A Perfectly Timed Email and a Bit of Honesty

I can’t explain this whole attempt to become friends. Not to myself and certainly not to those around me. The best I can say is that I need to walk away with something that will help me validate our relationship and the fact that I put my heart out there when deep down I knew it was likely to get broken.

It is hard though, this friendship thing. I still want to be with him, still love him I guess, yet I have to hold back all those feelings and emotions. I feel like I need him, but can’t let myself depend on him the way I used to. I’m obviously not making any moves to “get over” him at this current point in time. I’m just not ready to release my grip from all the memories. I figure I’ll just wait until he gets in his car and drives away for good, and then work on it. In some ways I think I’m still in a bit of denial about it all – like I’ll suddenly wake up and I’ll have my amazing boyfriend back.

So as it stands, I’m definitely not 100% myself. I have my moments (like Sunday when I didn’t leave the house until 8pm – despite the gorgeously sunny day – and spent the majority of my waking hours with tears in my eyes), but overall I’m okay, I think.

But after initiating our first (and only) 2 get-togethers as friends, I felt like I needed Boston to initiate something. Anything. It didn’t need to be plans to do something. Just an email to see how it was going would be fine. As immature as it seems, I felt like I had to make sure he was willing to put some effort into this and boycotted contacting him first, knowing full well that he was leaving (tonight) for a weekend in Boston and a day after his return I was heading to the east coast myself. I guess I’ve been a bit of a pessimist these days and I had all but finalized my “this isn’t working” speech.

A mere hour after I confessed to a friend about how hopeless I felt in the whole situation, an email arrived. It was exactly what I wanted, what I needed. Boston emailed… just because. We both happened to be free last night, and I had a birthday gift with his name on it (as an aside, I was determined to find the perfect book for him – it is a hard thing to do, and based on the discussion we had about the premise of the book, I think I did well).

There was dinner and a walk (because we weren’t done talking), then the opening of the gift. Before we knew it, it was past my bedtime.

On his way out the door, I stopped him. I took a deep breath and reminded him how we promised to be honest about how we were feeling from now on. I told him how I was getting upset, waiting for him to contact me, but that the email from him that afternoon was perfect timing. It turns out he understood exactly what I meant. He knew it was his turn (not that we are playing a game or keeping score) to reach out to me. It was awkward for him to send an email about nothing, but he knew if would be much more difficult for me to continue to reach out to him without getting anything back. And he wanted me to know that he does care and he does want to spend time with me.

In the midst of all this honesty, I asked one more questions. Is he still sad sometimes? Because I am, not all the time… but sometimes… He’s sad too, not all the time… but sometimes. It doesn’t make it all better, but it is nice to know I’m not alone.

This honesty thing… I think it works. I told Boston how I felt and in return, he validated my feelings and eased my worries. There is no more wondering or assuming, at least about the issue at hand. Maybe we should have worked on this earlier.