Friends and Monsters
It’s been a little over a month since N and I returned from Charleston and I was at dinner tonight and the Snake said it’s been over a month and it seems like longer cause all these things have happened with you, but N has been pretty constant = he is home now and working on his marriage and having things both ways.
I was telling S about the whole dinner conversation and she said it seems like everyone is concerned about me waiting around for N and that is why they say what they do to me about him, about everything else, and so take it that people care.
I am not quite sure what all these caring people would have me do right now to satisfy whatever it is that is making them concerned – would they like to me to start seeing someone else? Would they prefer that I curse N and say he is a waffler? It’s really quite unbelievable that everyone would have me be doing something other than what I am doing so they feel as if things are right with the universe or they feel that they can say I told you so. Because believe me a lot of them are waiting to say that – it’s on the tip of their pointed tongues.
As I see it I have always been a supporter that if the situation is better where he is then he should stay there. I’ve repeated this as a mantra to him from the beginning. Staying in his marriage is not fucking me over as much as everyone would like to have me believe it is – I have no doubt that N loves me whatever choice he makes. Does his confusion make me love him less – no, not in the least. Do I still hold out hope for him to be in my life other than as a friend, yes, naturally I do. But things are going to unfold as they are going to and I’m a big girl and will act accordingly. When I think back to what was originally going to be the plan, time seems to have collapsed into a small marble.
What’s difficult is that everyone else seems to really believe they know what is going to happen with him, with us, with me. And I say to them you don’t know him so you don’t know squat. N says he is still confused and I’ve asked him point blank if he has an expiration date on that excuse and really he doesn’t. And we laughed, because he knows that my head isn’t focused on expiration dates. But he is trying to do what is right by him and those he loves and for that he must be commended even if it doesn’t necessarily cast him as a man of action – one who knows what he wants and gets on it. He doesn’t know what to do or sometimes when he does, he doesn’t know how to do it. There it is. The Good Heart will help him find that clarity.
For me, I feel like I’m going about my life and getting what needs to be done done. I don’t sit around and think about N because I don’t have to think about him – he is present in my mind without having to conjure him. He still makes me laugh. He is still loving and supportive. I still adore him even though he hates that word. And I’m not interested in what others see as his shortcomings because I have and they have enough shortcomings to keep us occupied for years to come without having to tear N’s apart on a daily basis.
At the end of the day, it’s how I feel and what makes me happy and right now I am content to have him in my life and while the uncertainty of what he is going to do does loom – it is not impossible to deal with – it just is what it is. He is wont to tell me how he still doesn’t know if he is going to deliver the crushing blow to me. I’m a big girl dude is all I tell him. If it is all a set up for heartbreak I am not scared to face it because there are a few options and they all involve choices and in the end he will make his choice and my choice is that any involvement with me involve certainty, not hesitation.
What I’ve seen is that some of my friends have pegged N for someone who he is not and I think I know a N who is not the cad that some would like to label him. W told him he doesn’t always have to be the bad boy but there is a bad boy aspect of N that is his appeal – it doesn’t necessarily have to manifest itself in infidelity or the like – but bad boy it is and that is a part of him that I don’t want to see go away. What these people don’t seem to want to realize is the good boy – the one that loves his children, loves his friends and family, and who wants to be loved in return. “Luv me?†It’s not all bad boy-itis.
P told me last night after a Manhattan or two that C left and then went back under a sea of confusion and left again – broke her heart she said – but now after more than a decade together she is able to think of that time in abstract. I’d rather no back and forth, I’d rather a certainty of what is or is not, and if that requires time spent doing homework – then so be it. Know thyself was my message to him a while ago.
And when people like to predict the outcome of my life I think back to the wanting to get pregnant and everyone saying S will come around – just do it – and then the whole two years and ten miscarriages and friendly advice that I received – oh this time it will happen was the one everyone pulled out of their back pocket most often – no one knew what was going to happen – and in the end no one knew anything at all least of all were they able to predict the future or know S or my mind in any of it.
L called and we talked about the omniscience of people and how they all smugly think they have the answers. Like N said in response a month ago – if she thinks she knows what I am going to do could she tell me because I would like to know. And L sent a text to K today even though they are having a moratorium right now that he misses her and then he asked me don’t I have a right to let her know?
We all have a right to feel or behave the way we do. I am not going to hide from the fact that I am in love with N, nor should L hide from the fact that he misses K while she goes through her issues. In the words of Rodney King can’t we all just get along. Because I can tell you with certainty that N will do what is right for him in the end, and I will do what is best for me. And that’s the best of all possible worlds.
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:36 pm
This is a very moving and thoughtful entry, one of your best, if not the best.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:38 pm
-This is a very moving and thoughtful entry, one of your best, if not the best.
I disagree. The words “missive” and “banal” are notably absent.
January 24th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Someone reading the blog said to me recently, “do you think R’s blog is a cry for help?” prompting me to drop in and check on my friend because, to be honest, your blog has been too painful for me to read. In reading this entry, I would like to clarify my remarks about the motivations of people imposing their opinions. I can’t speak for others but I am concerned that your every action, every breath, every thought is driven by the fact that you are consumed with thoughts of N (you can think or speak of little else) and that you are not living your life. Instead, YOUR life hinges on the decisions and actions of N. I hope the best for you, I really do. I know “the best” for you (in your mind) would be to end up with N at any cost. But “the best” for you (in my mind) would be that despite the difficult things you’ve faced recently, you pick yourself up and carry on with your life — being interested in your work, being interested in your friends’ lives, being interested in exercising, laughing, enjoying life — rather than sitting around waiting for N to make a decision. He’s getting on with his life, trying to make decisions that are right for him. Get on with your life, make it full and rich with the activities, people and things you love. I’m not implying you cut N out of your life, I am asking you to value yourself enough to carve a life for yourself. And if/when N becomes part of your life, I know your friends will support it. I love you. But I wish you could see yourself from the outside looking in….painful watching someone I love behave the way you have been behaving; it literally makes me sick to my stomach because I worry the final outcome may not go your way when everything you are, everything you hope for hinges on only one outcome that is pretty much out of your control right now. So I say this: don’t be so hard on your friends who are trying to help you the only way they know how; if you could see you the way we see you I think you might be a little more forgiving.