If it has­n’t been painful­ly obvi­ous, I’ve fall­en off the wag­on. I’ve been think­ing about her again.

But it isn’t my fault.

You see, she came by my work and gave me a box of home­made short­bread cook­ies in a cute lit­tle box (as well as some for my oth­er co-work­ers). I would nor­mal­ly say that it’s a nice ges­ture, but in this case, it was a cru­el and painful reminder of what I had lost. But that pain sub­sided as I ate them (admit­ted­ly, in one sit­ting) and I decid­ed to for­give her for that one. It’s hard to stay angry when the sug­ar and but­ter hits your brain.

Then she walked by at a con­cert, and squeezed my arm as she was pass­ing by. I did­n’t even know she was there until it hap­pened. Then she did it again.

This whole time, I’ve been try­ing to get over things by stay­ing away, and I was doing pret­ty well, until the touch¹ of her hand fanned the ash­es of pas­sion that were left smol­der­ing in my chest, revers­ing sev­er­al weeks of emo­tion­al recov­ery.

I told my friends I knew I was being self­ish, because I’m the weak­er one for not being able to han­dle it when she’s dat­ing some­one else². But they tell me it’s not self­ish, it’s self preser­va­tion. That I’m just tak­ing care of myself, and she’s the one being self­ish and incon­sid­er­ate, because she’s not respect­ing my wish­es to keep a dis­tance. I’ve since stopped feel­ing guilty for stay­ing away.

Still, I’m left with this won­der­ing. What do her actions mean? What is she try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate? What does she want?

I can only guess that she wants to remain friends, but there’s this stu­pid hope in the back of my mind that it meant some­thing more. Maybe it’s a habit; I lived with that hope for more than a year as we fell into a rela­tion­ship at arms length.

I’ve con­sid­ered going back to her and ask­ing for some clo­sure — some real clo­sure — but I don’t think even she can explain her actions at this point. And if she could, her answer would prob­a­bly be the same as it’s always been.

But I real­ly don’t know for sure because she’s cho­sen not to stay away, against my wish­es, and my heart feels like it’s hang­ing by a thread. I doubt she’s doing it on pur­pose, but yet again, she gets to fig­ure things out at the expense of my emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. After all, it’s hard me to move on when mixed sig­nals are hold­ing me back, like an open, gap­ing wound con­stant­ly being picked.

1. This is the same sort of caress that can melt one’s resolve when com­ing from a per­son for whom one has a weak­ness. Humbert Humbert refers to this at the end of Lolita when he says to her, “Don’t touch me. I’ll die if you touch me.” [↩]
2. Then again, at least I know enough to stay away, instead of stalk­ing and going psy­cho. [↩]