark and bed. I miss hiding under covers and watching things. I wanted to be that hotel room person. So I could leap on you in my pajamas and share morning snacks.
I think this living here and not OG where you could come is still slowly destroying my innards, like my heart is on a barbeque slow cook skewer.
blah.
Anyway… this is really long and I’m getting sidetracked and saccharine.
You are, as ever, my very favoritest human that ever I’ve known.