Probably Should Have Ditched This One Too.

I don’t want to write about L anymore. I don’t want her to be such a focus for me, such a priority that I feel the need to work through my thoughts by writing it all down. It’s clear I don’t mean that much to her, so I’m a chump to let her mean that much to me.

But here I am in a funk again because of her, and not able to write more than a few sentences before my thoughts get all jumbled up and I erase everything because it doesn’t make any fucking sense. Since Monday I’ve started three different posts that I wound up deleting. Four if you count this one, because it was much longer before I deleted it and wrote this. And honestly, this one may not survive the cut either.

I decided this weekend to start distancing myself from her, the way she’s seemingly doing to me. We still text most days, at least a little, but I haven’t initiated the conversations and I’ve kept my replies short. Of course I want her to notice, and to feel the kind of sting I felt on Saturday when I saw on Facebook that she and B had been in town. I want her to see that I’m moving away from her, and for her to feel the helpless emptiness that I feel because of her moving away from me.

Oh, you think that’s immature? That’s not even the beginning of it. I’m still trying to think of a plausible excuse for the wife and I to drive down there this weekend without telling her, and check in all kinds of places on Facebook; shopping, eating, whatever, just to let her know we were there and didn’t want to be with her. How’s that for immature?

There are two reasons why it won’t happen, though. For one, the wife wouldn’t understand, and it would be too hard to explain why we were doing that. Secondly, L probably wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t care if she did. And if somehow she did care and fussed at me about it, I’d feel like shit for having hurt her. How fucked up is that?

But she may have noticed the distance after all. Yesterday evening she asked me to call, and asked me a computer question "for a friend" she didn’t really need to ask. The purpose was to drop just enough hints to get me curious (and probably jealous) and start badgering her with questions. (This isn’t idle speculation on my part, either. She’s done it enough times for me to recognize the pattern.) So far I’ve failed to take the bait; I answered her question as if I were completely uninterested in whatever clues she was dropping and I’m not going to ask for any details. It’s her mess, let her deal with it.

Re-reading all of the above, I feel like a character in a crappy “feel good” movie that only B-list actors are in because no serious actor would want to be in a movie this bad. (I see Brendan Fraser playing me.) This is the point in the movie where you’re rolling your eyes and thinking “This guy is just too fucking annoyingly stupid. Why doesn’t he just cut the crap and tell her how he feels? It would clear everything up, the happy music would play while the credits roll and we can move the fuck on!” (Maybe Renée O'Connor could play L.)

What you don’t see after the credits roll (if you even made it that far into the movie) is how two days later everything goes to shit again, and you’re right back where you started.