Sunday, August 28, 2022

Letting it all fade away. Aug. 31, 2012

   

He called me up to ask me how my vacation went.

He always pretends like he’s my friend but always comes across as if he’s being sly, trying to be clever, trying to get me to do or say something that might reveal something about myself that fits in his narrative – or hers.

I always feel like I’m walking through a mine field when I talk to him, one wrong step and I set off a chain reaction – like a did last month for her birthday.

That said, I truly believe he is my friend, someone I betrayed badly, when I should not have. He feels deeply, and I get the sense he really wants to protect her – and is trying to balance this as well as maintain our friendship.

I can not longer talk to him about her, partly because I sound like a fool when I do, and partly because I’m afraid what I said might later be used against me, even when I believe I am innocent.

I do not want to force him to choose between the two of us, and so keep quiet when it comes to her.

I mistakenly believed that the last four weeks had seen an easing of tension when perhaps this was a deception as well, a few innocent poems then another shot between the eyes with her time piece.

Perhaps the poem came as a result of my foolish attempt to speak with her at the office on Tuesday, or perhaps she managed for hide her rage for the last four weeks only to have it bubble up again when she could not pin me down as a possible stalker, when I clearly am not. I mistook a lull for her moving on when it appears she still sees me as a potential threat.

 

In the poem (if actually directed at me) called me “clever” and “elusive” as well a crazy and masked the insult in her usual passive/aggressive way as to be able to deny the insult later if I was foolish enough to tell anybody about it.

She is not really good at confrontation, yet is capable of doing things on the sly, perhaps eliciting allies who are less shy.

I need to be careful and not do anything that will justify her carrying out her threats.

This last poem made it clear that there can never be a peaceful resolution, only a Mexican stand-off, and that my best defense against provocation is not to react, and hope that over time (as she so aptly put) it will all fade away.


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