Duck or Take the Hit

This relationship for me lately is hugely like a game of dodgeball.

Things could be wonderful for a moment. There could have been a beautiful compliment, moment, or maybe a nice bottle of wine involved. Everyone’s feeling good. We’re on our individual computers, me enjoying my good buddy Dorothy Hopkins and the wares that we’re exchanging for Farmville. He, playing the Sims on his computer.

I’ll have a weak moment and think that it’s ok to break the barrier and make a comment on something from the social network. I’ll have noticed that two particular folks on the site that we went to junior high school with seem to have found each other in adulthood and appear as though they are in the upswing of a relationship. Much like us! Only we didn’t find each other on Facebook…my guy hates Facebook and things it is the epicenter of all that is evil. In fact, when it comes up in conversation, he usually loses control and mutates into a spitting llama.

But I try anyway. Either that or I forget how fruitless and dangerous it is to mention anything regarding the site. If I’m doing anything other than simply playing games on Facebook, then apparently I can’t be trusted.

So I mention this couple….how cute it is….and he fixates on the fact that when I was 14, I made out with the guy. Ok, true. I did that. It wasn’t even fun at the time….the guy was a bulldozer, very forceful but whatever…bygones to me. I don’t care and if I did then maybe it’s something that I’d need to work out in therapy.

I mentioned back that I was pointing out that it’s cute….two other people hooking up later on in life. We’re adults….aren’t we past that who kissed who back when Duran Duran was super popular stage? Can’t it be something non-competitive and not the least bit serious?
Dodgeball. Either I’m trying drastically to get out of the way because I’ve mentioned something from 1984 or else I’m going to get smashed with the ball. And in most cases, once the dodging starts, the ball is going to hit me anyway.

It’s too bad that I didn’t use better discretion and allowed the funness of the moment dictate my words. Because then he started down the ladder of descent slowly but no doubt, without any other aim except to reach the bottom. Now I’m hearing about how there are a billion ex-boyfriends in my life. Yes, I am “friends” on Facebook with exes. We aren’t talking daily. Or weekly. Or monthly. Sheesh, lucky if it is as regular as an insurance paid pap smear.
But my words are as good as a used car salesman’s around here. My partner is a well intentioned man. Just too bad that his emotions and mind are warped a bit due to calluses from his past. What can you do with someone who won’t believe you or stop policing your every sentence?

I have learned that there seems to be a lot more that I should not say than I should share. I never know what memory bomb is going to blow an evening, a weekend, a good part of a week into shrapnel.

I miss my Self. I miss my freedom to think and speak without the Thought Police turning my home into a prison. I’ve learned how to work hard to just be quiet and hope that Hurricane Offended will blow by without ripping off too many roofs.

The only thing these fights allow me to do is to leave the house with my girl and head to Borders where we can pretend for a couple of hours that the world is right again. Where the bargain bins are full of life. Where people smile and the lights are golden happy colors. Where the little man in our bodies shuts off the cortisol switch.

I had an alternate day of beauty, awe and stress. It is my children and my memories of hope that have given me the most pleasure today. But that is for a different post.