Monday, May 23, 2005
sitting tight
Well kids, it has been a very busy few days for me.
Saturday was Julie's last day at work. I was incredibly sad about it, but I managed to suck up my shyness and give her a 'good luck and thank you' card of sorts, with the promise of a present in it. She was thrilled and gave me a big hug. I was thrilled. The card had a picture of a grey cat on it, and it turns out that it looks like her old cat who had died who incidentally had the same name as one of my cats. Weird. We had a lovely last day at work together. I was scheduled to start work at 10:15 and she was supposed to start at 10:00, but she was running late and so ended up running into each other at the coffee shop on the corner. We talked and laughed all the way to work. She has all these funny little quirks, things I shouldn't tell you about because they're so unique that they would identify her better than even using her real name. Suffice it to say that I really get her, and she seems to really get me. At the end of the day I nearly cried to have to say goodbye to her. I know it's not forever though, because when I told her I thought it was funny that I could miss her so much after meeting her just a few weeks ago, she replied that she felt as though she had known me for a very long time. Understanding like that is just so rare. She wears clothes I'd love to borrow and she uses all the biggest most unnecessary words, like I do. She is also a fool for alliteration, and she hunts down books she knows I'd like to read and then gets me to read them when there are no customers around. She sends me silly emails and she tolerates all of my dumb questions and bad jokes.
This is one crush I won't let slip through my fingers. I'm thrilled to have her as a friend, but I am also perfectly comfortable feeling more than friendship and keeping it a closely guarded secret. I know she has a boyfriend and I have no intention of messing that up. Plus, I am not the type to decide someone likes me when I have absolutely no proof of it. Especially when there's that whole silly labelling aspect involved.
The Boy came back into town unexpectedly on Saturday morning. He took a bus for 22 hours in each direction, 44 hours total, to stay in town for barely 24 hours. He wanted to buy me a grad present, something that I would actually like, and something that wouldn't make me cry. I really didn't know what to think of that, except to observe that this is a grandiose gesture of the sort he never would have performed two weeks ago. I didn't even really know he was coming until he had already arrived. I assumed he had other business in town but all he wanted to do was hang out with me, find me a present, eat some sushi, and maybe go stunting. He got two out of three, because stunting was cancelled for the long weekend.
On Saturday afternoon I met him on my lunch break. He looked adorable loitering in the store like a nervous little kid. We looked for a present and eventually found a silver amethyst pendant with zirconias in it that I loved. I didn't even know how much it cost, and for the first time ever I really didn't care. I was letting him make his own decisions. I went back to work and he bought the necklace for me and gave it to me in the store. I was pretty much flustered for the rest of the day. I showed it to Julie and Sara (one of our younger employees), and gave them a bit of an explanation. They cooed about it as girls are wont to do, but were generally nice. I fucked up a whole bunch of transactions and had a hell of a time counting the contents of the tills at the end of the day. Having him around brought everything back, and it was really tough to stay focused.
We went out for dinner to a really nice restaurant, and he paid for everything. I offered to chip in, and he pointed out that I made $9 an hour at my job compared to his multi-thousand dollar salary. Good point. We had many long conversations and laughed and joked just like we used to. Nothing, and yet everything, had changed between us. I still love him, and he still loves me. I miss him, and he misses me. But I can't go back, and neither can he.
Oddly enough, I feel like a different person than I was the last time I saw him. I feel somehow more confident, more together. Perhaps it's true what they say - that losing everything really makes you reassess what you have.
At least now I know that we'll be friends. Great friends. I'm still trying to find that elusive thing that makes a friendship into a relationship. It's not sex, I know that. Sex and friendship can exist together without anything else. Perhaps it's just will, commitment, understanding. An agreement about where things stand. I don't know what it is, exactly. But somehow I feel that him and I are better off without it. There is less pressure, somehow. We are free to be who we are. He knows me better than anyone on the planet, and I know him just as well. Perhaps it's just the guilt talking, but he seemed more relaxed and more giving. And I was so much more willing to just accept.
So what could have been an emotional disaster turned out to be a really good experience for both of us.
And then I got myself into something of a debacle downtown.
Because some of us have short attention spans for long posts, I will post that account separately.
But I'll do it right now because I'm like that.
-N
