Back in Your Rightful Place
Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 10:49AM I've been sitting at work trying to think of a way to explain what happened earlier today.
Other than going back over what happened between tony:there and I over three years ago and our lives together before that, which would take a long time, I'm not sure how I can.
And so I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to tell myself the rest of the story.
After a couple of chance meetings over the last 3 and a half years with no apparant desire on anyone's part to repeat them, on New Year's Day as I was changing buses, a truck pulled up beside me and he offered me a ride to work.
After what happened between us and from what I've always known of the type of person he is, the only clear thing I knew that day was that this particular gesture was akin to an apology. Coming from someone I'd known so well and loved so much I knew how much it cost him to do that. And that it meant, as well, that he was ready to be a part of my life again.
A few days later, I called to wish him a happy birthday and left my number.
I figured that if I was right and he really was ready then he'd call me back.
He called this morning and we spent almost three hours having coffee.
He and I, for being such radically different people on the outside, are at our cores very much alike and I don't think it has ever been so apparant to me as it was today. He's definitely become so much more self-aware and unselfconscious about his feelings and fears over the last few years, as have I, that it was as if we were almost completely new people meeting for the first time. Well, except for that shared experiences thing and the fact that I'm one of the few people on earth he trust(ed).
As well, I noticed that he's taken on a few of my goals while at the same time I've assumed some of his in a peculiar sort of dovetail.
This is hard to explain but today felt important. It felt like a part of the rest of my life. I haven't felt that since I met T3 and look how radically that changed my life.
One interesting thing that I learned about myself today was that I'm no longer intimidated by his beauty. That may seem like a silly thing to say but it has always been an insurmountable obstacle since I met him 20 years ago.
This comes from a really deep place inside of me and it's embarrassing to admit but the beautiful people have always caused me problems. You know the ones - that look gorgeous even when they're ugly, that are so effortlessly perfect no matter what they're wearing, what their hair is doing or how they're feeling. I don't know if it's that I don't feel worthy enough inside to compensate for the lack of belief that I'm a beautiful person too (cause uh, I'm not, not like them, not on the outside) or what it is but it's been an issue always. Like I'm just an interim thing while they wait for someone as beautiful as them to come along.
Fucked up. I know. These things, however, are just not rational, yes?
At any rate, I was always tentative in our relationship, although not in our friendship, because of this thing inside of me. I didn't want to do anything "jen-like" to upset what I was sure was a relationship always a moment away from over.
You'd think I'd find that sort of amusing these days but ... no.
Over the years as his best friend I came to understand how much he trusted me and how much he loved me, and what those things meant to him but in another way my fear was justified because one day an innocent questioning remark lost me that love.
I knew then and I know now that the issue wasn't with me in that case and it seems that conclusion has been reached by him as well. I've learned enough about myself in the intervening years to.. maybe not believe completely in myself.. but to be able to rise above that instinct for preservation that seems to live inside my bones. Although, preservation of what, I'm not sure.
I've learned, as well, that I can't let fear prevent me from doing what I feel, because things end and begin in a moment and trying to prevent that moment by holding back just ends up costing you more .
I'll have the opportunity to test this theory at some point because that is the nature of my relationship with this man. It may change the relationship again or not but I know that inside of me, a great change will have been wrought. In a strange way, I'm looking forward to it.
Reader Comments (3)
Which'd be fine in themselves, except for those blue blue eyes.
*sigh*