Tag: nice

55. I thought ‘I don’t want to be friends with you’.

Last Sunday morning I walked the dog with the daughter. A nice and energetic walk around Tooting Common, watching the dog bounce through the long grass and chase sticks into pond. It was sunny and warm and easy. And it helped start a strange day well. It’s our wedding anniversary today. I didn’t quite know what to do with it. I felt sad, but not overwhelmingly so. I felt disappointed and slightly cross. But mostly I just felt at a bit of a loss.

It was difficult not to keep remembering what a great day we’d had. (Read 16. And then I talked about our wedding.) But I remember also that he went for a run the afternoon before the wedding and left me and our friends to put up the gazebos in the garden and the flowers on the tables. Always that one step away from a full commitment.

This evening we went out for something to eat together. I shy away from saying that we went out to dinner, it has the ring of a date about it, and I had no intention of it being that. It was my idea, to do something positive when I was feeling rather wobbly. I think the anniversary had upset me more than was obvious. It was, maybe coincidentally, the start of ‘one of those weeks’.

Anyway, we met in a lovely, quirky, joyful little restaurant on the hill. It’s a place I often go, and we used to come together on occasions. I know the man who runs it, the smiliest person in the world who always greets me with a “Hello Sister” and a joke about my meal choice. I think I needed to know in advance that, even if the evening may be ‘iffy’ the food and the service definitely wouldn’t be. It was a bit noisy outside, and looked like rain, so we moved indoors, where it was just as noisy because there were musicians rehearsing. So we could chat, but only loudly, and I didn’t really feel like loud. I hadn’t  exactly prepared a list of subjects but the ones I did want to, hopefully, get into weren’t really for projecting across a table.

But we did talk, well, we chatted. About his dad and the holiday home, about the dog, his decorating, his yoga, a bit about my work, about the daughter and her plans. It was ok. It wasn’t great. I’m not entirely sure what I expected. I know I hoped, at some point, to be asked how I was doing, but it didn’t really come. I’m not entirely sure he want’s to know. Because, in reality, it’s not so much that he’s moved on, it’s that real understanding that he wasn’t truly there in the first place. And that’s the sad realisation. The feeling that I get when we talk, when I see him is that I don’t really miss him, because he wasn’t properly here. He spoke of the security that he knows he doesn’t have now; the company, the intimacy he misses, but I don’t think he misses me.

He spoke about aloneness, but as a thing to get used to, not that he was lonely. About the plans and ideas he’s starting to have for his future. He talked about the difficult relationship he still has with his parents, and maybe that will never change. And as we sat, surrounded by the noise and bustle, I thought ‘I don’t want to be friends with you’. Because, while not for one moment to I want to get back together, I would, for once, like to hear something from him about me. Because he’s the one that left and I’m the one that made it easy for him. I’ve been actively supportive and helpful to make the process better. I know it’s been less of a drama for those around us, But even a small acknowledgement of what I’ve been through would be nice. Isn’t that what friends do? Even things out a bit? Understand what the other person is going through?

I don’t want to hear all about him, and wait for a suitable moment to tell him about me. I want to be asked. So I don’t want to appear to be ‘like a friend’, because that’s not the type of friend I need. I can’t be bothered. Really I can’t. And the difference now is that I don’t have to.

So I’ll still be nice, because, after all, we are doing this well. But that’s what it is. Being nice. I’ll be friendly. But he’s not a friend.

 

 

 

54. The niceness is really starting to piss me off!

Sometimes, time just trundles along. The weeks have rolled into months and now I find that it has been over five month since we separated. Nearly eight since we decided to part. It’s getting to the stage when the anniversary of the end  is heading towards us. Do we mark the occasion. Does it warrant celebration, not for the break itself, but for the way we’ve managed to be.

Or is there a new chapter which we need to write. No one of pleasantness and simple kindnesses, but of actually being able to talk. Because we’re not there yet.

We meet, or rather, we see each other fairly regularly. There’s the dropping off of the dog, the daughter needing a hand, even a chance to watch football downstairs with his dad. All those occasions are politely and gently managed. The “is it all right”s and “do you mind”s are sent ahead so that there are no surprises. And we dance this dance of not wanting to offend or intrude.

And the niceness is really starting to piss me off!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing. Who wants to be the shouty, pointy, accusing, unforgiving couple? disappointed that Jeremy Kyle has been taken off air. This way of being is so much healthier, so much easier to heal from. But what does it say about us? Because I feel that all the things that couldn’t be said at the beginning of the end are still waiting to be said. It’s like those words are all sitting on a shelf, and I’m concerned that they’ll sit up there forever, gathering dust. And we’ll never learn from them

The past few month, the space and distance it has given us, enables us to speak while not being in the pain we were. I remember the feeling when I couldn’t breathe, when the lump in my throat or the knot in my stomach was made of all the things I couldn’t say, the questions I couldn’t ask. Those barriers are smaller – they’ve not gone, but they feel different now.

Our friend in America, when I told him our news, was saddened and sad for us. I told him how we were being, how we were trying to do ‘this’ well. “Good” he said, “because loosing a lover is one thing, but loosing a friend is much worse”

And that’s what it feels like. The physicality of being on my own has become familiar, I’m used to the bed to myself, the dinners to suit, the schedule without checking with anyone else. It’s not always great, it can get a bit lonely or boring or lazy, but it doesn’t feel awful like it did at the beginning. So I can manage the ‘living on my own’ bit.

But I miss the friend I once had. The person I could tell almost anything. And I wonder if we have to finally talk about the one thing we didn’t – us – in order to finally be truly just friends.