I love Goose. We know this. I didn't dare to hope that he was also in love with me, but I thought that he cared about me and that I was special to him. I thought that he felt a connection between us. Now, I suspect he is just a run-of-the-mill cad because he appears to have had another version of his relationship with me on the second leg of his travels. Or at least that's what it seems like since there's another girl all up in his Facebook page, commenting on it every time he posts a status update.
Add to that the fact that I haven't heard from him in days, and what you have are some very wounded feelings. I spent every waking minute (and some sleeping minutes) with this man in Peru. We shared. We confided in each other. When we said good-bye at the airport in Cuzco, it was one of the most emotional moments of my life, and I don't think I've ever cried so much about anything as I did about being separated from him. I wish I could teleport myself to where he is right now, just to see him and touch him again. He, apparently, is spending his time trying to remember who exactly I am.
I am sure that he has been tired and busy since he returned from his travels. There was a long plane ride with which to contend, followed by diving straight back into his considerable responsibilities at work. But it takes about five minutes to email someone, and I've never been too busy to email someone to whom I really wanted to talk. If he has time to update his Facebook status, he has time to email me and chooses not to.
Admitting that to myself feels like taking a pick-axe to my heart. There is all the pain and confusion of this situation, and then there are all the ghostly pains of similar relationships past. My mom says I need to examine why I'm attracted to unavailable men, but I contend that it's not unavailable men in general to whom I'm attracted. I'm attracted to a subset of unavailable men: men who are in crap relationships. I have known lots of handsome, funny, smart guys with wives or girlfriends who I identified as seriously good catches, but I was not interested in dating them because they exuded an "off limits" vibe. But if a man is in a relationship that is not fulfilling the matrix of his happiness in some way, he gives off some kind of wobbly signal that I am irresistibly drawn to. Maybe it's some kind of hideous mutation of my desire to help people, but it ends up being the emotional equivalent of diving into the rapids after someone who's drowning. I just get sucked down with them, and nobody ends up happy.
It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return. It also hurts to love someone and expect at least their friendship in return and not to get it. It hurts to put myself out there, since I told Goose that I like him and that I wish he were single, and be passively rebuffed. (Somehow, it seems like there would be more honor in a direct refusal, even though that would not feel good either.) Yet, I don't know that I am the one who ought to change. I'm being emotionally honest, even as I make poor emotional investing decisions, and I'm not sure that losing that honesty benefits anyone. It would be better, I think, to keep the emotional honesty and focus on finding more deserving targets.
I just feel so lost on this one. Normally, my instincts about people are impeccable. For instance, when I first met The New Guy in Egypt, I thought, "Well, this guy is a hump-dick." It was only when I rebelled against that instinct that shit got fucked up because he did indeed reveal himself to be a complete and total hump-dick. But when I met Goose, I felt something click into place. I felt like I found a kindred spirit -- a good friend at the very least, if not my soul mate. How could I be so wrong?
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