magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i was scared out of my dreams (which were, from what i recall, a little scary in and of themselves, bordering on nightmare territory) by the ringing of my phone. fumbling for the call accept button, earplugs out. "hello?" but even half asleep and totally disoriented i knew who was going to be on the other end.

and, "do you want to call me back so i can save this calling card?"

"okay. give me ten or fifteen minutes." yesterday's clothes. barefoot on the lounge phone. two hours.

i had left her voicemail last night. "i know that it's only been a couple of days since we've talked, but it seems like a long time. and i figured that i'd just be talking to your voicemail tonight, but i wanted to at least leave my voice for you, tell you i'm thinking of you, that i miss you."

and two hours on the phone this morning. we've been talking quite a bit recently. i had called her almost two weeks (i think) ago and left a message. "i'm calling you because i'm thinking about her. i'm sorry. i don't want to be." some more that i can't remember.

i've been on the phone an awful lot recently with all sorts of people. i think i spent over thirty hours on the phone in the month of february. that's more than an hour a day. at least it's cheap.

so two more hours on the phone with her this morning. then to check my mail and an actual handwritten letter from her. two very sweet things in it. a paragraph that she had written about me over a year ago. before i had any idea that she had any feelings for me. and a list of the items near her bed. including photos of us and things that i had sent to her.

she wrote the letter after receiving the last extensive email that i sent her, the morning after my last real conversation with lindsey, after the argument in the stairwell outside the cornell apartment. at that point our last phone conversation, a few days before, had been about mundane stuff, it had felt inappropriate. but i was thinking about her when i woke up that morning. i wrote:

i wish we could be talking on the phone right now, but it's quarter of five your time. there's stuff that i need to say, and i don't think it's really what you want to hear. i have been feeling flashes of you in my life the last few days. strongest this morning. but i think they've been primarily caused by the fact that lindsey has been pushing me away. and maybe it doesn't matter where they come from, as long as i'm feeling them. but i feel bad that this is the reason. that it's not because you've been sweet and wonderful and written every day and sent me odd little things in the mail and made me fall in love with you again. (these are hints, i don't know what it is that you could do to make me feel that way. and i guess it is more important that you figure that out, anyway. that i know you have the capacity to figure out what to do to make me feel that. i know that the phone messages are not enough. that phone calls about everyday things like our last one only really make me feel awkward right now. like we're forcing something that is not inherent in the relative positions that we find ourselves in.) so please, please, please, please. make me want you for who you are, not for who you were, not for a memory of someone i once loved, not as a fall-back to fill a more recent void. even if that void was yours to begin with, even if it was only being temporarily filled with someone else. but when you left that spot, it changed shape, and it may have never really fit her, but it doesn't really fit you anymore either, and if you want to be there you need to work at reshaping it. i guess in a way, i'm testing you. if you can find ways to fit yourself back inside my heart, to make me fall in love with you again (not to re-fall in love with you, because it can't be the same as it once was), then maybe there's hope for overcoming what has happened. but i need to be able to love you, obviously. who you are now. who i am now. and i can't only be feeling echoes of old feelings that don't apply anymore. i can't only be feeling them because the person who you pushed me towards can't or won't love me in the way that i would want. i can't only be feeling them out of fear that i won't find someone who is deserving, who respects me. i want for you to deserve the fact that i love you. please.

she responded with one line. "i am no longer emailing you. expect real mail. i love you."

and we've been talking on the phone a few times a week. i told george on the phone that i was a little worried that things were just sort of inevitably going to work out. that i didn't really have any free will in the situation. that i couldn't picture a future in providence without stef. it shouldn't be that easy.

for instance, she had woken me up another morning with a phone call. i had been up late the night before talking with lindsey about sex. about how despite all my talk that sex is not really important to me, it obviously is. and how what she has done is saying, in a way, "i don't really respect this special thing that you have shared with me that means so much to you." i tried explaining this to her on the phone. she said, "of the thirty-one people i've been with only three have really been meaningful."

which really only reinforces my point, but more importantly, "wait a minute, when was number thirty-one?"

"i knew you would pick up on that."

"when?"

"when i was in memphis. i was drunk. i met some guy. we went back to his hotel room."

i couldn't say anything. i started pacing. she may have started to speak. my muscles tensed. "fuck you," i said. "fuck you. fuck you." i hung up and threw my phone down on the couch. i may have kicked something.

just relaying the conversation now, weeks later, puts me into the same horrible, sinking mood, so obviously this hasn't been resolved. she did call me back (after i had gone and woken up lindsey). i can't remember what we talked about for the rest of the conversation.

i do know that i will have to forgive her if things are ever going to be truly okay between us. but i haven't yet. and i might not be able to for a while. and that is what makes this feeling that things are inevitably going to work out even scarier, because things really aren't okay underneath, and i don't want to fool myself into thinking that they are only to have them explode to the surface at some point.

but still, we have been talking. and things are maybe starting to resolve. the other day i was looking though my old sketchbook for something, and i came across that first ever picture that i have of her. taken a few days before we were together. and i felt what i hadn't felt when i received her first letter since all of this started.

the first letter came the day after her birthday. the words that she wrote seemed a little fake, a little too easy, a little too superficial. there were photos of her, and of us, taken towards the end of the summer. film that i had sent to switzerland from italy and had seen online, but not seen any of the prints of. i didn't feel anything when i looked at them. and i felt awful for not feeling anything because she had written: "I have a feeling you have been waiting for these, this is just the sneak preview. (Well actually just the ones I knew would make you feel extra good.)" my stomach still sinks when i read that. because they didn't make me feel good. i felt more for the pictures of ryan and his girlfriend caroline that he has up in his studio space across from me. and i still don't feel anything when i look at those photos.

but that very first one of her did make me feel something. and does. so i looked at the letter that she sent to me last semester. just over a month into this distance. and it seemed so sweet. "I have been having wonderful dreams about you as far as I can tell. I can only really remember seeing you in them when I wake up and not any context, but I don't care." and sad. "I haven't bought my plane ticket for February yet..."

and the newest letter.

and i don't know why i should feel such divergent things in response to such similar stimuli. of course this is going to be confusing. i wish that i could wake up one morning with the knowledge that i could forgive her completely, and we could move on, or else with the certainty that i couldn't and with the strength to let go. but that isn't going to happen. it's just going to have to play out.

garth and chris.k told me that i should know right away when i get back if things are going to be okay or not. that if it doesn't feel good pretty quickly, it won't be. and getting back. that's really the hinge point. and until then..