Completely. Fucking. Lost. Part II
I actually forgot to mention one other little odd event in all of that… before she actually kissed me, she had tried once before to kiss me, and I shot her down in a subtle way. All off the Three D’s were in the room at the same time, and I was setting down. She had grabbed a bag of Baylies Irish Cream chocolates that I had found at Walmart that she LOVES. She only had one left, and walks up to me, and drops her voice a bit… “Honey… so, these chocolates you got me…?” “Yeeeessss?” She steps up so one leg is on each side of my leg, and leans in a bit. “This is my last one… could you get me some more?” I smiled at her real big, “Yes, of course” She then set the last one on the table, and puts both hands on my face, and bends down to kiss me. I assumed she was headed for my cheek at first, then realized she had something else in mind, and I turned my head at the last moment, so she only kissed me on the side of my lips and the cheek. Yeah, I know – seems odd that I would actively dodge it, and I’m not really sure what I was thinking at the time. I think a bit of it was that I was being “marked” in a room with two other guys, one who’s asked her out before. It just seemed too strange. Part II… 🙂 So, the next day we’re supposed to get together and hang out. I end up sticking around in Cheney part of the day, but I had forgotten to snag parts for her car before I left for Cheney the day before (I was doing a tuneup on her car – the poor thing is a 1986 Accord that’s had a hard life. It’s eating gas like crazy, and running like shit.) I really wanted to get that done before I left for Kenosha. Worse, I forgot all of my toolboxes at the house, so to do anything I had to go back home!
So I load the kids up, and we head for Wichita for parts and my tools.
BUT FIRST… 🙂 The Dyke I mentioned in the last post? She emailed me, fishing for information about Devi. I won’t repost it here – my answer took two hours to compose. Seriously. Basic gist of it was that she felt Devi was dishonest about her life, about her relationship with me and the other D’s, then started in on things like would she ever get to see Devi’s kids again.
Basically my response boiled down to grow up, you have a wife, you’re “married”, and if you want something else? Tough shit. You’re married. I wrote it very nicely – it was designed to produce questions in the Dyke’s head, not be insulting and angry. I wanted HER to figure out what happened, and what the problems were, and what she would need to do to handle it – if it’s even a repairable friendship now.
But when it came to the kids question, I was PISSED. The question of the kids, well, it wasn’t honest. She wasn’t concerned about the kids – it was a tool to get back into Devi’s life. That part, I’ll quote here:
“But as someone who doesn’t have kids? Goddamnit, you better damned well be looking at your own kids first. And if your using Devvi’s kids as a way to get her back in your life? I’ll give you fair warning – I will rain hell down on your head the likes of which you have never seen.”
I wrote that, and almost deleted it. Then I just let it stand. I didn’t realize I was that protective of them (hell, I guess really there’s never been a reason I would be protective of them yet.) Whoa.
Anyway, after spending two hours on that, we headed for town. My mood wasn’t great – I was a little stressed at having been pulled into the drama, and the whole bit that happened the night before was still on my mind. But, it’s easy for my mood to be lifted when I’ve got Marc and Madi around (particularly Madi – Marc’s pretty oblivious really, but Madi can quickly see when I’m tired, run down, not feeling well, or unhappy about something, and tries to help. She’s the younger of the two, and is turning 9 on Sunday.)
I’ll admit – I made a serious mistake. I took Marc and Madi out for Chinese while we were in town. I wasn’t paying as close of attention as I usually do, and they loaded up on sweets. Well, not that big of a deal, right? Or at least, that’s what I was thinking at the time. Later, walking through Walmart, I regretted that one 🙂
I mentioned the potential problem with Madi starting, doing the whole bit about me telling her mom I love you. Uh, well, things got more interesting. Let’s see…
Marc asked if I would stay the night. Madi asked if I would stay Saturday night. Then Madi spent 10 minutes trying to talk me into going to church with them on Sunday (wow, if I wanted to amplify the drama that was going on, that would have been an awesome way to do it.) Then something was said about what we were going to Walmart for (pretzels and the Bailys Irish Cream chocolates, which they no longer have – I’ve checked three Walmarts so far.) And both of the kids start in on how I must love their mom, etc., and anything they can think of concerning that.
Basically, they are pushing for me to be in their life more, and I think, trying to push a bit when it comes to their mom. Hard to tell on the last one though, but the first one is pretty easy.
Folks, I’m fucked now. I’ve got a relationship that just went from a known to “uh, wait, what?”, and two kids beginning a campaign to be a part of my life. Well, I guess time will tell – Devi and I are supposed to hang out tonight. I guess it’s going to be talk time.
But I spend the rest of the day gathering parts, etc. and heading back to Cheney. Madi and I play on the trampoline for a while, until she hurts her ankle again. (I talked to Doc later, and looks like it’s going to require a bit of R&R on that thing before she’s ready to get on the trampoline again. Bummer.)
Check it out, fix her up, and got her to relax on the couch until it felt better. Then I headed out to work on Devi’s car. The day started out nice and cool… unfortunately, by the time I got to the car at 6 PM, it was no longer cool. I way overheated myself working on it, but it runs great! I’ve got one more thing to do (replace the distributor cap – they gave me the wrong one at Advanced Auto) and when I get back, I need to replace the PCV valve. She’ll owe me about $100 by the time it’s done – not bad for a complete tuneup.
Now I’m not feeling well at all. Devi txt’s me, and Russ had asked if he could come out and have me look at his phone tonight. No dice – I wasn’t in the mood. Then he said he could watch the kids for a while if nessisary, so that Devi and I could go out. No, I just wanna sit here, relax, and spend time with ya hon. I’m not feeling up to going out (which is rare for me.)
But I also, much later, realized he was trying to put himself out in Cheney while I was there, so he could insert himself into the situation. *SIGH* More male chest pounding.
Devi FINALLY comes home at 10 PM. I’m still overheated, and I’ve already started putting the kids to bed for the night. I’m not happy. Don walks in with three six-packs of alcohol – I immediate drop to one knee, and address him as My Liege 🙂 Cold beer – this is gonna be awesome!
He sticks around for 45 minutes – eventually I just got up and walked away from her and Don chatting and went back inside to start packing up my stuff for the night.
In the end, Devi and I hang out for about an hour and a half before she’s tired and ready for bed.
I told her what was going on with the kids, and told the whole tale there. This fell into things I suggested ways she fix. (Oddly enough, in retrospect, that wasn’t the right thing to do on my part. I should have told her what was going on, and then said the following: “Devi, I’m fine with all of this, just as long as you are. They are great kids, and I like having them in my life. If they are wanting to be around me more, you know what? I’m all for it.”)
Annnd… that’s all I talked to her about. I didn’t feel well, and knew I really couldn’t handle the conversation that should happen between us. And worse, both of us were suddenly avoiding the pink elephant in the room, I think – things weren’t comfortable, except the conversation about the kids.
She went to bed at midnight, and I hit the couch. For a while. I became a bit angry with myself, and a bit angry at her. How dare she change things. And how rude – she tells me she wanted to hang out, which for us is usually a 3 AM thing, and shows up late, then goes to bed early. I had expectations here, damnit!
Which of course is the real problem 🙂 I never told her “Hey, I want to talk about us.” She would have sit and listened closely, and talked with me about it. I never said “hey, how about you get home around 8 PM?” I had expectations, not promises. And had I asked for a single thing from her, she would have done it for me.
But that’s stuff I figured out in retrospect. My anger somehow managed to make all the heat exhaustion go away – so I got up off the couch, packed my stuff, and left.
In the morning I gave her a call about 9:30 AM, because she had to pick up Alex at 10 – basically, just following a sort of modified version of our routine. And she wasn’t happy with me at all – she had woke up in the morning, and I wasn’t there. She knew I hadn’t been feeling well, and I had consumed a couple of beers. But I think it was the first part that bugged her the most – she woke up, and I wasn’t there like she had expected.
Ends up, that might have been a good thing – I forgot that Doc was home since he had the day off for holidays, and Devi and the kids had planned on coming over and playing Rock Band for a while. Since I was there before they were, I could call and inform Devi.
Now, if you’re keeping score, I would have seen the Devi and the kidsi: Monday, Wensday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday (Madi’s birthday party at her Grandparents house, and 4th of July), and Sunday (taking Madi and the rest to dinner for Madi’s actual birthday.)
In the conversation, I was still a bit angry, so I told Devi “Look, I’m a bit ticked at you right now over something. Find a time in your schedule where we can sit down and talk.” She wanted to know what was wrong, and I said flat out we’re going to discuss it face to face. But we don’t have to do it today, just before I leave town.
Tomorrow is Madi’s birthday party, and Fourth of July. I’ve got Madi a “normal” gift – a gift card to GameStop (something they love). But I’m going to give her something special. Madi loves my hat – she steals and wears it as often as she can get away with. So I hunted down my old felt hat, still in it’s box from Hatman Jack’s when I retired it, and give it to her. Of course, an old hat by it’s self would be meaningless. So just like when I gave Devi a set of presents on a really bad day once, I’ll add a good (true) story about the hat when I give it to her, adding meaning to the gift.
I spent quite a while talking to Maha on the phone today – she saw in my email that I was upset about things (she had sent an email asking “how’s it going?”, and wanted to know what was going on between me and Devi. So, I told her the story (though I didn’t go into as much detail as I did on my blog post), including the bit about the kids. She told me “I knew this was going to happen,” and explained her belief on the subject.
Her opinion was “Talk to her about it. You’re going out of town – it’s a perfect time to do it, and tell her she needs to make a choice between now and then. Either you’re in her life, or your out. Anything else is just going to get you hurt, her hurt, and possibly the kids.”
I’m not sure I’m completely in agreement with her on that one. She’s been pretty perceptive, but at the same time, Maha is also been a cheerleader for me starting a real relationship with Devi. Cheerleaders can be a dangerous thing sometimes. Just like anyone standing in my position could easily be fooled by desires rather than reality, cheerleaders can be fooled by the desire for their friend to be happy.
For most of this… relationship, I’ve been a pessimist. I’ve tried to keep my mind centered on the idea that I fill one role in her life, and I shall never fill more than that. I’ve tried damned hard to just be Devi’s friend / fake husband. I even tried to pawn all of this stuff off as “nothing.”
But when I played most of this weekend back in my head while writing this (it’s taken me two hours to write this, as I slowly analyze and think through all the stuff that’s happened before now, and what’s happening now), and suddenly…
Yeah, I have no idea what’s going to happen between us. The intimacy rules have changed. some of the language of the relationship has changed. I’ve learned before when you start going against a plan the universe has for you, it starts ratcheting up the difficulty level. It pushes harder at you. I stepped into Devi’s life when this all began, just to help her out for a bit, and help her get established. Then slowly, one step at a time, we intertwined our lives, more and more heavily.
She’s the one who’s made jokes about having a relationship between us. She’s the one that keeps throwing out stuff like “We might as well be married” or “We should just break down and get married to make everyone else happy”. She keeps throwing stuff like that out. She’s the one that tells me “No, keep calling at 10 PM.” She’s the one that keeps doing stuff to intertwine our lives more. She’s the one that keeps telling me how awesome I am. She’s the one that started the whole “I love you. Good night.” joke, and then one day, just changes it to “I love you.” With no joke attached. She’s the one that seems to actively encourage my further involvement in her kid’s lives. She’s also the one that said ages ago, while we were in bed, “I don’t know how I feel about it, but I like where this is going.”
She’s also the one that basically shot me down in flames once. I took that at face value, but as I finally start putting certain things in her past together (which includes abuse at more than one level) and all of these things she’s told me as neutrally as I possibly can, and well…
Maybe I’ve been wrong this whole time. Chris is right. We do have a relationship. But there’s fear there – my fear that I’m wrong, her fear of being abused again, both of our fears of feeling abandoned by someone yet again if we get close to each other romantically. She’s been trying to keep me close enough that I’m there, but just far enough away to be safe.
Then she took an action she probably knew would change the rules. Heck, she didn’t just do it: she actively tried to mark me as hers in front of a guy who’s interested in her, and her best friend from high school. Even if it was actions done subconsciously, she’s moved things forward between us. I’m the one that dug his feet in, and tried to avoid it.
I think, well, maybe she really has been interested all this time. It’s just the fears and such have been what’s held it all back. There’s only one way to really know.
Sunday evening we’re going to sit down and chat. Er, I’m not ticked at her anymore, but, what the hell – I can ask the question that’s been pressing on my mind the most over the last 48 hours or so: “You once said you liked where this was going. So, where do you think we’re going?”
Then I’m gonna hit the road for Kenosha at warp speed.