When P resurfaced, I felt a surge of excitement. As I learned a little bit about her circumstances, that excitement morphed, shifted in shape. It seemed clear pretty quickly that if P and I are to connect, we only do so on a pretty intense setting. Partly, this is me. I certainly favor the intense to the casual, the connected to the dissociated. But P plays a role in this also, with her tendency to share intimately and vulnerably.
A problem quickly arose, though. One I don’t remember so well from our first go-round, but which P identifies as a characterological feature of hers — which is that she is what some people refer to as a bad texter. This construction doesn’t really do much for me. It feels like an avoidant way of describing a set of experiences and behaviors. Regardless, P does not text reliably, quickly, or comprehensively. Some texts from me go unanswered; others elicit seeming non-sequitur responses a day or three later; threads get dropped; and in general, our communication has been characterized by a pretty dramatic asymmetry. With me writing and recording and disclosing, and her, well, not.
I thought I could bear this. I thought that our conversation — in which she explained her relationship to texting and to communication — had somewhat inoculated me from the disappointment and anxiety that I inevitably would feel at long silences between our communications. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that while that might be possible in the right context, it requires a substrate on which to draw: a relational history supporting the gaps. In the absence of that, I just feel awful.
I don’t fault P for any of this. She is who she is. She communicates how she communicates. She has a complicated, difficult life with a lot going on that I genuinely appreciate. And yet — there is a bare minimum of attention and concern that I simply require in order to be in relationship with someone of any sort. This is something like a boundary for me, I’ve discovered.
So there are no hard feelings on my part, only disappointment and sadness that whatever it is I had allowed myself to imagine might be possible really isn’t. But whoever P may be, I am not destined to get to know her — at least not this time around.
Featured image prompt (gemini): Tight upward shot on an interior staircase at night, direct on-camera flash, hard frontal light bleaching the treads white, a sharp black shadow thrown hard up the wall behind. The staircase curves slightly, iron railing catching the flash as a single bright slash. No person. The steps recede into absolute darkness above — the flash reaches only so far and then the building swallows itself. A single step bears a phone, face up, screen dark, its edge catching the light like a blade. The walls are close, the perspective steep, the darkness overhead total and indifferent. Grain pushed high. The picture is cold, still, and going nowhere.
Bottom image prompt (gemini): Tight upward shot on an interior staircase at night, direct on-camera flash, hard frontal light bleaching the treads white, a sharp black shadow thrown hard up the wall behind. The staircase curves slightly, iron railing catching the flash as a single bright slash. No person. The steps recede into absolute darkness above — the flash reaches only so far and then the building swallows itself. A single step bears a phone, face up, screen dark, its edge catching the light like a blade. The walls are close, the perspective steep, the darkness overhead total and indifferent. Grain pushed high. The picture is cold, still, and going nowhere.