Describe how you met the last person you texted and talk about your friendship/relationship. Isn’t that a pip of an assignment? It just so happens that the last text I sent was to the Doubtful Guest…my Mr. Big. I think I may just refer to him as D.G. from now on. It’s short and sweet, like J.R. or D.J. Works for me. Anyway, I was hoping for an answer I didn’t get. As always, things are complicated with D.G. He’s far away. He has his own son about my boy’s age with many of the same things going on; school, homework, holidays, etc. There’s a huge time difference. When I’m free he isn’t and the like. It can get frustrating sometimes. At any rate, on with the story.
D.G. and I met through a mail exchange service. I had just watched a heartwarming and rather odd animated film called Mary and Max about a little girl who becomes lifelong friends with her pen pal and thought it would be a sweet idea. I wanted new people to talk to and I missed writing letters. I made a few friends and still write to one other fellow I met there about once a month by old-fashioned paper mail.
D.G. was interesting from day one. He wrote me this hugely long introduction letter that reminded me of Edward Bloom from Big Fish, just a little larger than life with stories too numerous and amazing to be entirely true. Something strange happened from that first letter. I can’t tell you what it was. Usually I’m very guarded with new people, especially if I suspect them of being possibly full of it, but I wrote a long letter back. I was much more freely myself than I normally would be with a stranger. From that day on, we emailed back and forth four or five times a day.
We became fast friends and talked about anything and everything which was wonderful. He told me about where he was from, I returned in kind. He believed in my work. he sought to bring me up instead of tear me down (a new thing for me). He got my weird references for the most part, everything he said was something I would say, and then it got even more interesting. There were times when he seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. He’d email me something I had been thinking the night before, no kidding. He would write long letters of his opinion that were exactly the same as my opinion. I thought either he’s in cahoots with Ed Harris producing my lifelong tv show (thank you Jim Carrey for the paranoia) or we really are meant to be great friends and maybe more.
We’ve had some ups and downs since, mainly due to the fact that I had feelings and never managed to reconcile them until recently when he admitted to his own. I kvetched I can tell you. I was miserable as a person could be. I could write an entire chapter but it’s best to stay to the main bullet points here. Basically, I’ve given up the outcome to fate. I haven’t given up hope but there’s still a huge distance and other things to overcome. He’s everything I want except for the most important thing…readily available.
Things have distanced us over the past year. He has more concerns (some serious ones) and less time. I’ve had some setbacks and need more support. It hasn’t found a happy medium yet. Some days I feel like all I get is a drive by greeting or a message to explain the lack of a message, and it’s crushing. Other times it’s like the first days when we talk and laugh over everything and make grand plans. There are still new and exciting things to learn.
For the tough bits, I blame the increasing tension of distance. He’s not here to hold me when I’m sad or to bring me tea when I’m sick. He’s not here to cuddle with on the couch or to laugh with when I make a stupid blunder or trip gracefully over something in plain sight. He’s not here to say goodnight to or to geek out with eating junk food and picking apart movies made from our favorite books. Sometimes that breaks my heart. Sometimes it makes me mad.
For now we just text and call and email and hope that when the time is right, serendipity will kick in…or it won’t and I’ll find out that it was all a huge pile of wishful thinking and feel the hopeless part of hopeless romantic for trying to push a close friendship somewhere it was perhaps never meant to go. A relationship is hard to quantify with so many intricate moving parts and outside influences. I have my own biases and blind spots. I can only hope that they’re not too huge at this point to know when to walk away for self-respect’s sake. If it all goes to hell, I’ll be somewhere crying, yelling at Ed Harris and shaking my fist at the sky.