this hour

there's a new entry in the guiness book of records: the longest hour known to man. that would be the hour between getting here this morning and the earliest possible time she would call.

and it won't be an hour. what with being away over the holidays, plus the office being closed for the week, plus everything else, there'll be lots of office talking going on, so it'll probably be much later before she can find time.

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in many ways i'm such an incurable romantic. (probably another reason B said no to me and yes to him). yesterday i overheard a couple of people talking in the office and one woman said she'd gotten engaged over the holidays.

and even though i don't really know her and wasn't a part of the conversation, my immediate reaction was to chime in and say "that's so cool! my girlfriend(/lover/soulmate) got engaged on xmas too!"

i can only imagine the looks i would've gotten and how difficult that would have been to try to explain. and frankly, once the thought passed through my mind, it didn't seem so cool after all.

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it's been exactly 59 hours since she called me with the news. i wonder what's been happening in her world in that two and a half days. is the coffee table stacked high with modern bride magazines now? is there a list of reception halls to call? numerous potential dates circled on the calendar yet to be checked against other important dates, birthdays, holidays and travel plans?

has she changed her mind? rethought her yes? or has she completely jumped into it, purging all other distractions from her mind? is she breathless with the thought of how close she almost came to opening up her life to me and so thankful that she didn't? or is there perhaps a little twinge of regret that we didn't meet, at least once, before?

despite the hours of brain time i've spent thinking about all this, it hasn't been ?emotionally real? to me yet. but last night, this morning, and now every passing second is starting to bring with it the suffocating -feel- of the truth.

more than anything i want to believe that she's rushing to work, anxious to call, dying to tell me that it was all a mistake, that she's reconsidered, that she can't go through with it, that she's been dying to try to contact me to tell me so. but the truth of the matter is that there's been two full days in between - ample opportunity to find a way to make a quick phone call or send a text message or email.

i can tell myself that it's not final yet or that it's all a mistake or that she's come to her senses. but it's not me that has to say it. and she hasn't said it.

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a correction - a few days ago i wrote:

now just the holiday weekend and one extra day ... and the sun will rise in the east again.

who knew?

drawing dead

when she broke the news to me about bf's proposal and her "i didn't say no" response on sunday night there was something else she said: "nothing's been done that's irreversible".

another line i mistakenly interpreted as "even though i said no, i could still tell him yes". that twisted interpretation no doubt helped soften the impact during the last 48 hours. looking at it now though, it's clearly wrong. while it should provide a glimmer of hope that she's not 100% committed to marrying him, what it does do is to confirm that she told him "yes". not, like i thought previously, did she not say no, but she must have said yes. and although she could change that to a no, it's still a ?groundbreaking? (heartbreaking?) change. she's never said yes to him before, despite several proposals.

two sides of the same coin. two interpretations of the same event. we've been breathtakingly close the last three or four weeks. closer than we've been in a long time and, i was sure, closer to meeting than ever (she'd even agreed to a tentative date!), closer than ever to merging our futures into one. i was more sure than ever that she was going to leave him. and days later she accepts his proposal of marriage.

after she told me about it on sunday night, she had to hang up suddenly. now, i know her. and i know that if she needed me to know that my fears and assumptions about her accepting or not accepting his proposal and my worries/concerns/fears about our relationship and where (i thought) it was going, that she would find a way to call me or get a message to me, especially given that she knew our next "regular" time to talk would be over two days later. if she needed me to know, she'd find a way, no matter what.

yesterday was obscenely quiet.

today has been devastatingly quiet.

tonight will be hell.

and then tomorrow morning, waiting until she calls. not -if- she calls, because she will, even if it's to say goodbye. but will it be in the morning? i don't know, can't even guess. i do know that the later it gets past mid morning the worse it is... the more it confirms.

more thoughts

so i've been thinking - big surprise - and there's a couple of things that stick in my mind, both of them things she said to me when she told me that bf had proposed to her on christmas eve.

first of all, i realized that i was really naive for feeling unprepared, blind sided even, by bf's proposal to her. his life has turned around a lot in the last two months or so. he's stopped (pretty much) accusing her of cheating on him all the time, so a lot of the tension from that has been released from his thoughts. the other thing that was bothering him a lot was the lack of sex and her apparent disinterest in it. but she's told me that for a couple of months she's been getting back into sex at every opportunity and moving their sex life along, including asking for and getting the sex that she's wanted for a long time.

so with way less relationship tension and daily sex i'm sure things have been looking up for him. he's getting sex at least daily, plus whenever else she wants it, not to mention she's been requesting the more intense sex that she's wanted and been wanting for so long. who wouldn't think things have turned around?

so, all things considered, there's no way i should have been surprised that he'd propose again. i've certainly called a couple of previous proposals over the last 3.5 years. how the fuck did i miss this one? looking back, it's painfully obvious that it was in the works. hell, -i- proposed to her barely two weeks ago. (the answer was no.)

it's funny how sometime you can get so caught up in how great the ride is that you completely fail to see the "Bridge Out" sign.

so, there were two things she said that have been sticking in my head. "i didn't say 'no'" and "it'd be the worst thing for [her] and the best thing for [me]".

up until mid-morning today, i took "i didn't say 'no'" to be a positive thing. to my interpretation it meant "i didn't say 'yes' but i didn't turn him down flat either". hearing the words of my interpretation i dared to feel hope. since she hadn't said 'yes', i felt/assumed/hoped that she'd later tell him 'no'. and then i realized that i'd been hearing exactly what i -wanted- to hear, which was "i didn't say 'yes'". but that's not what she said, is it? what she said was "i didn't say 'no'". not that she didn't say 'yes', but that she didn't say 'no' - big, big difference. did she really say 'yes' but was just unable to tell me right out? did she leave it open with him, intending to give him her answer later and she wanted me to know that she hadn't -yet- accepted? then why tell me at all until she'd decided? or was my initial wishful thinking on track?

the other thing she said that's been bothering me was "...it'd be the worst thing for [her] and the best thing for [me]". i've told her so many times to please -not- make decisions about -our- relationship based on how she thinks it will affect my relationship with my fuck buddy. i hate that and she knows it. she knows damn well that the only reason i even have this fuck buddy is because B won't see me (yet). so to make a decision that runs contrary to the best interests of B & my relationship, the relationship that i consider the most important in my life, in the interests of any other relationship really irks me.

but anyway - if she really thinks that marrying bf would be the worst thing for her, they why the fuck would she have made the first comment? why would she have said 'yes' (if she did) instead of 'no'?

now that i think about it, there's something else she said last night that registered in my head but couldn't get my attention over the news of bf's proposal (my brain was already overloaded). i thought she'd said "i wrote you an email with my name and phone number and all that". clearly that's -big-... HUGE even.

i don't think she'd divulge that information (after all this time) if she wasn't ready to meet. or, at least if she hadn't been ready to before his proposal. if she'd accepted, she certainly wouldn't do it because agreeing to marry him would rule out ever meeting me. then i figured well, if she wrote the email before the proposal, i'd know by the datestamp and i'd just have to accept that she now regretted doing so. if, however, she sent the email after the proposal, then that would be a pretty strong indication that she was -not- going to marry him.

and of course, i was nuts all day trying to get to email somehow. and i was going nuts even knowing, KNOWING that she'd called me shortly after he proposed and before she had -any- possibility to send an email, but wishing gave no heed to reality. i did finally get to check it late in the day - almost 8pm her time. at which time the third possibility became clear to me.

there was no email. so, she hadn't sent it earlier in the day( and g-d, wouldn't THAT have been the best xmas gift i ever got?) and wouldn't have to regret doing it later.

and staring me in the face was the truth that she'd changed her mind about sending the email, about opening up to me and us. again. which means she doesn't want me to know who she is. which would seem to support the thought that "i didn't say 'no'" might just have really meant "i said 'yes'".

so now what

so now what do i do?

"he asked me a question". I knew immediately, of course, what the question was - i'd wanted to ask her the very same question within the last few weeks. i'd even specifically -not- asked her that question in the last few weeks even though i't been on my mind.

funny - i hadn't wanted to push her especially during the holiday season. it's really funny, considering i'd have done the exact thing he did.

how did i not see this coming?

she said "i didn't say no". ouch. i was sure she'd have said "no". instead, during this time of our relationship when i was more sure than any other that we were going to be together, she told me "i didn't say no".

and while i know that it doesn't mean she said "yes", it's not a "no" either, is it?

and so, at 0215 PT on december 25th, 2006 i sit in a mcdonalds on the strip in las vegas and ponder a future without her. she's told him "no" several times over the last four years and to be honest i never expected her to say "yes" - at least not since -we- began, and certainly not when we've been, over the last four weeks or so, closer to meeting, closer to each other and just closer in general.

or so i thought.

and as i sit here i have to wonder where my life went so wrong, where my future, my relationship with B left the tracks. and instead of counting down the days till we meet (because she has (had?) tentatively agreed to meet in feb), i have to switch to counting down the days until she becomes mrs bf.

wow. how could i have been so wrong? even within the whole of our time together, i've never been more sure that we'd meet, -soon-, and start being together soon afterward.

instead of hearing "i don't love him" or "i want to be with you" she said "i didn't say no".

otoh, i guess i shouldn't be too surprised - it's exactly what i'd have done, had i had the opportunity.

and so it's official - hope was knocked to the curb at 1105 pm et on christmas eve, 2006. it's so ironic because after how we've been for the past few weeks, i was positive, POSITIVE, that this would be the last xmas we celebrated apart from each other. instead it'll remain forever embedded in my memory as the last xmas that i -thought- we'd ever spend apart and the last xmas i ever had a chance to know her before she decided to marry him.

while my love is away

the weekend wasn't too bad, all things considered. i got to see my daughter and we had a great time together. having my days with my daughter be good ones helped build on the overall good feelings left in me from the friday before with B.

she was with me the whole weekend. it helped that i had a pretty good idea of what she'd be doing all weekend as she was preparing for her trip. it was a pleasant surprise that she called me from the office saturday night and again from a pay phone once she got to her destination on sunday. there's nothing quite like looking at your phone, seeing a number that you don't recognize but that you know is from the city she's in and then hearing her voice on the line. now -that- is a sweet, sweet surprise.

i think because she was home until sunday, at the same time i was away, made it easier to "break up" our time apart. she was home and i was traveling, then she traveled, then i went home, then she'll come home.

anyway, i've felt her presense in my heart this whole time. for xmas i gave her a bracelet she wanted (and about the only thing she's ever said she'd have asked me for if we were together). it's surprisingly calming to be able to visualize and know that something of me is with her all the time.

now just the holiday weekend and one extra day (she's off tuesday too) and we'll be back in touch. and the sun will rise in the east again.

seeing the future

another year comes to an end. for B and i, this is our fourth xmas holiday season. tomorrow i leave to see my daughter for a few days and on sunday B leaves to go away for a week with bf. but for -us- today is our last day together for 12 days. (not exactly the 12 days of christmas, huh?).

days off are bad enough. weekends more so. weeks even more so. and while there will be a huge empty spot in my next 12 days, she'll still be with me. what's a little surprising to me is my reaction - it's not what it's always been in the past, which is great anxiety and this looming sense of emptiness. it's -there-, i'm aware of it deep inside.

but this time it's different, there's a kind of calm that surrounds all that. it's the calm of knowing that -we- are waiting at the end of the time. it's a serenity from knowing that even though we'll be apart and out of touch, we'll still be very much together; she'll be with me, in me, as i will be with her. i have no sense of concern about whether or not she'll come back to me and us from this time away - none whatsoever. i KNOW that she'll be back and that it will be a -reunion- not a reintroduction.

there's another element to the calm i feel, although one i'm almost hesitant to voice. it's something i've always wanted and even felt that it was a possibility, but now it feels more like a certainty. dare i hope or think that this will be the last xmas we'll be apart? i feel it.

i know it.

hello again

well. it's been almost two weeks and a lot has happened; more in a later posting.

in the meantime....

cliche' of the day: it's always darkest just before the dawn.

cliche', yes. but accurate too.

last week was the darkest time i can remember. she went away for almost three whole days in the middle of the week. i was useless. devastated. and when the third day dawned, i knew that all was lost.

and then she called. and since then we've talked. and talked. serious, important, open talks.

and while things still aren't where we'd both like them to be, we're getting there.

even while knowing that there are no guarantees in life... my mood can best be described as "giddy".

the end of love +3 days

one side of my heart is positive she'll call today. how could she not? could she really give up over three years of this relationship in just three days?

the other side of my heart sits in the corner, afraid to look at the passing of the day, knowing that this is just the beginning of the time after B. she's left for good. she'll be back at some point, not to come back but just to stop in and say hi before she moves on.

and i'll stand here, numb and disbelieving that she could let go and move on and watch her as she walks out of my life forever. i'll watch her for a long time, call after her for a long time, begging her to reconsider, to please, please give us a chance, to please give us the chance to see how we'd be in the real world.

and when it's finally obvious to me that she is not going to turn around, not going to come back, never going to let us see how we'd have been together, i will stand and wait as the darkness returns to my world.