Saturday, December 31, 2011

Sometimes

Sometimes it feels like I've known you forever, and sometimes you're a stranger to me.

Sometimes I know I love you, and sometimes it feels like I'm imagining these feelings or making more of them than what they truly are.

Sometimes I believe you, and sometimes it feels like you're just telling me what you think I want to hear, or worse, what you're only feeling at the moment and they are only fleeting.

Sometimes it feels like I'm a late night friend whom you call when you're drunk and lonely, that I'm not a part of your real, every day life.

I've no context, no box into which you easily fit.  And I need you, want you, to fit somewhere in my life. I introduced you to the most important thing in my life - my son. I wouldn't do that if I didn't trust you, didn't believe that you were a good influence on him. I did it for my son's sake. He needs a good role model, someone to whom he can look up and aspire to be. But I'm not always sure you should be that person. After all, what do I truly know about you?

I know you're a good, kind-hearted person. I know you've a lot of love to give, lots of advice to bestow. I know you wouldn't steer him wrong or confuse him with misguided thoughts or ideas. I know you've his best interest at heart. And yet... Yet I don't know if it was a good idea. You only seem available when it's convenient for you.  But how can I say that with any amount of certainty?

I don't know your life. I don't know what you do during those hours and days when we don't talk.

I'm happy because of you, and yet this happiness unsettles me. I'm not one who can just go with the flow. I think. I plan. I imagine. I plan some more. I think of what could be, what should be, and what probably will be. These things are not the same.

What could be is us, together. I feel like we could create a good life. What should be is you finding someone who can give you what you want and need. But what probably will be is us, alone. Not exactly strangers, but not really connected, either.

I imagine us meeting and what we would say to each other. Would we hug? Would you place your hand gently on my face and say, "You're here, and you're real; that is enough for me?" But that is all fantasy, all speculation. More than likely you will look me over and smile, but I would see in your eyes your unspoken thoughts. You're not who I was expecting, and I don't know how to combine the person in front of me with the voice on the phone.

Perhaps we're better off in this limbo, this combination of imagined reality and perfect fantasy.  Not really knowing. We let ourselves imagine the worst then tell ourselves they can't be as bad as we've imagined the other to be.