A weird question has arisen in my mind as of late... That is: what on earth is one supposed to do with one's exes?
I've asked a couple of people over the years: "so, are you friendly with any of your exes?" and I've gotten mixed responses. Seemingly, all of Norman's exes had dropped off the face of the earth. Jake proclaimed that he did his best to absolutely ruin the lives of his exes, and then refused to acknowledge their existence. Jürgen was still in love with all of his exes and stockpiled them, organizing them in Rolodex-like sections of his life, for easy access. Neil told me he'd pretty much drifted away from most of his exes, because it was so often difficult to have a friendship with an ex-girlfriend. But there were exceptions, of course; he'd kept two of them around as his best friends, and that worked out fine.
Me, I like to take it on a case-by-case basis.
Now, I'm not really on friendly terms with most of my exes, I suppose. There are only one or two, I think, with whom I actually maintain some semblance of friendship. There are a few -- but just a few -- toward whom I have genuine animosity. Most of them fall somewhere in between. One or two, I couldn't care less about. And one of them, with whom I would have LIKED to remain friends, seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
And then there are one or two whom I just don't think about. It's not that I dislike them, it's just that my life has ceased to have any room for them. Or, there is room for them, but it's kind of minimal. The kind of person who ends up getting listed on my instant-messenger programs, but to whom I have NOTHING to say.
I used to have this policy: if I hadn't worn an article of clothing for one year, and it didn't have some great sentimental value, I gave it to somebody else, or donated it to the Salvation Army. That worked pretty well. It kept me from becoming TOO much of a packrat. Before I implimented said policy, I used to tell myself, "well, yeah, I never wear it, but it's pretty and someday I might have an occasion..."
So, I've been wondering about an appropriate time to discard people who are no longer relevant.
I know that sounds awfully heartless -- it really does. If one of my exes, or even an old friend, were in trouble, I'd likely do everything in my power to lend my assistance. Well, in MOST cases. There are a couple of people I probably wouldn't rescue if they happened to be tied to a train track. And maybe two or three cases in which I'd stop and wait for the train so that I could watch the action. But hell, if somebody I haven't talked to in years called me up wanting ten bucks, or a place to sleep for a few nights, or a bag of Top Ramen, I'd do my best to provide. In most cases. I'm NOT the sort of person who likes to leave wreckage in my wake and ignore the existence of an ex or a distant friend.
But it seems to me that there comes a time when maintaining an acquaintanceship -- especially with an ex -- just isn't worth it.
A story...
Once upon a time, Helena very much liked a boy in one of her classes. He was very smart, and very attractive. And when Helena was around him, she got a little bit nervous and stupid. Furthermore, although she's still kind of loathe to admit it, he reminded her in many ways of Neil, who had vanished somewhere in Southern California at the time.
Helena didn't date the boy. The boy had a girlfriend, for one thing. For another thing, Helena was kind of too chickenshit to ask people out. Plus, the boy also had this other female friend who was always tagging along with him, and Helena was pretty sure that the other girl was in love with the boy. So, they didn't date. Once, they got drunk together on pear cider and maybe some tequila, and they held hands. But nothing really came of it. They weren't really friends exactly. They went to a party together once, but they were accompanied by a few other people. They talked sometimes, but it was almost always in groups of several people. It wasn't the sort of relationship where, for example, we could have gone out for coffee and conversation, or driven around someplace thinking up acts of random fun and possible destruction. Those things, I think, constitute a friendship. Things like that. We didn't have that. What we did have was, I suppose, a mutual crush on one another. But it didn't develop into anything more than that.
...Until, that is, Helena and the boy started emailing each other sometimes. It should be mentioned that, by this point, the two of them weren't living anywhere near each other.
...And then, the emails increased in frequency until they were daily occurrences.
...And eventually, they took on a tone that was decidedly more-than-friendly. The boy told Helena once that she had beautiful eyes -- in Czech. Helena doesn't remember all the things she told the boy. But she does remember that in both sides of the email conversation, there were a lot of things that people don't usually say to just anybody -- or to just any old friend. The emails were really something quite close to love letters a lot of the time. All of this lasted just about a year.
And somehow, the whole thing turned into a fling (in person, not via email...) that lasted a couple of days.
...And then the boy left town, telling Helena he wasn't interested in a relationship. He wasn't into the idea of a long-distance thing. Oh, and there was the dilemma of the girl he lived with, whom he'd been dating on and off for awhile. At the moment, he said, it was "off," but that I wasn't to tell anybody about the aforementioned fling, because it would devastate the other girl if she found out.
Helena was absolutely infuriated. A year of love letters -- or something kind of like love letters... And a very nice weekend that really did seem an awful lot like a relationship of some sort... And THEN the boy told Helena he wasn't interested. Oh, she was pissed. And, truth be told, pretty hurt, too. It felt a lot like the boy had tried her out and rejected her.
But Helena didn't mention any of this to anybody. First of all, she was horrified at the idea of the other girl finding out about what had happened. (Helena happened to know and like this girl quite a lot.) Second of all, she wasn't entirely sure she had any real reason to be hurt or upset. Maybe, after all, she'd just made the mistake of taking everything much more seriously than the boy had. That, in any case, was what he'd told her. She wasn't sure if she ought to feel rejected, or just stupid for thinking of it all as more than it was. Third, she'd planned to visit the boy on his home turf a few weeks after he'd visited her on hers. And she swore she wouldn't let anything get in her way of having a good time.
And nothing did.
But she never really knew how to act around the boy after that. There hadn't been any real friendship -- the coffee and trouble-making sort -- before the love letters and so forth. There wan't really anything like that to fall back on. Before things turned more-than-friendly, there hadn't been much other than a crush. Helena felt kind of stupid remaining "friends" with somebody she hadn't really been friends with before.
But, by the time she'd figured all of that out, she'd been faking her way through a sort of friendship for a few months. And it would have seemed pretty irrational to spontaneously say, "hey, I'm not really sure we have anything in common, and I'm not really all that interested in hanging out..."
It seemed, to Helena, like trying to be friends with a one-night stand. Somebody she wasn't really sure she'd ever known all that well to begin with. She still wasn't even sure whether she should feel dumped, or used, or rejected, or whatever. Basically, Helena had really been interested in having a relationship with this boy, and it hadn't happened, and she felt really weird about the "friendship."
But, since she hadn't said anything to begin with...
Finally, it occurred to Helena to just kind of let the whole thing fade away. It wasn't going to be a relationship -- and by that time, Helena wasn't even remotely interested in trying for something like that -- and it was an incredibly awkward friendship. So, she emailed more sporadically than she had. And she might have sent a letter or two in the mail, but nothing like the kind of thing she'd sent before. The last time she saw the boy was in the fall of 2002. And it wasn't a bad time, but it still felt awkward.
Besides, the last time Helena saw the boy, he made what she considered a completely tasteless remark about not being comfortable sleeping with her because she was pregnant. Forgetting -- or at least neglecting to mention -- that perhaps Helena didn't have any desire to sleep with the boy. Forgetting also, that Helena had made it clear that she was in a relationship with somebody else at the time.
But Helena didn't say anything about that at the time, either. And she felt still more awkward about the relationship between herself and the boy.
Helena never could bring herself to tell the boy to fuck off. She didn't DISLIKE him, after all. The boy just didn't fit anywhere into her life. His place was confusing and awkward at best. But is that really a reason to tell somebody to fuck off? Is it really a reason to break up a friendship -- even one that seems strange and somewhat unhappy from one side? The boy hadn't actually DONE anything to hurt Helena -- at least nothing that was identifiable as deliberately harmful. So Helena just ignored emails and letters most of the time.
And that mostly worked.
Until recently.
The boy hadn't contacted Helena since maybe April or May, and she hadn't replied. Until a week or two ago. His email didn't say anything particularly important. It was just a hello-how-are-you sort of thing. He asked for my contact information. That was pretty much all.
And Helena knows damn well she can't ignore him anymore. She's either going to have to give him her contact information and continue to subject herself to feeling weird and awkward around this boy, or she's going to have to tell him she'd rather not have any sort of acquaintanceship with him -- that it had long outlived its functionality and that it hadn't really been the greatest thing to begin with. If she chooses the first option, she's obligated to more-of-same. If she chooses the second option, she's going to have to explain. And frankly, she feels bad about "discarding" somebody who has generally been nice to her.
Helena doesn't like that sort of directness.
Helena DESPISES that sort of directness. Note the use of the third person narration for the entirety of this story.
Especially when she really feels like her reasons are somewhat irrational. And certainly outdated.
My mom called me today to tell me that she'd gotten a phone call from an old friend of mine named Aimee.
Aimee was my very first friend. We shared Nancy Drew books and pointed out the parts where Nancy and Ned kissed. We were somewhat scandalized, and utterly delighted by those parts. We were also going to write the world's longest letter to each other. We wanted to break a world record. I think Aimee must have stopped writing by now. I guess I never gave up.
Aimee left my school district in fifth grade. We saw each other a couple of times after that, but mostly she lived her life and I lived mine. For awhile, I missed her a lot, but it kind of faded. The last time I saw her was in the mall in Johnson City. I think I was about sixteen. I don't remember what we said to each other. I remember it was nice, and friendly, but gahd, we were SUCH different people.
Come to think of it, we always were pretty different.
But she was my friend -- somebody who would have kicked the asses of everybody on the playground who teased me. We were the outcasts of elementary school, and we took care of each other. I loved her dearly for it. I can still hear her voice in my head; that defiant, silly, giggly little-girl voice. We really were a couple of losers. But we fit together for a few years. It worked. It was nice.
Now, it has been at least eight years -- maybe more -- since I've spoken to Aimee. We just lost touch after awhile. And out of the blue, she called my mom -- presumably she scoured the phone book for somebody with my last name -- and asked for my contact information. There's a tiny part of me -- a tiny part that's been disappointed a number of times in my lifetime -- that wonders if she just called because she's turned into a meth-head or something and needs money and is desperate enough to call up her best friend from third grade... But most of me is pleased. Most of me is astonished to think that this girl took our childhood bond that seriously. I mean, THAT is loyalty.
And it's entirely different, somehow, from the situation with the boy in the above tale. And not, of course, just because I didn't sleep with Aimee. The boy and I had nothing between us to begin with -- just a bit of infatuation that ended quite abruptly and rather painfully. Aimee... I haven't seen her for years and years, and we haven't spent any real time together since like, 1991... But there was always something there. Something very strong. Aimee was a kind of a black sheep, like me, and so we were sisters way back when. I have every hope that the reason she called was because she remembers that.
I think I will write her a long, long letter. I hope she remembers the thing about the world record.
I made Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. It actually came out a whole hell of a lot better than I'd expected I could do. I was very impressed with myself. All things considered, the quality of dinner was, to say the least, a minor miracle. Hell, I even got most of it done at the same time, so the only thing that got cold was the potatoes. And they were still at least lukewarm.
Have you ever seen an 8.27 pound turkey?
Imagine it sitting in a pan.
Now imagine somebody swallowing it whole.
That's approximately what I look like at eight months pregnant.
I find this a little bit disturbing and a little bit amusing at the same time.
Anyway, we all ate until we were full. And then we ate more. And then we took turns sneaking into the kitchen to pick at the leftovers. It was one of the nicest Thanksgivings I've ever had, despite the fact that the damned store was closed and we had no pie or biscuits. It wasn't about that. It was just nice to have good people around, and to have more than enough for all of us.
And by the way, there is no gravy but homemade gravy, and for those of you who buy your Thanksgiving gravy in little plastic tubs because you're hopeless in the kitchen... you know not what you do. I hereby extend my pity.
I'm going to go do something else now.
Love,
~Helena*