Day Fifteen : Relapse

Two things happened yesterday.  The first is that one of my tires randomly blew on the way to the doctor's office, causing me to dovetail into another lane narrowly missing what would have been a pretty bad side collision and costing me several hours to resolve.  The second was that, when I checked my phone after returning from walking my dog, I found a message to someone who thought my number was my father that the sender had found "her" dead in her apartment from either a fall or heart attack.  Of course, I immediately thought of my sister.  Dead siblings, no bueno.

So, understandably, I got a little upset and called my father to find out what the hell was going on.  He managed to assure me that it was just an uncle letting him know that my aunt's mother had died, and had gotten the wrong "E" in his phonebook.  And, yes, while it was very tragic that someone was dead in apartment due to unknown causes, I would be fine, just fine.

After I had hung up the phone, I saw that I had gotten a text from a number that was all too familiar because I had erased it far too many times.  "How's life?"  it read.  How fortuitous, I thought.

I sat on that one for an hour and a half, trying to do everything in my power not to respond.  But there was a part of me that leapt up at that - mainly because (to my mind) it showed me I was not the only one missing things.  "Surviving," I wrote back.  It was a fair answer.  "Same here," came the reply.

Perhaps I should've left it at that, but I had to know.  "I don't mean to sound all un-southern woman-like, but are you just inquiring about my health?".  "I'm still at work, but are you doing anything later."  And then two minutes later "and I was just checking in on you in general as well."  For some reason, the latter addition made me miss this person because he is weird and awkward and restrained, like me.  And so I said I had plans until 8:30, but would let him know my plans after.

I paced and paced again trying to find things to do and 8:30 came.  So, I did the next best thing to ignoring him.  I told him I needed a book and a bed and then took a double dose of Ambien to render all driving impossible and locked up all communicative devices.  This morning, I checked and it just said "cool, talk to you later."

I spent dinner with some friends trying to convince myself this wasn't a relapse in the real sense of the word, and explained to one that maybe my reasoning is that I'm not quite ready to let go of the person, just the unhealthy feelings in interactions with this (or any other) person I think I have feelings for.  Like maybe I'd kind of like him to be around on the 87th day when I finally get my shit together.  Or to feel like, even if he's not I'll be okay with that.  She remained unconvinced.  I suppose we will have to see.