The state of Moxie

Glenn sent the ring papers yesterday, in a FedEx box packed with a binder from grad school, my copy of Sex and the City: Season 5 on DVD, and some mail that had accumulated for me in LA. No note. Just the box. And I was fine. It was a relief. No more naggy emails.

Then, badness. My friend T, who's in Germany and whose husband decided last week that marriage just wasn't his thing, is coming home next week. I'm so glad she's coming home. Ending a marriage is sucky enough without having to do it 5,000 miles away from your friends and family. But her pain and her experience are so similar to what happened with Glenn that even while I'm glad I can offer my empathy in a way that a lot of other people can't, supporting her is bringing up a lot of memories that are pretty wrenching. That probably sounds horribly selfish, but I don't mean it that way. It's just very hard to watch someone I love going through something like this. It's not something I would inflict on my worst enemy. I wish i could just take away her pain and save her from what the next year will be like. No one should have to go through this. Hearts are not meant to be treated this way.

The ring and the friend weighed on my mind. Bizarrely, the only person I really wanted to talk to about it was Glenn. I tried to talk myself out of it--I used all the call-deterring tactics I usually employ, like forcing myself to remember finding his emails to the trollop on my computer. But the wanting to call didn't fade. I caught him at work yesterday and it was like we'd spoken an hour ago. I didn't even have to say my name. We just picked up as if nothing had happened. And we talked for 45 minutes, which felt like an eon and nothing all at the same time. He had some interesting thoughts on T's situation--he'd photographed her wedding to her scum-sucking coward of a husband--but the thing he said that struck me most was his admission that our breakup was due entirely to his issues, not mine. No more blaming me for everything. It was a relief, and it was torture. Now that he's fixing himself, some other woman will reap the benefits.

Last night I dreamed that Glenn was asleep in our bed in LA. He was underneath the covers and asleep to the point of unconsciousness. I wanted to wake him up and have sex with him, because I figured that a physical connection would lead to an emotional one. But I couldn't wake him up. I kept peeling back layers of blankets and trying to reach him, but he wouldn't wake up.