The friend who I do not want to read this doesn't have access on the weekends (as she only reads this at work), so I'm going to post it again, hoping that I can get some advice on it. Please, I need to know if I'm crazy or not. It will be deleted later...unless I work up the courage (or empathy) to show it to her before Monday morning....
***
I am almost to the point of offically declaring myself out of this agonizing period of self-doubt, paranoia, and hyper-emotionalism that has now lasted over seven months. Though it was hard, it was an amazing journey of self-discovery that has re-affirmed my faith in myself and my own happiness. Even though there are issues still that I need to deal with, I have found myself to have a level of strength and fortitude in the past few days that I haven't been able to muster since August or so. I know that I will be able to work things out in my head and with others where needed, and I am comfortable with the idea that those consequences will be whatever is best...because I will be following my heart.
That said, there is one issue that is bearing a heavy burden on my heart. It involves my best friend. She has just started dating a new guy that she met a couple of weeks ago and she seems very happy and I am happy if she is happy, but there's just something about the guy that bothers me...that he is so much like me. Every word, every last word, that she has spoken about the wonderment of this guy could easily be spoken of me -- attentiveness, niceness, humor, and all of that, including lots of minor details (interest in journalism, the books he reads, interests). But, of course, they are not. The same goes for the last guy that she was pining for for the last nine-months...and even the boyfriend of two years before that to some extent. It freaks me out, it really does, in that she is obviously into guys that are just...like...me, and yet she has never even looked at me in that light, at least that I am aware of. I don't know, it makes me feel ugly or unwanted or at the very least luckless. All I know for sure is that it leaves me confused.
And I don't know if it's jealousy or self-doubt or maybe a little bit of smittenosity that makes me feel this way, but it does bother me. I mean, maybe this is a guy thing, or even just a kyle thing...but if I knew someone that possessed those things that I was looking for in someone to date, if I knew someone that was available, who cared about me deeply and for whom I too cared about deeply, someone that I could confide in and feel safe in confiding in return, someone who was attentive to my needs even when it caused her to make small self-sacrifices, someone who was honest, even willing to be brutally so when the times called upon it, someone that loves me, even if it may be in the platonic sense. If I knew someone that I knew thought of me as her best friend and always would consider me as such, I wouldn't run away from her and off to someone just...like...her. I would run to her. I wouldn't go off somewhere else to try and develop that understanding, that confidence, that love with someone else from scratch, all the while having to play guessing games, setting up ground rules, and all that new relationship stuff...I'd follow the path of least resistence. You know? Because what more can you really ask for than someone like that who I just described? People search their entire lives for that sort of person and oh so many fail, settling for something else because they have grow weary of the search. The world is full of people in mid-life who regret that decision every day. I know many of them.
But, like I said, she doesn't go for that. She runs to other people. That confuses me.
I don't know why she does so. Perhaps I'm not attractive enough or young enough for her (I don't want to think the reason is that vain...and I don't). Perhaps I have failed in letting her see the real me. Perhaps she is scared of the possibilities. Perhaps she doesn't know how good she has it. Perhaps I am not the person that I think I am...perhaps I am completely ignorant of myself. I don't know, and it hurts me that I don't.
But maybe she does realize this (maybe not consciously) and it is the reason that things have been so weird between us for so long. Our friendship is marked by long and short periods of hot and cold. There are times when she has said and done things that made me feel like something was happening. Last Thanksgiving, for instance, I spent the entirity of the weekend wondering if we weren't quickly becoming a couple because the week prior had been a hot spell, and there have been other times that I thought the same thing (once or twice very sexually suggestive)...but each time was followed by a cold snap where there was none of the warmth that she had shown me before...and it sometimes made me snap into a state of bewildered flustration (you know, flustered and frustrated)...sometimes to the point of having a need to ask or say something to her about it. That never went over well...even to the point of her sometimes blaiming me for the tension between us (I've always taken as much of the burdan as I could bare...a product of my patience I guess), always causing a rift for a hour or two, from which we have always, always, been able to forgive and forget. As she has pointed it, our friendship is sometimes not unlike that of an old married couple. And I recognize, too, that our ability to rebound so quickly completely underscores our understanding of each other, our love for each other.
But I am here and she is there.
I am not writing this to say that she and I should enter into a more romantic form of relationship. My biggest fear right now is sounding like I'm saying that she and I "must hook up, or else" or something...whixh isn't the case. I can accept her friendship if that is all that it will ever be. More than that, I will adore her and our friendship forever -- I will always love her as a frIiend. But there's just this funny feeling in my heart that there is more there (and I know that we could have more) and that we're being damn fools, each of us, for behaving the way that we are. All the pieces are there....you know?
Then again, like I am about much, I may be wrong. Who knows? That's what's beautiful about life.
...having read this a long, long time ago and keeping it in my brain ever since hasn't helped me out either.
***
I am almost to the point of offically declaring myself out of this agonizing period of self-doubt, paranoia, and hyper-emotionalism that has now lasted over seven months. Though it was hard, it was an amazing journey of self-discovery that has re-affirmed my faith in myself and my own happiness. Even though there are issues still that I need to deal with, I have found myself to have a level of strength and fortitude in the past few days that I haven't been able to muster since August or so. I know that I will be able to work things out in my head and with others where needed, and I am comfortable with the idea that those consequences will be whatever is best...because I will be following my heart.
That said, there is one issue that is bearing a heavy burden on my heart. It involves my best friend. She has just started dating a new guy that she met a couple of weeks ago and she seems very happy and I am happy if she is happy, but there's just something about the guy that bothers me...that he is so much like me. Every word, every last word, that she has spoken about the wonderment of this guy could easily be spoken of me -- attentiveness, niceness, humor, and all of that, including lots of minor details (interest in journalism, the books he reads, interests). But, of course, they are not. The same goes for the last guy that she was pining for for the last nine-months...and even the boyfriend of two years before that to some extent. It freaks me out, it really does, in that she is obviously into guys that are just...like...me, and yet she has never even looked at me in that light, at least that I am aware of. I don't know, it makes me feel ugly or unwanted or at the very least luckless. All I know for sure is that it leaves me confused.
And I don't know if it's jealousy or self-doubt or maybe a little bit of smittenosity that makes me feel this way, but it does bother me. I mean, maybe this is a guy thing, or even just a kyle thing...but if I knew someone that possessed those things that I was looking for in someone to date, if I knew someone that was available, who cared about me deeply and for whom I too cared about deeply, someone that I could confide in and feel safe in confiding in return, someone who was attentive to my needs even when it caused her to make small self-sacrifices, someone who was honest, even willing to be brutally so when the times called upon it, someone that loves me, even if it may be in the platonic sense. If I knew someone that I knew thought of me as her best friend and always would consider me as such, I wouldn't run away from her and off to someone just...like...her. I would run to her. I wouldn't go off somewhere else to try and develop that understanding, that confidence, that love with someone else from scratch, all the while having to play guessing games, setting up ground rules, and all that new relationship stuff...I'd follow the path of least resistence. You know? Because what more can you really ask for than someone like that who I just described? People search their entire lives for that sort of person and oh so many fail, settling for something else because they have grow weary of the search. The world is full of people in mid-life who regret that decision every day. I know many of them.
But, like I said, she doesn't go for that. She runs to other people. That confuses me.
I don't know why she does so. Perhaps I'm not attractive enough or young enough for her (I don't want to think the reason is that vain...and I don't). Perhaps I have failed in letting her see the real me. Perhaps she is scared of the possibilities. Perhaps she doesn't know how good she has it. Perhaps I am not the person that I think I am...perhaps I am completely ignorant of myself. I don't know, and it hurts me that I don't.
But maybe she does realize this (maybe not consciously) and it is the reason that things have been so weird between us for so long. Our friendship is marked by long and short periods of hot and cold. There are times when she has said and done things that made me feel like something was happening. Last Thanksgiving, for instance, I spent the entirity of the weekend wondering if we weren't quickly becoming a couple because the week prior had been a hot spell, and there have been other times that I thought the same thing (once or twice very sexually suggestive)...but each time was followed by a cold snap where there was none of the warmth that she had shown me before...and it sometimes made me snap into a state of bewildered flustration (you know, flustered and frustrated)...sometimes to the point of having a need to ask or say something to her about it. That never went over well...even to the point of her sometimes blaiming me for the tension between us (I've always taken as much of the burdan as I could bare...a product of my patience I guess), always causing a rift for a hour or two, from which we have always, always, been able to forgive and forget. As she has pointed it, our friendship is sometimes not unlike that of an old married couple. And I recognize, too, that our ability to rebound so quickly completely underscores our understanding of each other, our love for each other.
But I am here and she is there.
I am not writing this to say that she and I should enter into a more romantic form of relationship. My biggest fear right now is sounding like I'm saying that she and I "must hook up, or else" or something...whixh isn't the case. I can accept her friendship if that is all that it will ever be. More than that, I will adore her and our friendship forever -- I will always love her as a frIiend. But there's just this funny feeling in my heart that there is more there (and I know that we could have more) and that we're being damn fools, each of us, for behaving the way that we are. All the pieces are there....you know?
Then again, like I am about much, I may be wrong. Who knows? That's what's beautiful about life.
...having read this a long, long time ago and keeping it in my brain ever since hasn't helped me out either.
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