Falling In Something

I sometimes wonder do other people get as confused as I do about falling for someone, and knowing the difference between a deep friendship connection and real feelings of love. I just get so wrapped up in other people sometimes and it destroys me internally for weeks, months… They stay in my thoughts constantly and visit me at night, usually not sexually, but then there is always that sizzling tension, butterflies in my belly, a want to hold them and kiss them, just BE tender… sometimes it even happens with men, so rare and awkward… and then eventually it quietly passes and I realise we’re finally great friends and it’s so wonderful and how could I have been so stupid?!

Then she came along and made it more real.

Then he came along, and made me question it again.

If only he had never kissed me. If only he would again.

Tea and Talk And Time For Goodbyes

Having tea once, he burst into tears and then would never tell me why. He is not good at emotions, so I know that tonight’s phone call was something considered a hundred times and chosen as the right thing. They are both my friends, this couple that are a couple no more. We were all friends before they started dating, and all through and now…at the end. They were, he said, not working anymore. They haven’t been for a long time. He loves her, but they have grown up and apart, and they don’t make each other happy. They have to  have that talk.

It has nothing to do with me and yet my head whirls with self-centred thoughts. I have promised not to say anything to her before he does – I never would. It’s not mine to tell. I have crossed the road to the shop and bought tissues and her favourite kinds of snack. I am waiting for my phone to ring. I know my friend’s pain is coming before she does. I know all of the things that he will say to her before they are said and before she repeats them to me through tears. I am feeling put out that my planned good night’s sleep, the first in a week, is not going to happen, and knowing how selfish that is. I am curiously grateful that I’ve been given time to take a shower and throw together tomorrow’s lunch. It is a strange sort of thing, to be completely aware of a coming catastrophe and unable to stop it. An hour of fore-knowledge doesn’t change anything about the months of moping ahead. It wasn’t wrong to tell me first, and yet it was. He loves her, he’s passing the baton at the finish line, readying someone to take over as he leaves, taking care of her to the last. On the other hand, when you are about to be taken leave of, at very least you should be the first to know.

I’m never going to tell her that I knew, or that I agree with him that they don’t work anymore. I’m never going to tell her that because I missed a call last night, out with her, he instead chose to discuss the break-up with the girl whom she is convinced he’s falling for a little bit, even though he doesn’t mean to. I never told her that he cried in the cafe, it wasn’t mine to tell.

How appropriate that the blog is back, just when there was the story of the lives of others to tell.

the couple

I was walking in the street and passed by someone I know only slightly. She was walking with her boyfriend who I don’t really know at all and have only met once. He runs a bar and for some reason, probably because of the industry he is in, never struck me as the romantic type. Yet there they were. It was early in the morning. We stopped for a brief chat which led to how early the hour was. It turned out she was on her way to work, he told me he had no reason to be up that early shy of wanting to walk her in. This struck me as the most romantic thing I had ever heard and I smiled broadly, basking in how sweet that was.

Afterwards though it made me immeasurably sad.

Rose-Tinted.

I suspect the things I find cute and endearing about her now, in the nascent few months, are the very things that will annoy me about her in a few years.