dontBlink's Datingish

"I'm Listening to You"

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:06:00 GMT

"But I'm not saying anything", he'd tell me. And on the other-side of the line, approximately 600 miles away, I'd just smile, "I know;" it's the best way I could describe it-- what I'm doing. Do you ever have those instances when you want to talk to someone, but don't have anything to say? It's as if all the words have been exhausted, yet the desire to connect still there. He tells me I'm crazy for listening to his silence, but even crazy saves me from my fantasized humiliation. I could picture it so clearly, picture how he'd burst out laughing the moment I explain to him that I'm not just listening, that if I breath slowly and just feel, it feels almost like those times when I'd sit idly beside him while he's playing games, or when we're watching a movie and we're so focused on the screen, we don't notice how we're practically sitting on top of each other. I don't want him to be burdened by how it seems almost desperate that my desire has transcended the physical. And my whole being can be content on the idea of his presence sharing a simple phone call with me. But it is one of my mottos, take what you can. I'm taking from the silence, enjoying his faint breathing muffle the receiver. I love talking to him, but not more than being with him. Who knows what I'd trade to be with him, or feel like I am with him. Some times talking seems to be so taxing, it amplifies the distance like we're trying to make up for the closure. And if it were up to me, I'd sit here all day and listen.

Conversation with Penn

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:34:37 GMT

Penn and I had gotten into a conversation about Don, my roommate and former best friend. I had mentioned that Don was sleeping and suffering from a blood clot in is abdominal.

"You should go and try to see if there's anything you can do for him," Penn told me.

"There is nothing that I can do for him."

"There's always something more that you can do."

"There is nothing more that I can do... What? I'm a bad friend aren't I?" I asked.

"Yes you are," he replied, "and at this rate you'll be a bad wife too."

"Well... that's what you think." I said a bit hurt, "I guess it's a good thing you have a good wife then."

Penn and I have a delicate friendship. We have feelings for each other that transcends the conventional and shouldn't exist. He is married and has a beautiful three-year-old son named Erik. His wife, Ollie, knows vaguely about our friendship and has asked me numerous times to stop contacting her husband. Although I know that I should honor the request of his wife, I could never do it, not unless he wanted me to.

"This isn't about me," he said.

"Then what is it about?" I asked probingly, "You brought up how insufficient I would be at being a wife."

"Never mind."

"You can't say never mind every time you want to dodge a topic."

"You just don't get it. I can't be there for you. You should talk to Don and be better to him," he said, once again.

"I know that you can't be there for me. I'm not asking you to, it's you who don't get it."

"Then tell me," Penn demanded.

"About what?" I asked.

"About what I don't get."

"That Don and I are not compatible," I typed irritably, "I've told you so many times."

"Some things in life are not doable but worth trying."

"I'm not opt to try."

"You haven't put much thought to what I said have you?"

Don was my best friend. All through high school he was there for me along with Serenity, another dear friend. The three of us were inseparable; always getting into trouble with our late nights out. In August Don and I moved out together to Florida where we now live in a one bedroom apartment. Our relationship has since gone sour, and I relayed my frustrations and concerns to Penn, my one confidante. Penn suggested that Don and I get together so that physical closure would mend our differences. What Penn doesn't get is that his suggestion is simply revolting for me, hands down.

"Oh, I have and my answer's the same," I rebuked, "Would you like to hear what I have to say about this matter though?"

"No. Not until you're less selfish."

"What makes me selfish?" I inquired wearily.

"Think about how you started and how you got to where you are."

"Oh, right. I only focus on my own happiness," I said hoping to sound sarcastic.

"I know it sounds like I'm against you but I'm just being fair. I base my judgement on the facts that I know."

The facts that he know does not include my emotions. I feel like he always listens to me half-heartily. When he does listen, he's too busy trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind the things I tell him that he never sees what is hidden in plain sight: my plea for assurance.

"Well I guess you'll never hear my story then."

Who She Is

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:18:35 GMT

TOW = The Other Woman = Me.
This is an article worth reading, it can never be said better

Who She Is
Regina Barreca

She's the nicest woman you could ever meet; in fact, you might have met her. You might know her fairly well and you might like her a lot without being aware that she's sleeping with your husband. She is a nice woman, really. This is the only part of her life that can't be admired, that can't be examined, that can't be discussed out loud. It's the only part of her life for which she doesn't respect herself and it keeps her miserable, even when she's happy, because she knows whatever happiness she has is stolen and illegitimate. She's not a fool even though she knows she's acting like one.

Or, she's not sleeping with your husband -- maybe you're single, maybe you have different relationships in your life -- and so this is a friend of yours, a woman you've come to consider a good and dependable part of your life. She's an elementary school teacher, a physical therapist, a pharmacist, a social worker, a bank executive, a swim coach, an engineer, a computer programmer. She's been your friend since junior high, your college roommate, your best colleague, your neighbor, your confidante, without revealing this part of her life to you because she suspects that even at your most understanding you wouldn't understand. You couldn't unless you've been through this and she knows you haven't. Or she thinks she knows you haven't but one thing she has learned is that nobody is exempt from the possibility of this happening -- if a person could claim exemption, she'd be first on the list.

So she doesn't tell you, her best friend. You might judge her harshly or, even worse, stop speaking to her altogether and she can't bear the thought of losing you. She's already surrounded by the possibility of loss and will not add to it, even at the cost of not talking about the very thing that consumes her waking moments.

Educated, polite and brought up by a loving family, she's not a particularly hot tomato or the kind of woman usually transported across state lines for immoral purposes. Attractive, fun, attentive and considerate, she is deeply committed to those she loves and that's one of the reasons this tears her apart. One of the things she loves about this man, after all, is the way he treats the ones to whom he is closest.

Not her -- he can't treat her as if she were really in his life, after all -- but others. His real family, the inhabitants of his real life. If he were an emotional bully or an emotional slob, she wouldn't have been drawn to him in the first place. Those aspects of his life he betrays to be with her are the very parts of him she would never wish him to compromise. So she understands how divided he is, how he feels like a piece of meat being sliced up by a rusty knife, how he feels like he's drowning and suffocating and being eaten alive all at once. He, too, is a decent person, except for this business of loving someone he isn't supposed to love.

Holidays are hard, but so is spring and so are winter nights, summer mornings and long, early-autumn afternoons. The phone is her lifeline and she has about 17 different ways of being reached in case some shard of time can be broken off and given to her. She'll take what she can get -- not in a way anyone would think of her, but in this case it's true. There are codes they use to communicate what can't be spoken or written; these were funny at first but over time they have be come as serious as a car crash.

Maybe it ends when there is a car crash and they're in the front seat together, returning from a place where they never should have been, suddenly having to make up a series of lies to disguise what everybody around them now suspects is the truth. Even if they get away with it, the experience wrecks them, mangles what they had beyond recognition. Or, she goes to his kid's high school graduation ceremony and realizes that it's been 12 years already and that she could have had a kid herself by now, one in the sixth grade.

Or it continues. Impossible nights, intolerable weekends, endless violations of everything she knows about how life should be lived, but they have loved each other for so long now, how can it stop? She starts to worry that he'll die of a heart attack and no one will tell her for days because why would anyone think to call and tell her an incidental piece of bad news about some guy she never knew very well? Or she starts to think about her own final moments. This is the worst.

She can't believe this is her life. Nobody else would believe it either, even the man. It's a tough, rotten, exhausting routine. Nobody chooses it on purpose. This is not a defense of her: She knows better than you that what she's doing is indefensible. Don't ridicule her, and don't think you don't know her. You do.

© Copyright 1998, Regina Barreca. All rights reserved.