Getting Our Heads In Order

Posted 3/04/2010 by WHayes in Labels: , , ,

wrong focus!
Originally uploaded by
lomokev
The following is the full text of a recent email I sent to a girl I care very deeply about. Within 12 days of sending this email, I'd see her again for the first time in nearly six months. By day 13, I'd be waking up at 4am with her in my arms, feeling like I'd just won the goddamn lottery.

I want to share this with you because sometimes we get caught up, but still have to make the right choice. It's a subject we've touched on before though "The Boundary," but that column has wrapped up its first run (but will begin again this summer), and we've made a promise never, ever to fake what's real when it comes to you. I want to share this with you because its proof that good things happen when you let yourself be vulnerable and speak what's on your mind.

Vulnerability. For all my querying and posturing lately on the nature of masculinity, its the one subject I've never known how to address; it doesn't take a quantum physicist to figure out why. Vulnerable: a bad word for bad men and men bad at being men. This is our fear, that slipping just once in the scope and believability of our testicular fortitude will forever condemn us to indefinite humiliation. Not only will we lose our job, but will wait three months for that final paycheck. Not only will we lose our girl, but be forced to watch the next guy screw her. It puts us in this paranoid limbo where we're never quite sure how close to the vest to hold our cards, a fog where we often choose to swallow how we feel and "deal with it later," if at all, because "a real man would get over this shit." I've grown tired of Purgatory. I want something real.
So this isn't an angry rant or anything, but there were some things I wanted to get out my head, to put us on the same page.

I don't think this should come off somewhat dramatic, but you never know. Truth is, I had been pretty off-center these past two days. Its weird for me to accept the part of our friendship where we physically move onto other people, because, like I said on Sunday, I'm still very much attached to you, and its a feeling I can't separate from. I'm having a hard time pulling far enough away to where I can be ok with (be ok with? accept the need for?) you relieving your boredom with another guy, because I've honestly been pining for the day I could fix the mistake I made over Homecoming. Its weird feeling like another guy beat me to it.

So yeah, its weird. I was (maybe still am) left wondering how he kissed you, where he touched you, what you did for him, so I know where to start (to be better) if I ever get the chance to be with you again.

Sunday brought the craziest feeling, like I was punched, so I called ____ and my cousin for advice. While I wasn't worried about my cousin, I was actually embarrassed to tell ____ the full story at first, because I thought I'd be letting him down. Thankfully, he told me that was impossible. He wasn't impressed with the situation, but he was understanding. They both said what I was hoping they would: that any friendship takes work, and that even tho this was a pretty awkward bump, it wasn't cause for just throwing everything away.

They're right. Going back a little, our first moves toward getting close happened at the same time I met xxxxxxx, and honestly I was almost as impressed with her as I was with you. You were and are everything I wanted in a close friend: a talented person with a past that taught you some hard lessons about yourself, that made you stronger, and when it came time to decide between you or my increasingly tense friendship with her, I picked you, because at that point we'd decided to be more than friends. It was a bittersweet decision, for while I didn't want to acknowledge it, I knew (from how her voice changed when she spoke to me, to how she one day hooked her arm through mine in a grocery store) that she wanted something more from me. I didn't want to hurt her, but I had to man up. You were the person who I had a future with, and I took you as a sign of where my path was supposed to lead.

The details of our friendship may have changed, but its still worth making work. Things may have gotten rough, but you've definitely been there for me before, and really, its my responsibility to be the one there for you now, when your involvement and stress level is at its peak. It took a moment to realize that. You've got the whole world ahead of you, and I'm just as excited for your future as I am for mine. Whatever you do though, don't move backwards. You can't just like I can't: there's so much better for us out there. I'm smiling at the possibilities.
Twelve days from sending the above email, that girl ran up to me and jumped into the first embrace we'd had in half a year. I held her as tight as I could so that not even air would come between us. One day later I'd wake up with her in my arms, thanking God I was there while dreading the coming limbo where I wouldn't feel that warmth again for another indefinite lull. Fourteen hours from that, she'd drive off without really saying goodbye, only to slam the brakes on her shiny SUV and jump out sobbing, returning full circle to that embrace again.


1 comment(s) to... “Getting Our Heads In Order”

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did this really happen to you?
I don't believe it!
Two women at once?You are not a playa playa.




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