Last night, I was telling a friend about a situation in my (love) life but I didn't get through it because fate, in the form of a cell phone call, intervened. Damned technology. But what part I did get to tell was very therapuetic for me so I think I'm just going to post the whole thing here.
Anyway, I met this girl at work...my first day. It was only a month or two after my mom had passed and I wasn't in the mood for love at the time, but I still took a fancy to her right away. Well, because of my lack of desire to get into a relationship, but my still being interested, it so happened that she and I started to become friends. We'd work together, take breaks together, go to movies and hang out together outside of work. It was swell. Really swell.
But as time went on, the feelings that had been there from the beginning started to grow as the death of my mother (the only real emotional barrier that had, for the time, kept me from wanting to get involved with anything) started to become less all-encompassing in my emotional life. So I started trying to push our friendship into "that" direction. For months I tried, for months I went through an emotional rollercoaster.
At first all was cool, I asked her out, she said yes, but I don't think she knew that I had done so wanting it to be a "date". We went, everything was nice, I thought that maybe it was going to go somewhere. Then I went to Europe for a few weeks. From there I called, I brought her a gift, she seemed entirely grateful for my thoughtfulness. And so I thought, "damn this is great". But then it didn't seem to go anywhere further for a few weeks. I brought it up to her, "what's going on here? Between us, I mean." I asked. "Well, I'm really busy, Kyle, you know that. You always aske me to do things on weeknights, you should ask me out on the weekend."
Score! The hormones were in gear and I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was getting myself into a real relationship. But the euphoria was short-lived. Within a week or two or three, we hadn't moved forward with the relationship that I thought for sure was starting to bud. I started losing hope, I started thinking that I was crazy and that this was never going to happen. But then it happened again, just as I was giving up hope on all of it, she made a little gesture -- a tap on the back and a girly little wave and giggle as if to say "hi Kyle, my day is complete now that I have seen you". That's all it took really and I was on cloud nine. I must have been impatient, I thought, I must have not been reading the signs right. She obviously wanted this to move on, just like I did, she just, like she said, didn't have the time at the time (and for the record, she was working three jobs and had just bought a house). Heaven.
But heaven clouded up again over a few weeks as nothing still happened. We still hung out, we still talked, we still went to lunch together and the movies. Even a concert or two or three. But "it" wasn't happening, the spark just wasn't there. My hopes fell again. Until another sign, another answer to my lingering question of "what gives here?" came and went, and then another, and then another...a series of ups and downs.
Of course, all the while, her good friend (and our mutual coworker) was egging me on, telling me to keep trying, telling me that it would happen at some point. Everyone that knew the both of us would tell us "you two are a cute couple" or "she's a good girl, Kyle, hold on to her" and I would smile and say "yeah, she damn well is" and be chipper as a boy in love for a day or a week.
But nothing ever came. It wrenched at my heart, it poked at my heart, I began to have anxiety attacks, and couldn't sleep. Nothing was happening but at intervals. Up and down I went in my little bipolar relationship until suddenly I called it quits. I realized what was going on. She didn't want to hurt me, she didn't want to ruin our friendship, she didn't want to deny my worth as a guy so obviously infatuated with her. But she didn't want me as anything more than a friend either. She had played along because she knew that it meant a lot to me that we be something. She offered a taste of girlfriendom in an attempt to appease my appetite. She had been leading me on, unintentionally, because she didn't want to break my heart. That was sweet. But in the end it required that I figure it out all on my own that this thing wasn't going to happen, she wasn't going to tell me. I had to take the initiative to stop before it got so uncomfortable for both of us that one of us would have to stop us from being friends. But I did, and it was rough, but once I finally accepted it, it was an amazing feeling...like one of that first breath after trying to swim across a pool underwater. I was free and we were free. And we could again be "just friends". Secure in that, or so I thought.
For I had damaged that friendship in the process. I had been too...there. I had been too emotional, too, well, creepy. It isn't a comfortable position to be at the end of a crush for months and months at a time, trying to be a good friend and not hurt the other all the while trying not to give the wrong impression. Sometimes she would slip -- and I in all of my hopefulness and optimism would see that slip as a sure sign that things were going my way. But they weren't that. They were just slips. I had misread them, and now the thought of those slips hounded her and she was afraid of making any more. Even though I had given up on the pursuit, she hadn't accepted that as the case...she had seen me give up too many times before only to come roaring back. And so things became wierd as the only way to avoid a slip is to stay comfortably away from the line -- not be too nice, not be too present in my life. And our friendship suffered.
And even now, after two years or so, it is still suffering. We can again talk, we can again hang out, but it still not the same. That closeness is gone, that insecurity that she developed is still there. And it kills me that I was such a fool. A stupid, infatuated fool that let my hormones and hopes get the best of me and made my mind go to goo.
The End.
I share that now because it's been bottled up for way too long and the fact that lately I have been discovering that it isn't such a personal story after all. It's something that a lot of my friends have gone through, something that some of them still go through. Unrequited attraction is a very ugly thing..ugly because our minds are so easily distracted away fromt he reality of the situation by our hopes and dreams. I know, and so do a lot of other people. And I feel a hell of a lot better knowing that I am not the only one. And now I share in the hopes that others can feel the same way, that, yes, there are others that have gone through the same thing...it's not just them. It's us all and our desire to be loved. Pitiful as it may be, we are all in the same big boat.
God bless.
Anyway, I met this girl at work...my first day. It was only a month or two after my mom had passed and I wasn't in the mood for love at the time, but I still took a fancy to her right away. Well, because of my lack of desire to get into a relationship, but my still being interested, it so happened that she and I started to become friends. We'd work together, take breaks together, go to movies and hang out together outside of work. It was swell. Really swell.
But as time went on, the feelings that had been there from the beginning started to grow as the death of my mother (the only real emotional barrier that had, for the time, kept me from wanting to get involved with anything) started to become less all-encompassing in my emotional life. So I started trying to push our friendship into "that" direction. For months I tried, for months I went through an emotional rollercoaster.
At first all was cool, I asked her out, she said yes, but I don't think she knew that I had done so wanting it to be a "date". We went, everything was nice, I thought that maybe it was going to go somewhere. Then I went to Europe for a few weeks. From there I called, I brought her a gift, she seemed entirely grateful for my thoughtfulness. And so I thought, "damn this is great". But then it didn't seem to go anywhere further for a few weeks. I brought it up to her, "what's going on here? Between us, I mean." I asked. "Well, I'm really busy, Kyle, you know that. You always aske me to do things on weeknights, you should ask me out on the weekend."
Score! The hormones were in gear and I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was getting myself into a real relationship. But the euphoria was short-lived. Within a week or two or three, we hadn't moved forward with the relationship that I thought for sure was starting to bud. I started losing hope, I started thinking that I was crazy and that this was never going to happen. But then it happened again, just as I was giving up hope on all of it, she made a little gesture -- a tap on the back and a girly little wave and giggle as if to say "hi Kyle, my day is complete now that I have seen you". That's all it took really and I was on cloud nine. I must have been impatient, I thought, I must have not been reading the signs right. She obviously wanted this to move on, just like I did, she just, like she said, didn't have the time at the time (and for the record, she was working three jobs and had just bought a house). Heaven.
But heaven clouded up again over a few weeks as nothing still happened. We still hung out, we still talked, we still went to lunch together and the movies. Even a concert or two or three. But "it" wasn't happening, the spark just wasn't there. My hopes fell again. Until another sign, another answer to my lingering question of "what gives here?" came and went, and then another, and then another...a series of ups and downs.
Of course, all the while, her good friend (and our mutual coworker) was egging me on, telling me to keep trying, telling me that it would happen at some point. Everyone that knew the both of us would tell us "you two are a cute couple" or "she's a good girl, Kyle, hold on to her" and I would smile and say "yeah, she damn well is" and be chipper as a boy in love for a day or a week.
But nothing ever came. It wrenched at my heart, it poked at my heart, I began to have anxiety attacks, and couldn't sleep. Nothing was happening but at intervals. Up and down I went in my little bipolar relationship until suddenly I called it quits. I realized what was going on. She didn't want to hurt me, she didn't want to ruin our friendship, she didn't want to deny my worth as a guy so obviously infatuated with her. But she didn't want me as anything more than a friend either. She had played along because she knew that it meant a lot to me that we be something. She offered a taste of girlfriendom in an attempt to appease my appetite. She had been leading me on, unintentionally, because she didn't want to break my heart. That was sweet. But in the end it required that I figure it out all on my own that this thing wasn't going to happen, she wasn't going to tell me. I had to take the initiative to stop before it got so uncomfortable for both of us that one of us would have to stop us from being friends. But I did, and it was rough, but once I finally accepted it, it was an amazing feeling...like one of that first breath after trying to swim across a pool underwater. I was free and we were free. And we could again be "just friends". Secure in that, or so I thought.
For I had damaged that friendship in the process. I had been too...there. I had been too emotional, too, well, creepy. It isn't a comfortable position to be at the end of a crush for months and months at a time, trying to be a good friend and not hurt the other all the while trying not to give the wrong impression. Sometimes she would slip -- and I in all of my hopefulness and optimism would see that slip as a sure sign that things were going my way. But they weren't that. They were just slips. I had misread them, and now the thought of those slips hounded her and she was afraid of making any more. Even though I had given up on the pursuit, she hadn't accepted that as the case...she had seen me give up too many times before only to come roaring back. And so things became wierd as the only way to avoid a slip is to stay comfortably away from the line -- not be too nice, not be too present in my life. And our friendship suffered.
And even now, after two years or so, it is still suffering. We can again talk, we can again hang out, but it still not the same. That closeness is gone, that insecurity that she developed is still there. And it kills me that I was such a fool. A stupid, infatuated fool that let my hormones and hopes get the best of me and made my mind go to goo.
The End.
I share that now because it's been bottled up for way too long and the fact that lately I have been discovering that it isn't such a personal story after all. It's something that a lot of my friends have gone through, something that some of them still go through. Unrequited attraction is a very ugly thing..ugly because our minds are so easily distracted away fromt he reality of the situation by our hopes and dreams. I know, and so do a lot of other people. And I feel a hell of a lot better knowing that I am not the only one. And now I share in the hopes that others can feel the same way, that, yes, there are others that have gone through the same thing...it's not just them. It's us all and our desire to be loved. Pitiful as it may be, we are all in the same big boat.
God bless.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home