distraction

How can I feel so content and so sad at the same time? That's not a rhetorical question; and I don't really want an answer.

I skipped yoga on Sunday, which hasn't become a regular day for me anyway, and then at the last minute yesterday - as I was getting dressed for it - skipped my regular Monday class, too. My knees hurt because of all of this rain. But I like this feeling, this humidity; it's not hot so the humidity doesn't bother me, it feels rich, I like the smells it activates.

R disappeared from Facebook and I got a little panicky. I had gone to Flightpath Coffeehouse to work on chapter 31 last week and suddenly got an urge to contact him, and thought I would do so on Facebook via my iPhone. He had contacted me a couple of weeks earlier, shortly after (I later discovered) he and his boyfriend had split up and his boyfriend had moved away. He called, but it was a short phone call; he said he had to meet someone and would call back. But then a couple days later he emailed to apologize for getting in touch and then disappearing again, saying simply "I've been unable to communicate..." Forgetting that the sentence actually went "I've been unable to communicate with anyone," my thought at the Flightpath was to ask "Is it just me or are you hiding from everybody?"

But he wasn't listed in my Facebook friends list. I was done writing for the day - that's why I let the distraction take me away - but it quickly turned to anxiety. Again my thought was "Is it just me or everybody." I packed up my notebook and bicycled home. I was somewhat relieved to discover that he had committed Facebook suicide, as it's called, having deleted his profile completely.

I guess I'm not over R. I don't guess I ever will be completely. The fact that he's moving from Tampa to Seattle makes me wonder what he's going there for. Or whom. Surely he's not already "with" someone. It probably has to do with his disdain for Tampa (yeah, I can imagine that).

The fact that S recently had sex with a man half his age who reminded him of R and then blogged that it was possible (not likely) that he could have a "whopping midlife crisis," fall in love and follow the man to California didn't help matters. Things don't feel so permanent here anymore.

I have a sneaking suspicion in the back of my head that the reason I haven't been able to find anyone to be interested in is because I'm still harboring hopes that R and I will be together again. I can picture a happy reunion sooner or later - even late in life. S has his doubts that such a thing would work out. I wish I could get it through my skull that such a thing could never work, but there is for some reason this feeling that R will always and forever be The One.

Not that S isn't important to me, but S is more like family, like a brother, my best friend. Our relationship is less defined in terms of our hearts; it's more of a soul connection, not physical. My love for S is stronger than it has ever been for anybody in my family, but it wouldn't (and hasn't been) changed by living across the hall or across the country from him.

I sent R an email, told him I felt a little pang of fear that he would disappear out of my life, that I felt like he was part of my family, a part that I never wanted to become estranged from. He responded a couple of days later with mutual feelings, said that I'm a big part of his family, too, "probably more than you know."

Was that just a statement to comfort me? It was comforting. It also made me want to write back and say, "Well, in that case, I'll meet you halfway there." But really, I'd much prefer it if he suddenly decided to come here where I've got a pretty good life going for myself, with the kind of weather I like, a performance community I'm beginning to feel comfortable in, and where I can afford to live and write.

Maybe that's the real reason I ain't got nobody...