an explanation on (what feels like) the ending of a fledgling friendship

what you see in the entry preceding this one is the messy breaking through of pain and hurt. and while dealing with the complicated dynamics of my new friendship with s.r. may have been the precipitator of the outpouring, it is not the sole cause. clearly the brokenness that has resulted from other hurtful, problematic relationships throughout my life has found their manifestation in the collection of words and phrases below. still, i feel a need to address this specific situation at this time.

so, what caused this specific display of raw emotion to burst forth at this particular time you may ask. well, my mid-day entry yesterday should provide some hint as to my emotional state on the day (it actually got a little better, allowing me to end the day fine; however, that respite was brief, as my mood plunged greatly upon getting home that evening).

i should pause to explain that since my recent entries that have also been focused on the struggles i am having in the friendship with s.r. (found here, here, and here), i haven't really received any acknowledgment from him about them, save one comment to the effect of, "awe (sic) (smiley face emoticon here) -- that makes me wanna cry!" on a further aside, i have expressed to him experiencing some confusion about the smiley face. still haven't gotten any insight from him into that either). now he has been busy with life stuff (work, visit from parents, etc.). i get that. but i had hoped when we did have the opportunity for an online chat, we could at least discuss it for a bit.

so last night, as is the case every night, i had no sense of when or, even more so, if i would have any contact with s.r. he appears in the moment in the form of a text on my phone, with a chime signalling his entry, or with a skype instant message "blip", each message usually beginning with some casual, breezy "hey, hey," (which is kind of nice in that my life is anything but casual or breezy these days). well, last night the skype im "blip" with the aforementioned usual greeting came in about 8:30. after inquiring after how my day was ("rough" was my response), he indicated that he was feeling kind of down. when i inquired why, he stated it was a long story. i shared i had the time if he was willing to share more. he wasn't, except that he did share that it was related to a friend and that he hoped the problem would "self-correct." and at that particular moment, it was if i could see, hear and feel a metaphorical door into his life slam in my face.

so we dialogued a bit more, and it became clear that the hoped for discussion on what i had written and shared with him previously about the pain/struggle i was experiencing related to our (what at least i've believed to be) friendship was not going to happen. and there appeared slammed door number two.

after a bit more discussion, he indicated that he was going to leave the conversation (and might be back) to fold laundry (now something you should also know is that i'd estimate about 85% of the time when s.r. leaves one of our chats, he doesn't come back later. sometimes i don't even get an "i'm leaving" during the conversation. they will just end with my making a point or a question that just hangs out in the ether to eventually evaporate to nothingness -- kind of like what my soul has been doing of late).

now i'm aware that i should have seen in his statement that he felt an urgency to get that particular household chore completed and perhaps he also didn't want any more reflection on his problem with his friend and hoped a routine chore would help distract him.  i likely should have seen that. and that is obviously what i saw with my mind. what i felt in my heart was, "i'd rather go do this mundane chore than to spend any time connecting with you clarus." i suppose it could have been worse. he could have told me that he had just painted a wall and wanted to make sure it was drying properly. anyway, cue slamming door into s.r.'s life number three.

the reason that the preceding words i did write entry begins with "i'm not really sure what to say" is because i was just stunned. i had been so hoping for a conversation that would address what i had been experiencing or, barring that, would at least provide some meaningful dialogue. and well that didn't happen. what happened instead was me attempting to be a friend and trying to share in and support him in any emotional pain he was experiencing. an attempt that for whatever reason was rejected. and then the conversation was over literally as soon as it started. i was, well, again, stunned.

the thing about skype im though is that you can still send messages even if the other person is not sitting at the other end. i've done this previously with s.r. i have no idea which, if any, of those messages he's actually read; but i've done it to at least finish a thought or express additional related ones (it should be clear right now that i have a strong need for closure in all matters of life -- tasks, conversations and yes, relationships). what you can't see in the entry is that there was about fifteen minutes of agonizing hurt between the conclusion of writing the first sentence and the beginning of the writing of the second. and i just kept writing -- not steadily but over a period of about 30 minutes or so i wrote, going wherever my ever widening heart break directed me.

so, does this mean that i want the friendship to end? i hope it's clear in what i wrote in the last entry, which must rank as one of the single most painful entries i've ever written over the five plus years of this blog (right there with "there are moments"), the answer is assuredly no. unfortunately, these days in particular, what i want and what will be continue to seem to be very different (almost diametrically opposed) things.

i intentionally chose the word "fledgling" in the title of this entry to describe the friendship because new relationships of any type do have the freshness and hopefulness of a new born animal. but in the same way they can be fragile and under certain harsh conditions they can either fail to thrive or be easily injured and die.

to use another metaphor, the situation i'm in right now feels very much like the child who is fascinated by the hot stove and places his hand on it and is burned. the pain and shock of that experience most likely will and should give the child pause to perform that act again, let alone repeatedly.

i by no means think ill of s.r. he is a good man doing the best job he can to live out his life in a way that supports the people he loves and the values he believes in. there are also complications that are created about the specific circumstances of our relationship (an example of which is i'm not even entirely confident that i know his actual full name) that i have not and will likely not ever detail even here. suffice it to say though that those circumstances, when combined with my current raw (and admittedly fragile at times) emotional state, create a dynamic very much akin to the hot stove. the pain i've expressed in all of the entries around this relationship to date are obviously my processing of the experience of feeling "burned."

and so my "goodbye" was literally my way of performing a basic instinctual reaction of fleeing the pain. but rather than flee i wish there were a way to figure out how to turn off the heat. but i can't do it alone and my lack of insight into how s.r. feels (and, in many ways, who he is) makes me uncertain (actually doubtful) that i have a willing partner in what it will take to do so. to restate a thought from that much referred to last entry, "i just don't understand what it is i'm supposed to want from life anymore."