Weird note and disclaimer: just after starting to write this, about 3 weeks ago, I talked with one of the people I was writing about for the first time in 14 years or so. He mentioned that he’d tried to read what I’ve been writing but was having a hard time understanding me. Bit of a language barrier, plus, uh, I am strange. So all of a sudden something that maybe one person would recognize himself in became something that two people would. I didn’t want to make anyone mad by invading their privacy, so I stopped writing. I was..am…nervous about how personal this is, and not just to me.
But I kept coming back to it. I am still struggling with words and relating to people in so many ways. Not just with these two people in particular. Comparing why one written relationship worked so well for so long in spite of some substantial barriers and why I am struggling with another that really should be so much easier than it is was helpful to me.
In the circular way life seems to have so often, I suspect that while one of them is returning to at least the edges of my life, the other might be slipping back out of it again. I don’t know, really. I suck at reading some people. In the end, it seemed somehow dishonest to myself not to post something just because someone, unnamed, might recognize himself and possibly take offense.
Possibly. Maybe. What if.
So, as I tend to do, I said “fuck this shit” and kept writing. I don’t want to worry about a maybe. Especially a maybe who doesn’t really seem to even be talking to me right now.
Then after writing all of this, it occurred to me that I might want to give some more thought to how I write about real people and if I care that they will recognize themselves. And what I should do about it. Sensitivity and so on.
The people you are about to read are real. No names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent. I don’t think I have said anything unkind, or at any rate nothing I’ve said is meant unkindly.
That’s a long ass disclaimer. Anyway. On with it.
In my life, I have had a few relationships, ones that were..are…important to me, that were mostly conducted in writing. In one case, distance made it a requirement. He lives in Europe. At one point, I considered him one of the most important people in my life. I still of think of him as one of only a few people who has ever known me extremely well. One of only a few people I will always care about, no matter what.
And I have only seen him in person a few times.
Most of the time, we communicated through instant messaging or chat rooms. The friendship lasted for several years, roughly from 1995-2000. Although most of our talking was done in writing, I think one of the reasons that our relationship lasted so long is that we did talk so regularly. We spoke on the phone for a few minutes almost every day, just long enough to say hello. Or if we had a misunderstanding, which was frequent because we spoke a language that I didn’t know all that well. He seemed to know when I needed to hear his voice, or when the tone in writing was more intense than what it seemed like it should be based on what he meant, or if he thought I was upset due to a simple misunderstanding. We didn’t seem to carry any upset feelings from day to day. He was just good to talk to. Always.
He’d let me know if he was going to be offline for more than a day or two. I’d do the same. There were very few times we went a whole day without some sort of exchange of words unless one of us was on vacation and away from a computer.
When we did meet in person, it was strange at first. More so for him, I think. I think he was surprised at how large I am. He was surprised at how quiet I was. Not just in the amount of talking, but my actual tone of voice. In a foreign language, I was much more fluent in writing than I was in speaking.
We got used to each other.
We never seemed to have trouble questioning each other’s motives. We didn’t always agree, but it didn’t seem to lead either of us to assume that it was because of a lack of caring or because one of us was trying to hurt the other. I always thought I mattered to him. I think he knew that he mattered to me. In retrospect, it is very uncharacteristic of me to have trusted someone so much. Someone I hadn’t even met in person. At the time, it didn’t seem at all strange. It just happened that way.
Things didn’t get difficult until the end. I was depressed and wanted to drive into a concrete wall. I was way over any kind of edge you might name. I don’t know that he really understood that, but he could definitely see that I was freaked out, continually negative and depressing to talk to. I think it just stopped being fun for him to talk to me, and eventually he sent me a very gracious Cara Michelle letter. I have never quite forgiven him for sending it on my birthday. Ahem. I meant it about the gracious, though. It was a very good letter, as I recall. It ended things as kindly as it could have.
I fell apart, but it had been coming for a long time and ultimately had nothing to do with him.
The other relationship began and ended in the real world when we were teenagers. We hooked up off and on for years after that. It all eventually came to a big crash/bang/thump at his wedding. After that, I stuffed that whole relationship way down. Never allowed myself to think about it. So of course I never got over it. Not really.
A few years ago, 25 years later, he messaged me. We met a few times, but mostly we communicated via instant messaging. It has been intense and problematic for me from the first. Partly because our history is intense, I have a hard time trusting his intensions at times. He broke up with me for someone else. Trust is a factor. I was also still married and was trying to keep things within the boundaries of that. We stopped talking at all again for a long time while I tried to work that out.
It has been strangely difficult for me to talk with him in writing. He does things like stop talking for days at a time that lead my rational brain to indicate that he is a bad emotional risk. Not talking triggers even more great behavior from me, I blow up, he handles it by avoiding the conflict and not talking some more. Vicious circle.
And I am, for all of my emotional intensity, generally not prone to outbursts. I am much more prone to silence and evasion but I am trying not to do that with people now. I am trying very hard to share my feelings. With this guy though, I think maybe my regulator is busted or something because I am either as serene as the Madonna or crying. I am definitely not as much fun as I normally am.
The odd thing is that our real life relationship, as much as I can remember, was not full of a lot of drama. We got along really well. He had a few jealous outbursts, but for the most part we were just happy, in love, teenagers.
The irony is that now, when I am theoretically a mature adult, I have emotional responses to him that are at about the age level we were when we were together.
Not that I have any stressors in my life that someone who cares about me might take into account. Some empathy and reassurance, maybe. Well. We do what we can, right? Everyone has issues. We seem to push each other’s buttons in messaging. Actually mostly I think he pushes mine. I don’t think he cares all that much what I do. Or maybe he just fakes it.
In person, I suspect we would have an easier time of it. There are challenges there, too.
When most of your talking is done via words on a screen, the volume of words does kind of matter. Few words sound short tempered or indifferent. Lots of words can seem needy or dramatic. The long pauses between responses make everything seem more important than maybe it really is.
Which is not to say that either of us is a bad person. We do suck at talking to each other via instant message though.
Solution?
I don’t know. It will work out or it will not. He will always matter to me, regardless.
I’ll try not to behave like a lunatic. The only thing I have any control over is my own behavior. Other people will do whatever they do. Maybe they will react to me, maybe they are reacting to other things I don’t know about or understand.
It fascinates me how different our reactions are to different people though. People who both care about me in some way, people who I care about.
You thought maybe there was going to be some wisdom after making you slog through all of this? Sorry, but no. I’m trying to figure this all out as I go!
Thanks for riding along with me…
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