I have a feeling that what I am about to say here is going to make a lot of people mad at me. And I guess that's okay, though I haven't done anything yet to inspire any anger, other than to answer a phone when I was mildly intoxicated. Notice, please, that I say "answer". This wasn't a regrettable instance of drunk-dialing; this was more along the lines of what would have come from that old adage about curiosity and cats, had vodka been involved. I didn't know who was calling; I answered anyway.
Now I wish I hadn't answered. That's my normal stance with unknown callers; if it's "blocked" or "out of area" or "caller unknown" or some name and number I'm not familiar with, usually I let it drop. But I've been getting a lot of hang-up calls on my voice mail recently, and since I finally figured out which button to press to tell me what the number was, I tried to call back the 812 number that hung up on me for the third or fourth time last night.
As I dialed, the same number beeped through on my caller-ID. I didn't recognize the name--some woman's name. The voice, though...that I recognized. Immediately.
"You called my phone?" it said.
"Yes I did," I said, "because YOU called MY phone."
"Who's this?" he asked.
"You called ME," I pointed out. "Who is THIS?"
"Who do you think it is?"
"I have my suspicions," I told him.
"So just say it," he said.
"It's CR, isn't it."
"Yeah."
Silence.
"Okay," I said. "How you been?"
"All right," he said. "Been having some bad dreams, though...about you."
"Oh, you too?" I replied.
"About what?" he asked.
"Just.......stuff." Not a lie, either. Though my conscious life has little to complain about, my subconscious, particularly for the last week or so, has not been a kind nor friendly place.
He sighed. "I got some biiiiig amends to make," he said.
"Yup," I said. "You sure do."
We talked for a few minutes--by the phone timer, it was six minutes, though it felt like a lot longer than that. He said some stuff that was totally ridiculous and totally pompous and factually incorrect; he said some stuff that was reasonable and true, at least in places.
The problem is, as it's always been with him, those things overlap sometimes--the pompous and the true, the incorrect and the ridiculous, the reasonable and the wrong. I don't know how he does it; maybe, like all great liars, he believes every word he says. I suspect that's the answer--but it has an unpleasant side effect.
After it was over, I called everyone I knew who was with me through that time; Firefly and Tim and Debbi, all of whom replied, in varying tones of outrage, "WTF???" (Tim was a particularly-strident WTF, since he was already WTF-fing at the news that his best-friend-bartender Cathy had just gotten fired--as I said afterwards, that would be like firing George Washington from the Presidency!) So we all had some good WTFs together, and then I hung up and went into my room and sat down to think.
Once again, I'm in a position where I have to sort out what I think, from what I want, from what other people think, from what other people think I'm SUPPOSED to think, from what -I- think I'm supposed to think, from what I KNOW.
I have sorted myself out enough to know this much at least: it is possible to miss certain things about someone without missing THEM; and that nobody is looking out for me except ME.
He left me another voice mail today, asking me to call him back. If I do, I want to know what he thinks he's doing, exactly, calling his ex-wife, after six years of silence, from his girlfriend's phone. Because....seriously. DUMBASS.
As I told Tim: I wish LJ was around, just for the entertainment value. I'd sell tickets to see those two in a room together.
Do I sound confused? I am, a little. But only a little. I like my life the way it is; there were just things about CR--not even relationship things, just human things--that I long ago forgot I missed. And it's hard to be reminded of those things so long after moving on.
More, perhaps, later.
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