Sunday, 09.09.2012 - 10:29 am.
The darndest thing, and my friend Victoria told me it would happen. I wake up one of these mornings, tuesday or wednesday, and I find in my e-mail a Facebook friend request from Joseph. I laughed incontrollably.
Even before I started laughing, I knew the answer: NO. Sure, I found out he got divorced and that turned out to be healing for me, more than it should, because getting an emotional benefit out of someone else's misery is not cool (even if that someone else beat you to the ground repeteadly). I stopped thinking and talking about him, I stopped feeling like shit about all that happened with him, Mr Smith, and the now former Mrs Smith. Hell, I even felt "forgiving" towards him, even though I've never felt there's anything to forgive, I've never felt like I'm owed an apology. It was too much for me to consider it in the realm of apology-forgiveness.
He does that. I mean, not him on purpose, but it happens, it's happened over and over since he dumped me: I start to get symbolic distance from Joseph and then he shows up unexpectedly as I think I'm safe from him (like the time I stopped getting in touch with him and he called on me because "I thought you were my best friend!" even though he was already married).
[Not getting in touch with the ex] made it easy for people to distance themselves from the relationship and move on. Emotionally, this is what psychologists would consider a healthy breakup. ...people who remain Facebook friends with an ex-partner will experience poorer breakup adjustment and personal growth relative to those who do not remain Facebook friends. ...while the temptation is great and the technology makes it easier to do that making toast, you should avoid your ex online. It will likely only prolong your negative feelings connected to the breakup, and result in your spinning your wheels in a sort of emotional purgatory. Source.This time is VERY different, though, my pathological grief is gone and I'm not relapsing. I have been thinking about him but not in the gut-wrenching way I used to these past four years.
I'm just thinking, the nerve of this asshole. He isn't aware of how much he hurt me, I realize that, so now that he's divorced we can...what? Be "friends"? I remember Art, he also sent me a friend request some time ago after I deleted him. It hurt too much that he did not understand that pretending he had feelings for me and thus misleading my own feelings "for fun", and then going off to do it with someone else (to whom he's now engaged, heh) was painful, especially considering we'd been friends for about a decade. I took his request as a follow-up to his insensibility, an insistance that he didn't do anything wrong and I was the uptight one; he was kindly giving me another chance to be friends again. The implications of accepting Joseph's request are even more monstrous for me.
I just can't look at him, even picture his face, without feeling disgust. The end.
***
Last night, Andrew and I went out on a date. I don't think we'd ever gone out (1) at night, (2) to a bar, (3) just the two of us; we've only gone out in a combination of two of those three conditions. It was really nice. We were supposed to meet with friends but everyone bailed out at the last minute. Andrew was in class the whole day so I feared he'd want to stay home and play Diablo or LoL, but I still thought I'd ask if he was up to do something else.
Sometimes it feels like he reads my mind. The day after writing an entry about feeling neglected by him over his gaming semi-obsession, he asked me if I felt he was being negligent with me because he plays so much. I said yes but also, in my mind, "shit, is he reading my diary?". Yesterday I was thinking of telling him to go for pizza when he writes me from class, "hey, let's suit up and go out"; then I was sure that he doesn't read my diary, because I hadn't written anything. He just does read my mind.
After class we went for ice cream with a couple of friends, we came home and did suit-up. He took me to his favorite bar, some sort of irish pub. We had drinks and a vegetarian dish that felt as unhealthy as the regular dishes: greasy, with lots of melted cheese and french fries...Delicious. We had a wonderful conversation about his friends and about our plans for the future, the future that starts next january: end of master's degrees and scholarships, finding jobs and getting my residence, travelling to see my family, getting a PhD in the UK or Canada, getting married (though that's a pragmatic step for us rather than romantic) etc. It was a lovely evening.
Speaking of the future, my thesis is finally coming along, so much that I may submit my "first final draft" next month. I'd been very dissapointed with the whole thing, it had a lot of methodological gaps, but my professor finally came (he lives in California) and we looked it over. I got some questions answered and for others, I'm just playing my silly card and following his lead. He will be at my thesis defense in december, if I make it on time, so I'll let him take the heat for that. He did seem pleased with the results and told me to present my work at the APA conference in July...in Hawaii! Fun! But we'll see, everything's so uncertain at that moment that I don't feel capable of committing to anything so big.