Mamma Mia, Here I Go Again. My, My, How Can I Resist You?

Friday, I'm going to visit my ex-boyfriend, who I haven't seen in three years since we graduated from school. As I have probably mentioned (I'm too lazy to review my own archives), we were friends, we argued for six months over whether or not to date, we dated for a hot second, then we fought about that for another year and a half. We know how to make the magic last. When we graduated, we were not speaking, but we patched things up that fall, and we've been more or less in touch since then. We've also been living on opposite sides of the country, which has probably helped us get along better, but it means we haven't seen each other.

I'm excited to see him, but I'm nervous as well. In the fullness of time, I concluded that we were better off as friends, but he broke my heart when we were in school. Repeatedly. He broke my heart right before I met Doug Funny, but that wasn't the only time. I once cried about him every day for a month. He probably changed me more (through knowing me and being friends with me, not through active efforts on his part) than anyone else, including Doug Funny, I met in that phase of my life. We loved each other desperately, but in a platonic way, I guess.

Given all the emotion I invested in this person and all the emotion he invested in me, I'm anxious for this visit to go well. I'm also anxious for it to remain strictly at a friend level. I have not had any indication from him that he hopes for anything more significant, and he was the one who ended the romantic phase of our relationship, but we are both single right now (I think), and we used to date, and accidents happen. One of my Muslim friends says that when a man and a woman are alone together, the third person in the room is the devil, and I'm hopeful that that won't be true in this situation.

It's really me more than him that I worry about. I talked to him on the phone today, and his voice made me feel a little fluttery. (He has a mellifluous, radio-friendly voice well-suited to his career, which involves a lot of public speaking.) Part of me was all twittery, and as my mother would say, "That part of you needs to shut the fuck up." We're friends. That's it. (I'll keep telling myself that.)