Chapter 29

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on

Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)

Angela breathed heavily into the phone. “Lori, I don’t know what to do about Rutherford. I’ve just been dealing with so much of his crap lately. I mean, things were good for the most part, but we’d have at least one good fight a week- either about money, or because he wouldn’t arrive or call on time. Or because he’d call to tell me he’d be late at the same time he was supposed to show up. It’s just been one thing after another with him. Lori, the last few times we were together, I was so disgusted with him that I had absolutely no sexual desire. I had to force myself to make love with him.”

“I’m sorry you’re going through a rough time,” Lori said.

“Let me tell you what happened last week when I visited him in Portsmouth. He was supposed to meet me at seven-thirty. So he called me at seven-forty-five to tell me he was just leaving his parents’ house, which was an hour away from the museum we were going to. He had every stupid, inane excuse in the book for not calling me earlier… Like sitting with his parents’ kitchen clock to his back. Or leaving his cell phone in his car. And on and on it goes. Then he tried to turn the thing around to blame me for not being more understanding! This, after I’d gone out of my way to get tickets for us. We got into a screaming match at the museum … I told him I just wanted to slap some sense into him, and he said he’d just slap me right back. I swear it was ugly and evil. I’m seriously thinking that this might be a good time to just ‘cut my losses’ and get out. I’ve been so consumed by what I’m going through with him that I honestly haven’t given a rat’s ass about anything else. I’ve been really self-destructive lately.”

“Like how?” Lori asked.

“With booze and food. I was talking to my mom night last night, and once again, I’ve got her totally worried about me. She’s ‘done’ with Rutherford at this point. She just wants me to get rid of him. She sees him as a big parasite. I don’t understand why I do this crap to myself.”

Lori sat quietly with the receiver in her hand. She let Angela continue to talk.

“I’m just feeling so lost.  Really insecure.  He’s late all the time, hardly ever calls anymore … It hurts so much. It’s like I’m just an ‘after-thought’ to him.”

“Are you starting to doubt whether or not you love him?” Lori asked.

“No, it’s more like I’m starting to doubt his love for me. I know I love the guy. I mean, I never really did get over him. But he’s admitted that he would never have been the one to get in touch with me. He says he just didn’t want to risk rejection … But you know, I think he just ‘moved on’ with his life and made me a part of his past.”

“Hang in there, Angela,” Lori said.

“Do you know what he told me last night, over the phone? I asked him if he really loved me, and he said, ‘I don’t know if I even know what real love is.’”

“Guess that wasn’t quite the answer you were expecting or hoping for?” Lori asked.

“Not at all,” Angela said. “But at least he was honest. He went on to say that he felt very much in love with me, and attracted to me, and all that.  But that his actions didn’t always show that and he doesn’t know why. Do you think he loves me, Lori?”

“I think it gets really tricky when people try to define love. I mean like, sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever genuinely been ‘in love’ with anyone, according to the traditional definition of being ‘in love.’ There are times I feel like I might love Nick, but then I think about it more, and can’t say for sure how I really feel.”

“People do get into trouble when they base other peoples’ love on their own personal definitions. I don’t want to be so hell-bent on what I think Rutherford’s love should ‘look’ like that I ignore the love he’s actually showing,” Angela said. “You make a lot of sense. Except the part about loving Nick! I think if you had actually started dating Nick- for real- your feelings would fade pretty quickly. I don’t know about you, but someone can’t turn me on unless they’re intelligent and stimulating. Paul, I’m sure, is incomparably smarter than Nick. In fact, I’d wager a bet than most people are. I think you’d eventually get so bored that you wouldn’t even be able to get excited about him physically. I also think part of the reason you gotso attracted in the beginning was because something was lacking in your relationship with Paul. You needed a ‘release’ and Nick provided it.”

“Yeah, well. There’s some truth in what you’re saying,” Lori said. “But honestly, I have a problem labeling anyone as ‘dumb.’ I mean, I trained with Nick in Belchertown, and trust me- he’s far from stupid. I just think he doesn’t care enough to try.”

“I guess what I meant to say was that he doesn’t seem all that ‘deep and sensitive,’ you know what I mean? Maybe he’s sensitive about himself, but how compassionate is he, really? Could you sit down and analyze, like, politics or religion or psychology with him? I used to try getting into deep stuff with him on the phone when we were working together, and I could only go so far. He just didn’t seem to have much capacity for depth. Don’t you agree?”

“Yeah.” 

“Look,” Angela said. “I have ‘loved’ people who are just as vile, if not more so. I just know that when these ‘creeps’ were in my life, I didn’t love or respect myself all that much. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s the same for you. If you were a lot more self-assured, would you really have time or energy for someone like Nick? You don’t have to answer me… But you might want to think about that.”

“I guess the answer’s probably ‘no.’ But I just … have so many mixed up feelings, still, when it comes to him. It’s like, every minute of every day I just see everything as being so finite. Kind of pathetic, even. And it’s not like it’s anybody’s fault. It’s life. It’s like we’ve all been tossed into this weird mix, and we’ve been left to make of it whatever we think we should be making of it. I see someone like Nick, and there’s something about the way he tries to wall himself off. It’s like, the more he pulls away, the more I want to reach out to him. The more I want to try to make things better for him, you know?”

“So you’re strangely attracted to Nick. In a physical sense. And maybe otherwise. We’ll just leave it at that.”

“Okay. It’s left,” Lori said.

“Anyway, I hope that next year is the year I manage to get my weight under control and get into shape. If I can accomplish this, it’d help my confidence in so many ways, Lori. I mean, I know I’ll never be a ‘classic beauty,’ but I also know I can look a hell of a lot better than I do. I went out to ‘Chili Chicken’ night with some radio friends last night, and I couldn’t help admiring my colleague, Sue Smith. She’s so thin and trim and gorgeous. I mean, she does have flaws- like she’s got this crooked nose. But guys just melt around her. You should see it. Nowadays, I hardly ever get any male attention. Some male friends of mine have said that I have ‘such a pretty face,’ but that ‘I really should get my weight down. I know they mean it as encouragement. But it also gets me depressed that I haven’t been able to get a grip on my weight in the last three years!”

“Angela,” Lori said. “I do think you should keep trying make the things you’re not happy with better. But I also think you do too much cross-comparison, and you exaggerate things. Like, do guys really ‘melt,’ or have there been a couple of times where you saw some guy flirting with this girl? And how flirtatious is she with other people?”

“You’re probably right,” Angela said. “But she really is attractive, and she does a lot for herself. So I think she really deserves all the attention she gets. Also, when a girl feels good about herself, she’s more confident. And guys respond to that. Real beauty always comes from within. It’s just hard for me to feel confident when the scale says 180, you know? Look how upset you get with 125! There’s a lot of pressure on women to look and be thinner. It comes from all levels of society, and it sucks, but that’s just the way it is.”

From Lori   

have a nice new years

From:  

u too hun

Lori would have settled for the quiet, affable coolness that seemed to be developing between her and Nick, coolness that was interrupted every so often by Nick’s lusty volcanic upheavals printed out unabashedly in a stream of barely intelligible messages. She would have acclimated just fine, as the tides seemed to be turning in the direction of a light-hearted camaraderie only mildly tainted by the wanton remnants of their past. 

But the tides turned again. Lori sent out messages that were met without any reply. She found herself battling the same recurring flurry of winged creatures in the pit of her stomach, the same shrinking of her heart as her ribcage wrapped itself tightly around it and pinched hard into its deflated ventricles. A seemingly perfect landing was suddenly met with gusty turbulence and she found herself hurled off-course to crash and burn. 

“Why haven’t you returned any of my messages?” she asked him, unable to control her irregular breathing into the phone receiver.

“Aah, I dunno. Just trying to drive you crazy,” he replied, casually.

“Trying to drive me crazy?”

“Yeah.” He laughed.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothin’.”

She remained quiet.

He remained quiet.

  “I don’t understand why you’re being this way,” she said. “What do you want to do? Where are we going now?”

“I dunno. Let’s just let things go, see what happens.”

She sighed into the phone. “Just two weeks ago, you were… I don’t know. So… different toward me.  You always leave this… question mark hanging over my head.”

He grunted something unintelligible into the receiver. 

“What do you want to do?” she repeated.

He shuffled the phone.  “Let’s just let things ride the way they have been.”

“I can’t,” she said.

He paused. “All right.”

  “I don’t think we should be in touch anymore,” she said.

“Okay! If that’s what you want!” he said, chuckling. “It’s up to you.”

“That’s what I want,” she said, before hanging up the phone.

From Lori 

i’d like to know what your problem is

i’d like to be friends with you, but i don’t know if that’s possible. 

do you even know how to be friends with me with all that we’ve been through?

From:  

yeah, i know how to be friends.

but we’ve been friends “with benefits” 

it makes it totally different

and sometimes totally annoying

like how many times in the past did you call me after i didn’t return an e-mail of yours? 

From Lori   

for some reason, you’ve been playing all these controlling little games with me

 and i have no idea why.

From:  

ok 

i’m sorry if i bothered you. 

look 

you and i have our own lives.

i’ve really enjoyed those times we’ve had together,

but i’ve always tried not to get emotionally attached, and i never wanted you to, either. 

but obviously you did! 

i’ve learned to walk away from things that are a problem. 

i’ve learned not to get stressed over things that i can walk away from.

i think more people have to learn how to be that way.

From Lori   

being female it’s hard not to get emotionally attached

i’m sorry, but when it comes to sex, that’s just the way it is

and so… 

i think at this point, i want more of a friendship with you than anything else.

i just think it’ll work better in the long-run for both of us …

From:  

ok i guess we’ll have to see

but if our friendship becomes a friendship with benefits …

try not to take it emotionally!

Asking her to twist her flesh around another’s and then walk away as though she had just prepared a pitcher of unsweetened pink lemonade was like asking her not to blink or breathe. How could he make such a request? Knowing her the way she had allowed him to know her, how could he realistically have assumed that she would be the least bit successful in doing what obviously came so naturally to someone like him?

Just the same, asking him to view her only Platonically and then treat her accordingly was undoubtedly just as absurd of a request. It had become both habitual as well as instinctual for both of them to claw feverishly at each other’s loins when in each other’s presence. It was all they knew of each other, and even if there was more to be discovered, anything beyond the carnal realm paled in comparison. At least it seemed to in Nick’s mind.

There was soon a flurry of messages from Nick. Wormy bait delicately lowered into the freshwater pond, innocently bobbing up and down in tune with the easy current. She knew about the lure. Her lip was still swollen and bruised from the last time the hook had pierced it. And yet she still hungrily eyed the bait.  

From:  

so any plans for tomorrow night?

From Lori   

no

From:  

would you wanna meet up and go out?

She envisioned parking her car behind his dusty Ford Thunderbird, and creeping along the length of the front lawn as she neared the side porch entrance. She could see the same fluffy white cat that had been there the last time watching her suspiciously as she quietly ascended the frail steps of the wooden deck. She could see Nick standing silently in the doorway under the dim porch light, peering at her with his head bent, expectantly.

She would walk inside, and step carefully down the narrow stairway to the basement. The floor mat saying, “WELCOME,” would have been kicked to one side, and she would walk past it toward the covered pool table. She would be standing awkwardly in the center of the room, playing with the buttons on her long-sleeved blouse, fumbling nervously with the contents of her purse. He would pull her near to him, and they would become one. They would belong to each other for a string of isolated moments, moments as separate as film frames, moments moving fast enough to give only the illusion of continuance. 

And then they would become strangers, again.

From Lori   

i want to wish you a happy birthday

as a “gift,” i’m giving you my friendship …

without benefits

i really can’t do it anymore

but i still really do want us to be friends

From:  

hehe ok hunny!

thanks for the birthday greeting

i’ve learned to walk away from things that are a problem. i’ve learned not to get stressed over things that i can walk away from.  Lori was filled with envy. She longed for the ability to just … walk away. And yet, she knew that dragging something on that she knew wasn’t going anywhere- something that would most likely only end up perishing in a burst of flames the longer it was allowed to just continue- was worse than simply turning in the other direction. She supposed she was missing some kind of vital “survival” instinct, the one that would let her know when it was time to move on.

She knew deep down inside that she didn’t have Nick, and she knew that she most likely would never have Nick. Yet the loss of what she knew she couldn’t have would have been another heart-wrenching loss in a long series of losses. She wanted desperately to break the pattern of losing, even if it meant going very much against the odds. She wanted to attain the unattainable, for it was only the conquering of the unconquerable that would bring justice to Lori’s past, itself unattainable and unconquerable in her eyes. 

(stay tuned for chapter 30…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)