2006-02-15
There have been a couple of messages from Jo this week. I wasn’t expecting anything from her at all this week really – she has her sister and family over staying this week and I didn’t think there would be much chance for her to make contact. And apart from that, even from the early days, Valentine’s Day, like Dave’s birthday, have seemed to be no-go occasions when she’s felt it wrong to give me any form of priority. And I respect that, of course. So when she wrote on Monday night that she was thinking of me, I deliberately held off from responding yesterday. But last night there was just a short message: ‘still thinking of you, hope you haven’t forgotten?’A couple of weeks back my friend Jessica picked me up on my comment that she hasn’t been responding in kind to any messages of endearment. And really, I wasn’t complaining. I well understand the degree to which we’ve moved on and the element of separation from that sort of thing that we probably both need. But it doesn’t stop me wanting to be near her, doesn’t stop me thinking of her. And really that’s all those ‘messages of endearment have expressed - just a couple of xx’s added to the end, just the words ‘missing you’ or ‘thinking of you’ used as a sign off. But until now, for nearly a year, there hasn’t been anything like that in return.
So now she’s starting to prepare for returning to the UK, and to coming back to work. And now she says what I came to assume she would never again say (even though, just by the desire to keep in touch sporadically, I know she must still have been thinking of me at least a little in the way that I have of her)? And on a day she traditionally avoided? I’m a little confused.
At the same time I’m fighting with Lynne and I don’t really know why. Monday I arrived home a little later than usual (eight minutes actually) and she was being upset that I hadn’t thought to call her and tell her, as though, she thought, I didn’t think she was worthy of being spoken to. As it happened we were both going out, separately, later in the evening – I was going to cricket practice, something I haven’t done before and she’s been encouraging me to take up again – and it felt like she didn’t want me to go out for some reason. And the frostiness continued into yesterday when we were going out or a Valentine’s meal with two other couples. All the conversation I initiated on the way there was met with one word answers and she volunteered nothing herself until in the end we ended up walking in silence until we met our friends. And all the time we were there with them there was no tension and it was fun, and after we were back to not speaking. There will be another little low-richter-scale seismic shift in our relationship and hopefully we’ll heal again. But it’s hard at the moment.
And here we go again on the job front. Now I’m being encouraged to apply for something, which I’m not convinced I’m suited for, doubt that I will get. And yet I feel that if I don’t put in for the things I’m encouraged to, the opportunities wills top being put in front of me. It’s a game I’m tired of, one that depresses me too much (as you’ll have seen!).
Short message from spherical (millionaire) Tim yesterday: ‘I’m still in New Zealand. Just wondering if you’ve found any thirty year old women for me to marry and have children with?’ Ah! the romance of Valentine’s Day, eh?