Archive for the ‘journal’ Category

The opportunity costs of playing it safe (in love)

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

After the whole set of Juli misadventures, I found myself incredibly cynical. I’d see ads in the newspaper for diamond rings and such, and I’d scoff at the naiveté of these fools rushing into love, not knowing how much hurt lay in store for them. Part of me wished I could simply forget my pain and enjoy the veil of innocence I was once under. I’m sure, however, it was more than anything simply the sting of betrayal mixed with a bit of jealousy.

After a while, though, I tried to get back into the game a bit. I was seeing a girl for a bit… there was a good chemistry, and we had fun together, but I purposefully didn’t make any overtly romantic gestures. So, it was a friendship with an interesting chemistry and the possibility for Friends-with-benefits.

But I still sat on it: for two reasons. A) I didn’t want to get hurt, so I was being careful; B) I didn’t know whether I was interested in this girl long term, and I worked with her and had kinda integrated her into my friendship base. So, after about two months, things kinda came to a head, and she disengaged, not even wanting to talk to me for about a week. In the end, we’ve become pretty fast friends again, but we’re not as thick-as-thieves as we were doing that two month stint.

I bring this story up because when it kinda fell apart, I was surprisingly unhurt by it all. I’m the type of guy who falls in love really darn easy. Perhaps it’s abandonment issues or something, but when I find someone who wants to be with me, I fall right in, even if it’s wrong. This time, however, it was strangely easy for me to maintain that emotional distance I’d never done before. Could it all have been something more if I’d just jumped in? Certainly, multiple mutual friends have said so since. But in the end, I know that the relationship couldn’t have lasted, and I’m happier thinking that months or years later, I can call her a friend instead of an ex-girlfriend.

But the crux is this: at some point in each new relationship, one must ask oneself, What am I willing to risk? For the chance to see if this could be something stellar, what am I willing to sacrifice if I’m wrong?  What level of hurt am I willing to sustain for the possibility of joy?

I’ve managed to not get hurt over the last year and a half, but at the same time, I wonder… what have I missed out on, too? What has playing it safe really gained me?  What opportunities am I essentially choosing to pass up in order to continue to don this armour?

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borne ceaselessly back into the past

Friday, February 6th, 2009

I don’t know why I care; certainly the knowledge that she must be out there lingers unquestioned.

A search through my browser history will demonstrate that every two or three weeks, I find myself looking for traces of her. Yet, when I do, I am simultanesouly disappointed and relieved. Why do I look?  In life, Julianne kept a bizarrely low profile; she hated other people knowing what she was doing. She was the most private individual I’ve known.  I don’t think I quite appreciate how deeply she let me in, nor fully understood the extent to which she would end up compartmentalising her life when I was no longer the primally intimate force in it I had once been.

I must presume that she’s moved on, that she’s paid off her debt (largely in part to the property settlement that left me deeply in debt); that she’s found a place of her own that isn’t the type of shithole she lived in after she left me but while we were still in communication; that she’s been dating others, fallen in love–I have no reason to not believe that she isn’t romantically involved with Josh, the guy she dated for a year and a half before we met, and whom she left to entertain dating others when I first asked her out.  I have no reason to not believe all these things are true, andI accept them, but it’s easier to simply accept them as abstractions, and not know, not have the presumptions verified.

I’ve tried so hard to purposefully distance myself from her–because I know I’m still not over her.  If she once again were even the remotest presence in my life, I’d break down and try to figure a way to make it work, and if I couldn’t, if she’s moved too far on, that I’d kick myself once again for the choices I made that led to the end of the marriage and then our subsequent contact in the first place.  It’s a kind of self-destruction I know I’d bring on myself and which I cannot afford to, no matter how much I love her. So, I maintian distance.

She sent me a birthday card and a present; I ignored it entirely.  I almost would prefer her to think that I don’t exist or care anymore. That’s better than the forever temptation of wanting to resurrect something that hurt me so deeply.  People ask me if I miss Califrnia–more than I’d like to admit; it’s one thing to think of each new day in each new place as an adventure. But the best days of my life were somewhere else, with or without her–a place that I feel exiled from simply because I can’t stomach the thought of being so potentially close to her and to not be with her.  To be in such geographic proximity and to yet maintain distance in our personal lives.  It is far easier to be 1500 miles away where it isn’t a faint possibility.

But distance melts away with new social networking.  When I first joined Facebook about three months ago, I entertained a few searches, and was relieved/disappointed to find she hadn’t yet made her way here.  But with each new friend from my past, deeper and deeper connections to my past were forming. After Juli and before Juli were fine. But the degrees of separation kept narrowing with each new friend. Luckily, I’ve altogether avoided friending anyone who might still have a connection with her. But the other day, the photographer at our wedding, and an old mutual acquaintance (who was a closer friend to her than to me) contacted me.  I ignored him.

But I can’t go on like that indefinitely.  How much power do I give this one person to dictate who I will and will not be friends with? It’s not their fault. They didn’t particiupate in the demise of our relationship (although those who watched it unfold and chose to remain her friend despite its end, I still resnt and have a hard time forgiving). But the merest inkling of a connection is like kryptonite to my social soul.  I don’t want to know what’s going on in their worlds, simply on the offchance that their path may intersect with hers, and then I’d know about it.

Well, it was a matter of time.  After watching a tech interview with the founder of a new social connectivity service called Gist, it occurred to me that the entire world is about this connectivity; this is our future.  Despite how private she is, our paths are bound to reconnect, no matter what I do.  I performed a Facebook search, and sure enough, there is a new profile with her name.  A search of friends don’t reveal anyone who’s a common connection, but the location of the two friends she has clearly show that it’s her.  And so now what?  Reconnecting with her is a button-click away. Why would I do it?  Why wouldn’t I?  She was my best friend for eight years, and since then, I haven’t come close to that level of personal intimacy and I miss it terribly. Her biggest lament about ending our marriage was that she’d lose her best friend. We both did.  But to touch that soul again would be like putting my hand deep into the fire, expecting the heat to not burn my hand.

She’s out there in the world. But, what did I expect?  Why do I care?

How much of my past must I destroy to move forward?  Like a riptide, it continues to pull me under and draw me back: in my soul, in my mind, a yearning so real it’s in my body.

But I’d still rather set fire to it all than relive it another second.

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The deep memory of… things.

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

OK, here’s where I journal the crap out of a topic I’m hoping to purge as completely as I can from my life: my inability to move on from my marriage.  Expect a lot of this.

I’m doing this here because it’s becoming clear to me that as much as my friends love me, there’s only so much they want to hear. And also, there’s only so much that should be permissible for me in everyday conversational dialogue about my ex-wife.  My friend, Brian, recently likened the marriage to a zombie: something that’s dead but which still just plain won’t die: something undead.  Unholy.  Something that keeps attacking me and coming back to life no matter what I seem to do to kill it.  But of course, it’s plain to me that I’ haven’t done everything I could or should; it’s no wonder I think about her every day: I still live with her ghost.

Now, I’ll concede that there are still things in this house that belonged to her that I must get rid of.  I’ve come used to seeing them in my line of sight, but when I actually come into close interaction with them, a specific memory is triggered.  And then there are the things that belonged to her that have since become mine.  If I stop to think about it, I’ll remember that it was something that she brought into my life, but in the end, it’s mine now. Those things I can live with… for the most part.

Then there are those things which are on the border.  Like this towel hanger in my kitchen. “Huh?”, you ask.  Let me tell you the story.

Shortly after we moved in, we were unpacking, and I returned home from work one afternoon, and while I was complimenting her on her recent crock pot experiment, she asked me if I noticed anything different about the room.  Of course, it was a new place, a new space, and a new time for us :there were lots of new things each moment.  I’m also not the most visually observant person out there. She knew this, but she always managed to be disappointed if I couldn’t notice what new and wonderful decorating thing she had executed this time.

And, this time, it was the “Coffee Break” towel hanger.  The towels depicted above are towels I bought afterwards, but the hanger is still there.  I just remember how proud she was of this small thing she’d done to introduce some kind of retro artefact into our living space, to make the space that much more “ours”.  It looked great hanging there on that chocolate brown pillar (let me tell you, the colour of this wall was a big deal: brown walls in our domicile were a point of major contention between us when we were first engaged; she never forgave me for not trusting her design sense… then again, I never forgave her for not affording me an opinion contrary to hers).  But nevertheless, it was the perfect addition to the kitchen.  I credit its perfection as the reason why I didn’t notice it.  And so, small as the accomplishment was, she had right to be proud, and it’s the memory of times like that that make me really miss her in my life.

And now, today, whenever I dry my hands: I can’t help but feel her standing there, grinning at this thing that she’d done, tinged with a little disappointment that I hadn’t immediately noticed.  It reminds me how important my opinion of her was to her; how much of what she does is built around other people validating her choices, proving that she’s worth what she knows inside she is.

Anyway, this thing is a fixture in my life, now.  I can’t throw it away.  At least, not until I move out of the house (I’ll probably leave it there when I do).

But, in the meantime, there is plenty of stuff that I do need to let go of.  I’m a sentimantalist.  Memories mean something to me.  Things have stories that mean something to me.  Each thing has a story, and I feel that, in telling it, I can let it go for good.  So, expect to read some stories.

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Monday.January 12, 2009

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

So far, I haven’t really done much “personal” blogging.  Mood hasn’t struck me yet… until now.  I was drafting an email to my friend Sondra (from Flickr) and I waxed a little personal, and I figured the thoughts were worthy of being captured here (given a little editing).  I hope she doesn’t mind the repurposing of thoughts I’d crafted primarily for her consumption…

my day… was a day. i’m so tired these days. i went shopping last night for produce for the first time since i don’t know when.  as i’ve posted previously, i’m on the south beach diet.  so, i’ve been hungry all day–which isn’t supposed to happen with the diet, but i wasn’t really prepared with the making of the lunch and all… and then i had a meeting scheduled at noon, to boot.

ran home early to make sure there was still enough daylight to finish raking leaves, a neverending home project from hell.  damn wind carried leaves from someone else’s yard on over to mine, so i had to redo what i’d completed last night.

exhausted, i went to make dinner, then realised i was missing an ingredient. no prob, store’s only a couple blocks away. came home to find that Macy had nabbed the pack of chicken from the counter and eaten three of the four breasts, with the fourth one dragged all over the carpet.

so, Macy goes into the back yard as punishment (she hates being outside unless she’s on a walk) and i go back to the store again. then comes the cooking–i’m very inexperienced cook. make a gawd-awful mess of it every time. well, the food was pretty tasty, but now there’s a mess, and i don’t have the will to clean, but i have so many other things i need to finish tonight and it’s already almost 10pm.

and so i wonder: where does the day go?

there’s a phrase the french use for homework: “les devoirs“.  it basically means “have-to-do’s”–you know, obligations. and i feel like what’s left of me when work’s done gets sucked into les devoirs.

you know, i didn’t always used to feel like this: that all the obligatory activity at the end of a work day seems to consume all there is of me. i just feel spent and wasted and like i’ve done nothing worthwhile. i think a lot of it has to do with not sharing my waking (and non-waking) time with another soul to share the burden, such that the burdens aren’t burdens, but just moments to be shared and enjoyed. the time after work would stretch into moments worth inhabiting for a while as opposed to just living through them simply to get to the other side.

i miss that… where the mundane things are actually adventures because you have someone to laugh with.

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