What a weird day. I lost contact with Juls yesterday evening… so to speak. We were both hovering over the blues due to hating separation and it was time for her to go workout. So, before leaving I asked her to buzz me later and she said “definitely.” But the call never comes so I felt pretty stupid. It was pretty much a case of wondering why the hell I’m doing this to myself and what is it going to take for things to change. She needs time but time alone isn’t going to get it done if she’s still in a “status quo” frame of mind. I was thinking at one point that if I had any self-respect left I’d allow some distance to develop and not get myself in the middle of something that I can only f-up and complicate with my presence. That’s what the rational guy would do (which is why I have such a hard time with it). Me? I keep believing that something is going to happen and that it’s worth the pain and suffering to stay within the ring of fire to be there when she can step free. But, she’s already projected that I’ll be without her for my birthday in July, so I really don’t know what I’m holding out for. I must really love self-torture.
Then with everything pretty much feeling in the air and all, only 15-minutes into my first class and access to our network drives and network just vanished. Shit. We were in the middle of doing our first save when the problem came to light. Then suddenly 40-kids needed immediate assistance. Ack. After assessing that this wasn’t a pulled cable problem and was effecting the whole class I decided that we needed to save to the “my documents” folder on the individual PC and let it stay there. Fortunately we weren’t working on anything that required a network connection (a la the KidPix drawing for first grade that I was working on). But it required a lot of fast footwork to get the students to save their work in a folder they weren’t used to using and with enough information in the filename so that the work could be retrieved later. Needless to say, I didn’t really need this problem. But it pretty much submarined the rest of the morning. The next class was beginning a mother’s day letter and it required that we use the order copy of KidPix which isn’t “writing friendly” (translation: mistakes have to be caught when one finishes each line and can only be corrected with a corrective BACKSPACE which destroys all the work after the mistake). After about fifteen minutes of that madness, the teacher opted for a simpler “solution” and we switched out to do the work. Ack. One poor girl was all but done when we made the switch. I canceled the next class (3rd grade) because all of their work was on the server and inaccessible without it. I would canceled the 1st grade class before lunch but the teacher didn’t check her voicemail before coming and we ended up doing the work in Word as simple as possible. But it still required that I do the class more or less on “roller-skates” running up to the front to type in the next sentence in the teacher computer and then run back and make sure that the kids save their work in the right place. At one point my projector overheated and I lost the screen so I couldn’t even show them what they needed to write. Ack. Then just after they left I found out that the network was back up. Someone’s having a good day at my expense.
Then just as lunch was ending I got an SRLU from Juls. I wasn’t in the mood so I just gave her an reply SRLU (lately I’ve been breaking the ban whenever possible and calling her whenever she SRLUs during the week). But then I knew that she had a job in Torrance in the morning that there was a possibility that she might be in the area on her way from Torrance to her afternoon counseling session in Orange so I decided to call. I think that I surprised her because it was a minute or so after I was supposed to let the kid in the room (but they were still lining up…). I asked her where she was at (I could hear driving noises in the background). She hesitated and asked if I wanted to know exactly where she was at. For a second I wondered if that meant that she didn’t know where she was at. But then she said that she was in the city of Lakewood (where my school is at) and she said that she thought that I needed to let my kids in, which led me to wonder if she wasn’t in some location where she could see me but not visa versa. Okay, now I’m really getting screwed. I know that she means to have fun and be “light” but I am getting really tired of what seems to be this endless and pointless longing to be together. If she’s going to hide in the bushes and some how get something from that… well, apparently I just need to lighten up and just follow her lead. Alas, I’m not sure that I know what that means, and I doubt that she’d appreciate that observation (she bristles when I make any reference to “games” and our relationship). But that is what it feel like. So after I let the kids in and looked around and so no car or evidence of her presence I wrote a TM to her: “That’s not fair… I am dying 2 c u… Least u could’ve done was honk. Wah. 2day sucks. 12” I debated about whether to included the concluding 12. She responded with what seems like a nonsequitor: “U not bad ru?” That was completely indecipherable to me. So I responded: “Bad? I guess I don’t understand the question.” By then (1:30) she was probably somewhere near Orange and looking for lunch, or maybe just heading back to the office. Then she’d be heading to her counselor, so I correctly guessed that I wouldn’t be hearing from her.
Right now (3:40), she’s got another 15-minutes of counseling. Then I might or might not hear from her. I’ve endeavored to let her take the lead in our contact and communication, though admittedly I’ve pushed for our conversations over the past two weeks (at least I don’t feel quite as stupid paying such a ridiculously high rate for so many unused minutes….). But, if I’m looking at another two to three months of “no contact” (which we’re breaking) and things still very much in the air… I have my doubts about being able to communicate every day and sharing how much we miss each other and how badly we want to be together and then have her go home every night to have it all reset the next day and play over again. What’s the point of that? When I was feeling completely destroyed two Fridays ago she did the impossible and lifted me up with the thought that we just have to hang on through this difficult time and then we can have the lifetime of love, affection and companionship that we’ve seen in each other. Silly me, I should have asked how long she things this period is going to last. I’m at that point where my fingertips begin to ache because my heart is being pulled and pushed and the end of this “period” doesn’t seem to exist. I want her to have the time that she needs, but in the meantime I am dying and I find it hard to laugh and enjoy whatever play we might be able to find hiding in the bushes along the way. I wish that I could but it’s the blessing and curse of how deeply I’m feeling this love. It’d be so much easier if I didn’t give a shit, but then if I didn’t give a shit I wouldn’t still be here. I would have stayed with Diane and made a go with it with her. But I responded to loves call and have been trying to be true to that calling in my heart. I can see why many don’t even bother to acknowledge it, or dispense with it as an inconvenience. But I’m just stupid enough and stubborn enough to not listen to any of that and hang on until I forget why it was that I started this journey. Oh well.
I’m stalling because I don’t want to drive home. Somewhere in my poor pathetic little mind I’m hoping that she’ll call and that something will have happened to give me renewed hope. But in that communication with me is taboo and I am a source of guilt … let’s just say that the afternoon will probably pass and when we do reconnect (probably a single “12” in a TM or less) it’ll be as if none of this happened and then the evening leads to her heading back home and another reset for another day. I am so tired of this. JBB 4:02pm
