Me, Myself, and My Blind "I"

This is not supposed to be a blog about my ex. How awful, how boring, how trite.

But for some reason the things - the thing - I am compelled to write about is the thing I can't talk about. I long ago exhausted all of my "call up at 4 am friends" and you know what, if I were them, I'd tell myself the same thing they tell me: fuggedahboutim. Yeah, I know that's a botched up new-england-ese-psuedo-italian word, but it's three o'clock in the morning and for the first time in six months he called me tonight.

In a fucked up twist, I am entirely responsible for the call. (Just like I was entirely responsible for the abrupt ending of our relationship, for everything that went wrong between us. This said with my tongue so firmly pressed into my cheek that I probably broke blood vessels and my middle finger somewhere imaginarily lodged up in space.) I texted him last night. After his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers won the Superbowl (BTW, I am a Pats fan, big time), I came home drunk and feeling happy about the night I had had out - I had seen old friends; I had "played" (meaning, I had allowed myself shots and such); I had rekindled the child in me who just enjoyed being in a different place with different people and that was great. So I thought I'd text him. The message was simple, perhaps unintentionally so, because the only letters I could make my motion-retarded fingers write were "Congrats!" And so it stood. And I hit send.

He texted me back tonight while I was in class and truth be told when I turned my phone back on on my walk back from the subway there was one little envelope affirming that I had one unread message. It could have been from anyone. And I knew, crossing over the middle of the uptown part of Broadway where you have to stop at the concrete island in between the traffic running downtown and uptown, that it was a message from hiim. It was lengthy, and depending on the million different ways I could interpret it it was either sweet or condescending or apologetic or polite or something written in the various dimensions that exist above and beyond this linear gamut. And I was unemotional about it, surprisingly so; although yes, I did stop on the concrete island and read it, just once but in its entirety, with enough focus that the green light to turned red again and I was stuck there for another minute.

But I didn't feel a god damn thing besides shock and "okay, this is fine." I walked home, began tidying up, positioned myself on the couch to watch the Bachelor (SO not my type, but still, a decent guilty pleasure of a brainless show) and realized that it had been a special two-hour episode that had started at 9 pm. So, at around 10:45 pm, I fell asleep on the couch. And the phone woke me up at promptly 11:59 pm. And before I was awake, I knew the call was from him. I picked it up. And he did not speak. Not one word. So after three "hello's?" from my end, I hung up the phone.

So here I am, three hours later, trying once again to stick my hand inside of my guts and pull out some sort of emotion besides emptiness. But it's either still too soon or - or - I don't know. I love - d - him - or, I still love him and I always will, but that is not saying that I could be with him again. Life is good, I am in a happy place, but truthfully all of the resolve I have had about what I would say to him if he ever called on some predictable date like, say, Christmas, was sucked away from me as soon as I picked up the phone. Because I would not have said any of it. Because I am still blinded by him and how I felt when I was with him, by what I thought I saw when we were together. Because I still do care about him, a lot. I am me, I am so glad to be me, but no matter what, he is a part of me and I wish I could pretend that I didn't feel that way, but that would just be turning that proverbial blind eye.