He called....

I spoke to "He". It had been awhile since I've spoken with him. I don't think I blogged about it the last time we spoke last fall. Recently, out of the blue, he reached out & I answered. With glee. Like kid in a candy store euphoria.

Seriously, I don't know what's worse - not speaking to him at all or speaking to him so infrequently that I dread hanging up because only the Lord knows if and when we'll speak again.

In all fairness, I never reach out. Except for one day a year - his birthday. But I always choose the quasi-passive aggressive but least intrusive approach - happy birthday via text. My rationale is that I don't want to intrude on his new life with his new wife. Its a club I don't belong to so I feel like quite alien-like if I try to reach out.

However when we actually do speak, on the surface our conversations are just as easy breezy as they were before "the revelation". We trade stories of the ridiculosity we happen to witness in our everyday. We update each other on the family. We laugh until my belly aches. All the trappings of what friends do. But there's a big pachyderm in the room that we'll never ever acknowledge. EVER. So we go through the motions sidestepping Dumbo but, at least for me, the motions feel slightly disjointed. Have you ever watched Dancing With the Stars and you think a performance was incredible but the judge says something like "your left big toe was half a degree off center while your arm wasn't fully committed to the turn" and they give the person a 7 when, to your untrained eye, it deserved a 9?? Well that's what this feels like to me. No one would suspect that something is off but I know the ignorant bliss of our friendship before and that makes the friendship we now have that much more off balance.

I begrudgingly hung up. While our conversation had been going on for about an hour, it felt like 5 minutes and was over way to soon for me. Yes, I'm being all kinds of selfish and wrong but just maybe I still regret not saying how I felt sooner and maybe I regret letting my fears get best of me and maybe I just want what I can't have and just maybe I wonder what if from time to time. Or maybe I just really miss my friend.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē