After feeling stupid about J's most recent disappearing act, he appeared again, somewhat out of the blue...
First...a little synopsis of the happening since my last J sighting...
Apparently, his phone was broken, and that's why I couldn't get in touch with him. He did change his voicemail to say this, which made me feel a little bit better, but he never did call back after I left a message. So, I was still upset, but resolved that he was just being him, following the same pattern that I've known for the past 10 years. Yep, it will have been 10 years...in April.
Finally, I get a call on Thursday....guess who?
All of my anger melted away, it was like I just forgot that he disappeared again. And as usual we picked back up like nothing happened. I was shocked when he told me he had tried to hunt down my contact info. He is NOT the type of guy to do that, not the type to let anyone really know his business, and certainly not the type to deal with the questions that would surely come from that sort of hunting.
We talked about what was going on in his life, and he opened up to me. This wasn't something new, us talking about private matters, but generally J only shared facts, we rarely got into the whys and hows and CERTAINLY not the feelings behind things. But this time was different. He told me one of his friends, from the old neighborhood, had recently taken his own life and it impacted him in a way I had never seen before. He opened up in a new way. We talked about loss and pain and depression and how we, specifically, deal with these things differently, he finally admitted what I've know for the longest time -he withdraws when he is upset and sometimes that borders on depression. I felt a sense of relief, partly because his withdrawals had a lot less to do with me than I feared and more importantly, because he recognized what he was doing and feeling.
We spoke about the decisions we both made in our lives and how those decisions impacted our futures - both as individuals and as a unit. He then said something that took my breath away. He said the decision he made to leave dc when he lost his campus housing, rather than staying with me and finishing school was the biggest mistake that he had ever made. WOW. I was speechless (only for a minute though). I have often wondered what would have happened if he had decided to stay with me. We would have moved in together, as friends, of course, but I'm pretty sure he would have only slept on the futon for so long. And then what would have happened...
But that will forever just be a what if, because that didn't happen. What did happen is that we grew apart and now have just recently found each other again.
I have my own regrets, too. I wish I would have let my ex go when J got into trouble, not just because I wanted J to stay with me and finish his education, but because he was not good for me. If I had escaped that relationship my life would have certainly taken a different route.
So the conversation ended with a promise to see each other in the next two weeks. I guess we'll see if he's the one that got away, or the one that got me.
No comments:
Post a Comment