Not until today. Perhaps yesterday’s blip of hope, before the holding pattern resumed.
This has been over for a long time, and I have known it, but I only today realized it. Necessary, release.
Goodbye, Worm. For whatever it is worth, I loved you, and always will love you.
So, I hopped into a taxi and headed back to the Worm’s bar in residence, texting him that I was coming, that I was craving to see him again. “I’ve already left,” he replied. He said he’d gone home, felt like staying in, I asked to come over, he equivocated.
By then I was standing, shivering, on his corner. I have never been to his flat, but had walked him this far before. Awkward texing ensued; then deteriorated. “Fine, whatever, see you around then,” I pissily sent. “Ok” Worm responded. “What the hell?” I sent back.
Finally I called him, hearing the buzz of a bar in the background. Home, my ass. The glare from the women staffing the Family Mart I am standing am sends me out on the street, but the noise sends me ducking into some cheap hotel’s entry corridor, lined with grimy fish tanks.
“What the hell, [Worm]?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what’s going on here?”
“I can’t deal with being around you tonight. There’s too much to process.” He proceeded, over the following fifteen minutes, to delineate why he is freaked out, why he felt our situation was so complicated: his reluctance to get seriously involved right now, his fraught emotions towards me, that he’s already seeing someone else casually, that he needs to figure out his life, etc etc. But that that Saturday had been wonderful and intense and that he does really care for me, which is why this is difficult for him and I need to give him some space for him to sort everything out.
All this filtered through the bar noise on his end; on my end standing feeling bludgeoned in this greenish-lit dingy hallway with tank upon grimy tank of fish staring beadily at me, mouths moving in seeming mockery.
I didn’t cry then, and I haven’t since. I have felt confused and annoyed and estranged than sad.
The next day I emailed him, apologizing if I fucked things up by pressing to see him, promising to give him some space, saying that it was too early for him to be worrying about where this could be going, adding that my body already misses his.
That was two weeks ago.
Radio silence since, apart from some neutral online chats, and his leaving town without telling me. I finally called two days ago, to see if he still wanted to come along on a trip I’m planning soon. He was enthusiastic, has obstacles but will join if he at all can. I extended a lunch invitation, he deferred as his parents are incoming and he has to know their plans before scheduling anything. I had to pry him off the phone, as I was waxing late to an appointment.
It has been an irritating two weeks.
With anyone else, with a “normal” guy, I would know from this that I was dumped. But the Worm is not a normal boy. Whenever I second guess him, I am wrong, it is an impossible paradox. It has been three months now of limbo, not just since we hooked up. I know the ambiguity results from his ambivalence, and from his larger issues - he is a man-boy very much lost in the angsty pool of his own navel.
Some of it I should take personally, but not all of it. The problem is knowing when it’s him, and when it’s about me. And, regardless, it’s a shitty situation. I can deal with a lot, but I have to know WHAT I’m dealing with. I’m tolerant and understanding of his bullshit and issues, but not when it’s directed at me. It’s not like I’ve done anything to him to deserve such maltreatment.
I won’t say I deserve better. What we deserve is what we demand, and I need to demand better. I don’t want perfection, I don’t want commitment - I’m not even offering commitment, I don’t know whether I can do this either. What I do require, though, is a baseline of communication, companionship and courtesy. It is not a lot to ask. If he cannot do even that, then I need to walk away - sadly and reluctantly, but at least I will not end up hating him, or myself.
