Preschool age, somewhere between 4 and maybe 6, I can remember telling my mom about the cartoons I see in my head, how they show me things at the end of a long tunnel, but sometimes the movies show too fast and I can't see what they are. There is a weird feeling that comes with them, that I end up calling 'the cartoon feeling'.
Grade 2: I am at violin practice. Halfway through the lesson, I become hysterical and start bawling about snoopy, our poodle. I need to see her! I am so distraught that mom has to take me home halfway through the lesson.
We get home to find my dad crying, snoopy had been killed by a car.
Grade 4: I wake up crying for Oma in the middle of the night. My dad's mom. That morning we get the call. She died in her sleep overnight.
As I get older, the cartoon feelings wear off a bit, and don't come as often anymore. After a while, they only come when I am dreaming, and then only in some dreams. The dreams that have the cartoon feeling are silly little things of no importance, but they always played out in some way shortly thereafter.
In my early teens, I think I blocked them out almost completely. All I would get is "the mail feeling" which is totally lame and would simply mean that I had something show up in the mail that day. I'd rush home to my latest Ranger Rick magazine waiting on my bed for me.
I don't remember much of my mid teens. That was rather hectic and the fog didn't clear till I was around 18 or 19.
Age 19: My first hint of 'the infidelity feeling', 11:30 pm -- my girlfriend at the time had her leather jacket stolen from the The Warehouse (the bar i was working at) she was totally upset, and left early to go home. I had keys to her apartment, and was supposed to be staying there when I got off work. That wouldnt be until 3:00 am. Around 1:00 I get hit with a terrible feeling, it has something to do with her and it is NOT pleasant. I can't explain it to my boss. I fake sickness and rush back to her apartment. She's not there. She comes in at 2:30, drunk and reeking of another man's cologne. Break up.
Age 20: My girlfriend at the time had moved to vancouver from calgary 3 weeks earlier, and was waiting for me to get layed off for the season from working at the zoo before I came out. One night I wake up to a terrible dream of a man raping me, but he was raping me through her. My teeth shattered and I woke up and spent the next 7 hours writing a poem called "infidelity". I always sign and date them, I was beginning to trust my intuitions enough by then. I knew this feeling and it was about her, and I was terrified to get out to vancouver.
When I got here, and discovered that the infidelity was real, (breakup.. 3 days after i get to vancouver) I pressed for information and then totally freaked her out by showing her the time and date of my poem. It was the first night they had slept together, and by the looks of it I was 600 miles away, screaming in my sleep at the exact same moment as the initial penetration.
There are other, smaller ones, like the morning I woke and in my dream I was desperately trying to close the back door of the shop I worked at. I couldn't close it, the frame was crooked. It was a very frustrating dream. Fighting to shut the door, and I just couldn't. I show up at work 2 hours later to find the cops there, the back door jimmied open bent from a crowbar break-in and a bunch of stuff (including my treasured mountain bike) stolen. That break-in was at 6:15 am. When I was in my bed, trying to close that fucking door.
Then the infidelity that happened with my most recent ex. That was back in 97? 98?. It was my intuition first. Heavy heavy hit with the old 'infidelity feeling' bat. I confronted her with it, and tried to get it out of her, but she wouldn't budge. She kept telling me I was insane. Crazy. What are talking about?. etc etc etc.
I really tried to believe her. I really did. I was so torn though, the feeling was there, and it was there strong. Yet I trusted her 100%, and I totally believed in her to never ever do anything like that, so I went through a bit of torture as I tried to convince myself that yes, maybe I was crazy, and this was just some unseated psychological issue that i am mistaking.
A week later, she finally breaks down and shows up at my work, she had to tell me, yes she had been having an affair, It had started exactly when I thought it did.
Ok head, fucking stop it. It's kinda creepy and sometimes I wish you'd shut up. Unless you can start whispering the winning fucking lottery numbers, this game is getting a little old.
Of course, we break up. Then we get back together only to work up the next 6 years for me to break up with her again a month ago. This time for more sensible, honest reasons.
Then on Wednesday morning, I wake with my heart pounding in my chest after dreaming that nasty dream about her getting into my friends car. She's loving the fact that I am freaking out about it, and smiling a sarcastic smile
I misread that one. It was him, it was her, and the point was she was rubbing something in my face. I never thought anything about the fact that the guy in the dream was my friend, because he was my best friend and the thought never even crossed my logical waking mind that that was in any way significant.
Of course, that night after I have that dream, I do the unthinkable, unforgivable, and use her password to get into her hotmail account.
(I am still really really fighting to maintain any sense of self respect after that move.) And what do I find but the fact that him and her had been meeting, but he had been lying to me about ever seeing her.
He asked if we got together last night for a drink. I said no. But that we talked on line instead.
Just thought I'd update you
Keeping their story straight.
Well fuck. I freak out and call him shortly after finding this email. He comes over 2 hours later. He seemed quite devasted, guilty, and very sorry. He tells me that there was no sex stuff going on though, he says he was lying to me about seeing her because he didnt want to be put in the position of being grilled for what was said between them.
what? Dude, thats way outta whack, Ive been pushing for you to go and see her all month. Everytime a situation comes up where you might go and have a drink with her or something, its me telling you to do it, and you sayin nah, next time maybe. You guys are chatting on MSN, I know you are talking on the phone all the time, and Ive told you over and over I dont ever want to put you into the position of he said she said.
yeah, I know but thats different, thats not seeing her face to face he replys.
what difference would that make? I ask.
dunno.
After a bit of a freakout by me, mostly due to the discovery that him and her had been keeping their meetings a secret from me, and the betrayal I felt from that, Then my asking why he would hide that from me in the first place. What reason was there to hide the fact that he saw her? Really, what went on that night?
After a while, with us pussyfooting around it, not really hitting that evening head on, I started to say stuff like I can understand, a moment of weakness maybe, I mean dude, I know shes hot,
He says yeah, I see women that look like her that I find attractive, but
I continue on. ..and there you are with this hottie, and shes drunk and sad and angry at me, and maybe stuff starts to happen, maybe a few drinksyour brain goes into that base mode, I can see how that could be.
He was starting to look really upset, sad.
He started to say a couple of things like:
Yeah, I guess was just thinking with my reptilian brain. hes not looking at me.
I mention his ex, (lets call her jane)., and start saying that if after they had broken up, and he found an email from me to her that showed her and I were secretly meeting and hiding it from you
He gets quiet, thinking about something and he is just staring at the coffee table.
man. He says.
what, I reply
I was just turning the tables, and picturing how Id feel right now if this was you and jane.
He leans forward, head down, resting his forehead in his hands, elbows on his knees.
We dont say anything for a short while. Hes just sitting like that, me looking at the side of his head.
whats up? I finally ask.
I am just really wondering what kind of person I am now.
But he never went further than that. I tried to press for more, but all he told me was that she was just kinda yknow he could tell that she was just sorta. Well anyways, nothing happened,
I keep pressing, nothing? Like youre maybe just sitting on the couch, and theres a bit of that feeling there? Something coming on a little tingly.
yeah, tingly he says.
and that was it? Maybe a bit of this? I rub his arm.
yeah, a bit of that. He replies.
He was looking extremely devastated. But then we then back out of the conversation, it felt like we were just about to actually talk about it, but then it ends with him saying nothing happened. It gets left there.
However, I do feel a little bit better, as I focus completely on nothing but his words. Pushing aside that feeling I guess because I need to believe this is the exactly the way he just put it.
We do the very rare guy thing and hug, say our I love you's (dude) and he leaves.
The next 3 days I am torn from my sleep every morning with terrible terribly graphic dream displays of what could have happened between them. So far its the same thing every time, but I dont want to get graphic. That includes this morning, I tried to sleep in at least until my alarm went off, but no. 4:27am, theres that explosive flash of imagery. Fast, MTV editing of flesh. Close up. The image is only maybe 1 or 2 full seconds in length and my eyes are open, heart pounding.. Ever since our conversation on Thursday night, I have been consumed with a feeling that 'something is missing' here.
I'm sorry, this is a long one. Bear with me, I am getting to the point.
I decided I was stuck in this huge battle between what I want to think happened (nothing) and what my intuition was telling me. Theyre opposites. Fuck man, I really needed to talk to him again about this. I gotta sort this out in my head or its going to drive me insane.. Hes not online all day Friday, which is very strange. Nor Saturday, very strange. Did he block me? Or am I just being paranoid? Finally Saturday afternoon I see him online. I invite him over for dinner for Saturday. He says sure, Ill be over in a while! Then he calls me back at 6:00 and bails. There was a party he had to go to that he forgot about sorry man. Im sure he can hear the disappointment in my voice, I was so ready for the conversation but so nervous. I just wanted to get it over with. I couldnt bear to wait another day.
Sunday, I call him again and say hey dude, lets do that dinner thing yeah?
I have a lot of things I wanted to get done today he says.
You think you can squeeze me in there somewhere?
After a pause, he says
yeah, ok. What time?
4:00 Sunday afternoon, Im getting ready to roast some chicken, rent a shitty DVD, just do a nice dinner night thing. He pulls up out front, I let him and we turn on the TV.
I didn't know when or how to approach the conversation, but I just had to know the truth.
After a couple hours of mindless chatter and watching TV while I cooked dinner, hes playing a game at my computer and I am sitting at my writing desk behind him in the opposite corner of the room, chain smoking and looking at the back of his head. How to start this how to start this
He spawns near a tank, runs up to it and jumps in. its Battlefield 1942, the battle of Monte Cassino. The tank is slow. Hes driving it up towards a bridge. Firing the odd shell up over the hills into the distance at nobody in particular. The last 3 days in here have been absolutely devasting in a completely different way. Its been my own spiritual/emotional battlefield as I try to shed that old infidelity feeling and push it out of the way to loving embrace the words he told me on Thursday night. That nothing happened. I just cant allow this night to pass without me trying to connect to him to get him to open up about it.
Finally, I just force out the first words.
dude, I guess you probably know that Ive been wanting to have one final and last conversation about this whole thing, eh? I finally say.
what whole thing is that? he asks.
The you and her thing.
no, I didnt know that. he replys. Hes driving a tank up towards a german encampment, tank damage is getting bad from incoming artillery.
I start talking anyways, trying to word everything in the order I had thought about it all. He continues to play the game for the first little while, his back to me while I talk. I think I can hear my voice getting kind of shaky. The computer speakers are too loud, explosions and gun shots and germans screaming over my words. Finally, when the tank that hes in is about to explode, he jumps out to try and take out the foot soldier thats been laying all the damage on his now toasted tank, but all he has ready is a rocket launcher, he shoots, misses, and he is killed by a grenade. He stops playing and spins around in the chair to face me. He doesnt look too happy that we are talking about this again. He looks rather angry, actually. Or maybe its defiant. I immediately sense that we are not about to have the deep, open, loving and honest discussion about the whole truth that I had been hoping for.
Therein lies the problem. The truth. I will never know what the truth is. I only have what he tells me to go on. I am in no contact with her still and this is between him and I, in a way it has nothing to do with her. Well, not her and I, anyways, Shes free to do whatever she wants.
That doesnt mean that whatever she does now doesnt have the potential to hurt me, nor does it mean that I wouldnt expect that she would have some personal limitations in what she is capable of. But she IS her own person.
So I try to explain that I am still feeling something is missing. Then I back up and tell him that at first, if I thought about it, and thought that him and her had done something that he was feeling guilty about, I was going to be all up an a high-horse and angry. Then I realized how fucking hypocritical of me that would be. I have done some shitty things in my life too, things I am not proud of, but I understand how him and I are a lot alike, and are both trying to move forward in a personal growth way. That that person who I was at times is somebody I need to move away from. Nonetheless, I cant get pissed at him if he had a moment of weakness, because I am not sitting on a pedestal. I tell him that I wont freak out and start crying and yelling and getting angry and doing nasty things. I am not trying to gently pry out of him the information so that I can freak, using it against him in some underhanded way. But since our conversation on Thursday, (and I suppose that actually started with the dream I had on Wednesday morning) I have been feeling that intuition, and yet because of his words, I am forced into second guessing it.
The first thing he says is so what you are saying is that you dont believe me?
I dont know how to respond. I guess yes would be a good one, but I didnt want to accuse him of lying. Not when I was trying to have a deeply connected conversation with him. I was silent for a while and then just said its just an intuitive thing.
Dude, he says. I cant tell you any more than Ive already told you.
His arms are crossed, hes leaning way back. We are kitty corner on opposite sides of the living room. This is not going well, hes putting his guard way up.
He eventually says
look, if this thing is going to mean the end of our friendship, then so be it..
He is one of the people that knows my intuition, my 6th sense. He is one of the main people to tell me to always trust it because its always right. He has been freaked out by it himself in the past. He is one of the few people that have been close enough to me over all these years to really get a grasp on what happens to me at times.
Hes also one of the few people to see how it can torment me sometimes.
I know he understands me. But I dont think he knows how totally fucking important these moments are to my future. To my process of acceptance with the feelings.
My whole life, I have not been able to get away from them. They come on very rarely these days, and seem only to be attached to events around people that are extremely important and close to me, and they are undeniable. However, we dont live there. We live in science and logic and double-blind placebo controlled studies, we live in a world where we sit around in suits and discuss the next tactical stock move, the takeover, the mortgage, your uncles cancer, how 4 year old jimmy got killed by a car and everything is just so fucking unpredictable. Unpredictable, but static and undeniably real. If we cant see it, measure it in some standardized unit, poke it, dissect it, or somehow at least get some indisputable pictures, it doesnt exist. Anybody who thinks it does exist is a nutcase. Insane.
So Ive gone through stages in my life where I was at first thinking everybody was like this, and it was totally normal; to having that bashed out of me over the years, eventually never wanting to talk about it in fear of coming across like an absolute whacko. I got to the point of hoping for it to not be real. Hoping for some of the experiences Ive had to just be fleeting co-incidences, and that all of this was just what it always appeared to be. Flat, standard and there is nothing special going on outside of what we can see and touch. In the last 10 years though, Ive come full circle. Now I need to be able to understand it and be open to it.
Now, the very thought of trying to deny it defines insanity to me.
So I find myself in a position with my best friend, now I have to somehow explain my need for the whole truth to him. I need to somehow explain that this need for the whole truth has nothing to do with trying to underhandedly gain information from him about some terrible thing that may have happened. I still battle with these feelings, and to be told that they are wrong feeds power to my insecurities over them. After trying to fight them back for so many years, trying to deny them, trying to psycho-analyze them from within myself as some deeply unseated mental condition that I have created somewhere inside that is based on nothing but jealousy and fear, I am fighting now for the opposite. I am fighting now to understand them, and accept them as a natural part of my life. To deny them, and be told by others and eventually myself that they are completely psychological in nature, THAT is what is going to drive me insane.
Im sure anybody else out there that can understand what I am talking about, has also been tormented by this. They can also understand the need to be told its ok, that feeling is telling you the truth and you are not insane. Every single time this has happened, I question my sanity and every single time I am so indescribably relieved to find out that once again, the feeling was right.
I just want to find myself in a place one day where I dont actually require verification, but I am so not there yet.
And my state is fragile. I have no proof. I never do. I have absolutely no tangible evidence to go on except for a few words exchanged. Yes, if you want to sit down and discuss the process of the last 5 weeks, discuss what I have been going through, the heavy levels of stress, the sudden withdrawal of communication from my co-dependent counterpart, the anger and confusion of how she is not there for our dane, yeah sure. It could be textbook psychoanalysis. I might even be inclined to believe it myself.
Until I go to bed. Until I sleep. There is no possible way for me to explain what the feeling is. I suppose it would be like trying to describe the smell of lavender to somebody that had no sense of smell. But its there underneath it all.
And on Sunday night, after the conversation with him ended with him absolutely sticking to his guns that there is nothing else to tell me, and we sat there on the couch watching that shitty DVD, that feeling built. It grew so much stronger that night. Tearing at me.
Now my biggest battle is simply between my logic brain and the side of me that seems to tap into this information out there. Im on the fence of convincing myself I am insane again, while knowing that Im not.
I just wish that somehow, I could explain to him that I dont really care at this point about the actual shit that may or may not have gone down sometime in the last 5 weeks. I dont have any idea what it is. Not a clue. But there is definitely something there.
Care about me enough to allow me the sanity of just exorcising this torment with the truth. Dealing with the reality of what happened, thats the easy part. Relatively speaking. Yes, theres a potential for it to be really painful, it may dredge up all sorts of nasty emotions,
but that would be all so real.
Thats Love to me:
Allow me reality.
I can understand that there could be a huge need for self preservation on both of their parts. A sort of oh my god, what the fuck did we just do? We can NEVER tell him about this. A pact is formed. But honestly, if I could only explain well enough how that is SO not my focus right now. My focus is simply maintaining my sanity, and my trust in the feeling.
As painful and as difficult as it may to actually open up to me and give me the truth, it would actually help me out a lot. It would totally help explain why she never contacted me regarding the dog. If I go back and put something happening between them at the beginning of this month, it explains away so much of my confusion. I could eventually get past the feeling of anger regarding her disregard for our sick dog, which is so out of character. I could understand a lot more about what has been going on.
Mostly, however, I would be able to move on with this while maintaining my sanity, move on based on reality. All the other personal relationship shit that goes along with that, well to me that is totally secondary.
how the fuck do I ask for that in 14 words or less?
Grade 2: I am at violin practice. Halfway through the lesson, I become hysterical and start bawling about snoopy, our poodle. I need to see her! I am so distraught that mom has to take me home halfway through the lesson.
We get home to find my dad crying, snoopy had been killed by a car.
Grade 4: I wake up crying for Oma in the middle of the night. My dad's mom. That morning we get the call. She died in her sleep overnight.
As I get older, the cartoon feelings wear off a bit, and don't come as often anymore. After a while, they only come when I am dreaming, and then only in some dreams. The dreams that have the cartoon feeling are silly little things of no importance, but they always played out in some way shortly thereafter.
In my early teens, I think I blocked them out almost completely. All I would get is "the mail feeling" which is totally lame and would simply mean that I had something show up in the mail that day. I'd rush home to my latest Ranger Rick magazine waiting on my bed for me.
I don't remember much of my mid teens. That was rather hectic and the fog didn't clear till I was around 18 or 19.
Age 19: My first hint of 'the infidelity feeling', 11:30 pm -- my girlfriend at the time had her leather jacket stolen from the The Warehouse (the bar i was working at) she was totally upset, and left early to go home. I had keys to her apartment, and was supposed to be staying there when I got off work. That wouldnt be until 3:00 am. Around 1:00 I get hit with a terrible feeling, it has something to do with her and it is NOT pleasant. I can't explain it to my boss. I fake sickness and rush back to her apartment. She's not there. She comes in at 2:30, drunk and reeking of another man's cologne. Break up.
Age 20: My girlfriend at the time had moved to vancouver from calgary 3 weeks earlier, and was waiting for me to get layed off for the season from working at the zoo before I came out. One night I wake up to a terrible dream of a man raping me, but he was raping me through her. My teeth shattered and I woke up and spent the next 7 hours writing a poem called "infidelity". I always sign and date them, I was beginning to trust my intuitions enough by then. I knew this feeling and it was about her, and I was terrified to get out to vancouver.
When I got here, and discovered that the infidelity was real, (breakup.. 3 days after i get to vancouver) I pressed for information and then totally freaked her out by showing her the time and date of my poem. It was the first night they had slept together, and by the looks of it I was 600 miles away, screaming in my sleep at the exact same moment as the initial penetration.
There are other, smaller ones, like the morning I woke and in my dream I was desperately trying to close the back door of the shop I worked at. I couldn't close it, the frame was crooked. It was a very frustrating dream. Fighting to shut the door, and I just couldn't. I show up at work 2 hours later to find the cops there, the back door jimmied open bent from a crowbar break-in and a bunch of stuff (including my treasured mountain bike) stolen. That break-in was at 6:15 am. When I was in my bed, trying to close that fucking door.
Then the infidelity that happened with my most recent ex. That was back in 97? 98?. It was my intuition first. Heavy heavy hit with the old 'infidelity feeling' bat. I confronted her with it, and tried to get it out of her, but she wouldn't budge. She kept telling me I was insane. Crazy. What are talking about?. etc etc etc.
I really tried to believe her. I really did. I was so torn though, the feeling was there, and it was there strong. Yet I trusted her 100%, and I totally believed in her to never ever do anything like that, so I went through a bit of torture as I tried to convince myself that yes, maybe I was crazy, and this was just some unseated psychological issue that i am mistaking.
A week later, she finally breaks down and shows up at my work, she had to tell me, yes she had been having an affair, It had started exactly when I thought it did.
Ok head, fucking stop it. It's kinda creepy and sometimes I wish you'd shut up. Unless you can start whispering the winning fucking lottery numbers, this game is getting a little old.
Of course, we break up. Then we get back together only to work up the next 6 years for me to break up with her again a month ago. This time for more sensible, honest reasons.
Then on Wednesday morning, I wake with my heart pounding in my chest after dreaming that nasty dream about her getting into my friends car. She's loving the fact that I am freaking out about it, and smiling a sarcastic smile
I misread that one. It was him, it was her, and the point was she was rubbing something in my face. I never thought anything about the fact that the guy in the dream was my friend, because he was my best friend and the thought never even crossed my logical waking mind that that was in any way significant.
Of course, that night after I have that dream, I do the unthinkable, unforgivable, and use her password to get into her hotmail account.
(I am still really really fighting to maintain any sense of self respect after that move.) And what do I find but the fact that him and her had been meeting, but he had been lying to me about ever seeing her.
He asked if we got together last night for a drink. I said no. But that we talked on line instead.
Just thought I'd update you
Keeping their story straight.
Well fuck. I freak out and call him shortly after finding this email. He comes over 2 hours later. He seemed quite devasted, guilty, and very sorry. He tells me that there was no sex stuff going on though, he says he was lying to me about seeing her because he didnt want to be put in the position of being grilled for what was said between them.
what? Dude, thats way outta whack, Ive been pushing for you to go and see her all month. Everytime a situation comes up where you might go and have a drink with her or something, its me telling you to do it, and you sayin nah, next time maybe. You guys are chatting on MSN, I know you are talking on the phone all the time, and Ive told you over and over I dont ever want to put you into the position of he said she said.
yeah, I know but thats different, thats not seeing her face to face he replys.
what difference would that make? I ask.
dunno.
After a bit of a freakout by me, mostly due to the discovery that him and her had been keeping their meetings a secret from me, and the betrayal I felt from that, Then my asking why he would hide that from me in the first place. What reason was there to hide the fact that he saw her? Really, what went on that night?
After a while, with us pussyfooting around it, not really hitting that evening head on, I started to say stuff like I can understand, a moment of weakness maybe, I mean dude, I know shes hot,
He says yeah, I see women that look like her that I find attractive, but
I continue on. ..and there you are with this hottie, and shes drunk and sad and angry at me, and maybe stuff starts to happen, maybe a few drinksyour brain goes into that base mode, I can see how that could be.
He was starting to look really upset, sad.
He started to say a couple of things like:
Yeah, I guess was just thinking with my reptilian brain. hes not looking at me.
I mention his ex, (lets call her jane)., and start saying that if after they had broken up, and he found an email from me to her that showed her and I were secretly meeting and hiding it from you
He gets quiet, thinking about something and he is just staring at the coffee table.
man. He says.
what, I reply
I was just turning the tables, and picturing how Id feel right now if this was you and jane.
He leans forward, head down, resting his forehead in his hands, elbows on his knees.
We dont say anything for a short while. Hes just sitting like that, me looking at the side of his head.
whats up? I finally ask.
I am just really wondering what kind of person I am now.
But he never went further than that. I tried to press for more, but all he told me was that she was just kinda yknow he could tell that she was just sorta. Well anyways, nothing happened,
I keep pressing, nothing? Like youre maybe just sitting on the couch, and theres a bit of that feeling there? Something coming on a little tingly.
yeah, tingly he says.
and that was it? Maybe a bit of this? I rub his arm.
yeah, a bit of that. He replies.
He was looking extremely devastated. But then we then back out of the conversation, it felt like we were just about to actually talk about it, but then it ends with him saying nothing happened. It gets left there.
However, I do feel a little bit better, as I focus completely on nothing but his words. Pushing aside that feeling I guess because I need to believe this is the exactly the way he just put it.
We do the very rare guy thing and hug, say our I love you's (dude) and he leaves.
The next 3 days I am torn from my sleep every morning with terrible terribly graphic dream displays of what could have happened between them. So far its the same thing every time, but I dont want to get graphic. That includes this morning, I tried to sleep in at least until my alarm went off, but no. 4:27am, theres that explosive flash of imagery. Fast, MTV editing of flesh. Close up. The image is only maybe 1 or 2 full seconds in length and my eyes are open, heart pounding.. Ever since our conversation on Thursday night, I have been consumed with a feeling that 'something is missing' here.
I'm sorry, this is a long one. Bear with me, I am getting to the point.
I decided I was stuck in this huge battle between what I want to think happened (nothing) and what my intuition was telling me. Theyre opposites. Fuck man, I really needed to talk to him again about this. I gotta sort this out in my head or its going to drive me insane.. Hes not online all day Friday, which is very strange. Nor Saturday, very strange. Did he block me? Or am I just being paranoid? Finally Saturday afternoon I see him online. I invite him over for dinner for Saturday. He says sure, Ill be over in a while! Then he calls me back at 6:00 and bails. There was a party he had to go to that he forgot about sorry man. Im sure he can hear the disappointment in my voice, I was so ready for the conversation but so nervous. I just wanted to get it over with. I couldnt bear to wait another day.
Sunday, I call him again and say hey dude, lets do that dinner thing yeah?
I have a lot of things I wanted to get done today he says.
You think you can squeeze me in there somewhere?
After a pause, he says
yeah, ok. What time?
4:00 Sunday afternoon, Im getting ready to roast some chicken, rent a shitty DVD, just do a nice dinner night thing. He pulls up out front, I let him and we turn on the TV.
I didn't know when or how to approach the conversation, but I just had to know the truth.
After a couple hours of mindless chatter and watching TV while I cooked dinner, hes playing a game at my computer and I am sitting at my writing desk behind him in the opposite corner of the room, chain smoking and looking at the back of his head. How to start this how to start this
He spawns near a tank, runs up to it and jumps in. its Battlefield 1942, the battle of Monte Cassino. The tank is slow. Hes driving it up towards a bridge. Firing the odd shell up over the hills into the distance at nobody in particular. The last 3 days in here have been absolutely devasting in a completely different way. Its been my own spiritual/emotional battlefield as I try to shed that old infidelity feeling and push it out of the way to loving embrace the words he told me on Thursday night. That nothing happened. I just cant allow this night to pass without me trying to connect to him to get him to open up about it.
Finally, I just force out the first words.
dude, I guess you probably know that Ive been wanting to have one final and last conversation about this whole thing, eh? I finally say.
what whole thing is that? he asks.
The you and her thing.
no, I didnt know that. he replys. Hes driving a tank up towards a german encampment, tank damage is getting bad from incoming artillery.
I start talking anyways, trying to word everything in the order I had thought about it all. He continues to play the game for the first little while, his back to me while I talk. I think I can hear my voice getting kind of shaky. The computer speakers are too loud, explosions and gun shots and germans screaming over my words. Finally, when the tank that hes in is about to explode, he jumps out to try and take out the foot soldier thats been laying all the damage on his now toasted tank, but all he has ready is a rocket launcher, he shoots, misses, and he is killed by a grenade. He stops playing and spins around in the chair to face me. He doesnt look too happy that we are talking about this again. He looks rather angry, actually. Or maybe its defiant. I immediately sense that we are not about to have the deep, open, loving and honest discussion about the whole truth that I had been hoping for.
Therein lies the problem. The truth. I will never know what the truth is. I only have what he tells me to go on. I am in no contact with her still and this is between him and I, in a way it has nothing to do with her. Well, not her and I, anyways, Shes free to do whatever she wants.
That doesnt mean that whatever she does now doesnt have the potential to hurt me, nor does it mean that I wouldnt expect that she would have some personal limitations in what she is capable of. But she IS her own person.
So I try to explain that I am still feeling something is missing. Then I back up and tell him that at first, if I thought about it, and thought that him and her had done something that he was feeling guilty about, I was going to be all up an a high-horse and angry. Then I realized how fucking hypocritical of me that would be. I have done some shitty things in my life too, things I am not proud of, but I understand how him and I are a lot alike, and are both trying to move forward in a personal growth way. That that person who I was at times is somebody I need to move away from. Nonetheless, I cant get pissed at him if he had a moment of weakness, because I am not sitting on a pedestal. I tell him that I wont freak out and start crying and yelling and getting angry and doing nasty things. I am not trying to gently pry out of him the information so that I can freak, using it against him in some underhanded way. But since our conversation on Thursday, (and I suppose that actually started with the dream I had on Wednesday morning) I have been feeling that intuition, and yet because of his words, I am forced into second guessing it.
The first thing he says is so what you are saying is that you dont believe me?
I dont know how to respond. I guess yes would be a good one, but I didnt want to accuse him of lying. Not when I was trying to have a deeply connected conversation with him. I was silent for a while and then just said its just an intuitive thing.
Dude, he says. I cant tell you any more than Ive already told you.
His arms are crossed, hes leaning way back. We are kitty corner on opposite sides of the living room. This is not going well, hes putting his guard way up.
He eventually says
look, if this thing is going to mean the end of our friendship, then so be it..
He is one of the people that knows my intuition, my 6th sense. He is one of the main people to tell me to always trust it because its always right. He has been freaked out by it himself in the past. He is one of the few people that have been close enough to me over all these years to really get a grasp on what happens to me at times.
Hes also one of the few people to see how it can torment me sometimes.
I know he understands me. But I dont think he knows how totally fucking important these moments are to my future. To my process of acceptance with the feelings.
My whole life, I have not been able to get away from them. They come on very rarely these days, and seem only to be attached to events around people that are extremely important and close to me, and they are undeniable. However, we dont live there. We live in science and logic and double-blind placebo controlled studies, we live in a world where we sit around in suits and discuss the next tactical stock move, the takeover, the mortgage, your uncles cancer, how 4 year old jimmy got killed by a car and everything is just so fucking unpredictable. Unpredictable, but static and undeniably real. If we cant see it, measure it in some standardized unit, poke it, dissect it, or somehow at least get some indisputable pictures, it doesnt exist. Anybody who thinks it does exist is a nutcase. Insane.
So Ive gone through stages in my life where I was at first thinking everybody was like this, and it was totally normal; to having that bashed out of me over the years, eventually never wanting to talk about it in fear of coming across like an absolute whacko. I got to the point of hoping for it to not be real. Hoping for some of the experiences Ive had to just be fleeting co-incidences, and that all of this was just what it always appeared to be. Flat, standard and there is nothing special going on outside of what we can see and touch. In the last 10 years though, Ive come full circle. Now I need to be able to understand it and be open to it.
Now, the very thought of trying to deny it defines insanity to me.
So I find myself in a position with my best friend, now I have to somehow explain my need for the whole truth to him. I need to somehow explain that this need for the whole truth has nothing to do with trying to underhandedly gain information from him about some terrible thing that may have happened. I still battle with these feelings, and to be told that they are wrong feeds power to my insecurities over them. After trying to fight them back for so many years, trying to deny them, trying to psycho-analyze them from within myself as some deeply unseated mental condition that I have created somewhere inside that is based on nothing but jealousy and fear, I am fighting now for the opposite. I am fighting now to understand them, and accept them as a natural part of my life. To deny them, and be told by others and eventually myself that they are completely psychological in nature, THAT is what is going to drive me insane.
Im sure anybody else out there that can understand what I am talking about, has also been tormented by this. They can also understand the need to be told its ok, that feeling is telling you the truth and you are not insane. Every single time this has happened, I question my sanity and every single time I am so indescribably relieved to find out that once again, the feeling was right.
I just want to find myself in a place one day where I dont actually require verification, but I am so not there yet.
And my state is fragile. I have no proof. I never do. I have absolutely no tangible evidence to go on except for a few words exchanged. Yes, if you want to sit down and discuss the process of the last 5 weeks, discuss what I have been going through, the heavy levels of stress, the sudden withdrawal of communication from my co-dependent counterpart, the anger and confusion of how she is not there for our dane, yeah sure. It could be textbook psychoanalysis. I might even be inclined to believe it myself.
Until I go to bed. Until I sleep. There is no possible way for me to explain what the feeling is. I suppose it would be like trying to describe the smell of lavender to somebody that had no sense of smell. But its there underneath it all.
And on Sunday night, after the conversation with him ended with him absolutely sticking to his guns that there is nothing else to tell me, and we sat there on the couch watching that shitty DVD, that feeling built. It grew so much stronger that night. Tearing at me.
Now my biggest battle is simply between my logic brain and the side of me that seems to tap into this information out there. Im on the fence of convincing myself I am insane again, while knowing that Im not.
I just wish that somehow, I could explain to him that I dont really care at this point about the actual shit that may or may not have gone down sometime in the last 5 weeks. I dont have any idea what it is. Not a clue. But there is definitely something there.
Care about me enough to allow me the sanity of just exorcising this torment with the truth. Dealing with the reality of what happened, thats the easy part. Relatively speaking. Yes, theres a potential for it to be really painful, it may dredge up all sorts of nasty emotions,
but that would be all so real.
Thats Love to me:
Allow me reality.
I can understand that there could be a huge need for self preservation on both of their parts. A sort of oh my god, what the fuck did we just do? We can NEVER tell him about this. A pact is formed. But honestly, if I could only explain well enough how that is SO not my focus right now. My focus is simply maintaining my sanity, and my trust in the feeling.
As painful and as difficult as it may to actually open up to me and give me the truth, it would actually help me out a lot. It would totally help explain why she never contacted me regarding the dog. If I go back and put something happening between them at the beginning of this month, it explains away so much of my confusion. I could eventually get past the feeling of anger regarding her disregard for our sick dog, which is so out of character. I could understand a lot more about what has been going on.
Mostly, however, I would be able to move on with this while maintaining my sanity, move on based on reality. All the other personal relationship shit that goes along with that, well to me that is totally secondary.
how the fuck do I ask for that in 14 words or less?
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anything else, just doesnt matter