now it's decidedly not ok!
so i go see the 4th of the 5 french movies i have booked in to see during the 2011 french film festival - some have been great, others good, one not that good and yesterday, wonderful - magnifique actually (The Age of Reason with Sophie Marceau in case i forget later)
but a part of the overall plot was the childhood friendship between the main character and a boy in the village where she grew up...and it reminded me of a certain someone...a certain someone that i thought i had put away in that box?
you know about the box right? where you put stuff, that you don't want to throw out or really say good bye too (not forever anyway), so you put it in a shoe box, and put it at the very back of the top shelf in your wardrobe, so it's not easy to get at...can't reach it without a ladder or a chair, meaning it requires enough effort to get it that you have more time to question whether you should in fact be delving into the box at all...but all the same you can't bring yourself to actually part with it...
well, seems no amount of willpower (you know, the very same willpower that has allowed me to lose weight and continue with my exercise) was available to me last night...
as i sat in the cinema much longer than i usually do at the conclusion of a movie, and pondered the movie, the story and how i was feeling, i had an overwhelming urge to send a text to the certain someone, yep, the one who i thought was safely in that shoe box on the top shelf!
and of course that was not going to be easy as his details were no longer in my phone...but i used to be in finance right? good with numbers right? so i tried my best to recall his number...didn't work
so you'd think this amount of effort would be enough to make me question whether digging into that box was in fact the right thing to do (we'll come back to what is right in due course)...but undeterred when i arrive home i head straight to the study and find myself madly looking through files and paperwork for last months phone bill, so i can retrieve his number from there and send him what i thought to be a very innocent text - the sort of text two grown adult friends might send to one another, but something happens and things get well out of hand...how did that happen?
so the voices in my head (they are multiple i'm afraid) are now trying to reason with me and tell me what is right and what is wrong and even though there is a part of me that cringes when i think of recounting this little story to my therapist, to any of my friends, to other people who's voices have lived in my head, i can also hear her voice saying 'you're a grown woman, do whatever you want to'...what is right anyway? and i find myself spending every one of the 40 minutes of my walk (loved that - can't believe that having not exercised for a week i enjoyed it so much) contemplating that, and realising that actually, the ONLY voice that matters is my own...
- not one that might have been inherited from my mother
- not one that might be one or other of my best friends who of course have my best interests at heart (don't i also have my best interests at heart?)
- not my therapist, who absolutely won't judge me, but the thought of laying this out for her in our next session makes me cringe
so seriously, how did things get out of hand so quickly? well, i think i know the answer to that...since he turned up there has been an unspoken tension between us and today i decided (as things were heading in the 'out of hand' direction) that it was no longer useful to pretend that the tension didn't exist...
so i did the adult thing and named it! not sure who was more shocked...and then we ended up having a very interesting conversation about the fact that we can't really (and i mean really) be friends...
and i'm sad about that...from the get go, he has said that's what he wanted, and yet, it's not really possible, not in the way i want to be friends...you know above board adult friends...i don't want the sort of friendship that he has to hide from his wife because he doesn't want to have to explain our past to her, i don't want the sort of friendship where i can't call when i want to talk, or when i can't see him because he'd have to lie to her...i just don't
and that is good! good because years ago i would have thought it was all ok, but it's not coz it means the entire relationship is on his terms and i'm done with those kinds of relationships...
that aside, there are other complicating factors...not the least of which is the 'tension' that we have now both openly admitted to experiencing...have no fucking clue how to handle that...
is there a right and wrong way to do it?
honestly, i don't know...
p.s. i think my post about flirting was perhaps a wee bit premature...
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