This morning was spent in a hotel restaurant making sculptures out of the butter shells that were served alongside of my incredibly overpriced bagel and fruit, courtesy of a panicked Joel, who is in conference all this week but needed to talk to me and was in a rush, could I meet him for a quick breakfast downtown as he headed into his meetings?
Right. He took a leisurely two hours to tell me everything that is now wrong with my life while I pointedly ignored him and made a little butter astronaut guy exploring the face of the butter moon.
The maitre'd scowled at me relentlessly and I continued on while Joel tried and failed to drown out the clinking dishes. He knows damn well I have trouble with restaurant noise but it was his two hours and his hundred dollar breakfast so I let him drone on while I thought about PJ patiently waiting for me to return home, having planned to spend the day with me again, happily so. I actually messaged PJ twice and I don't believe Joel even noticed.
Joel didn't say anything I haven't told myself already. Nor did he say anything Ben and I haven't already covered at great length. Yes, we covered Bridget being half out of her mind, medicated and barely even fresh out of one therapy, still heavily invested in two others. We covered the kids and dads issue and Ben being more than friends. We've covered the incredible risk of recovery versus new and difficult relationships, and widowed people filling holes as a stop gap and temporary measures and rebounds and addictive personality types and killing friendships and Bridget's recklessness and sex addiction and life alone and life not alone and how doomed this is.
After two hours of his endless voice he came back around, wrapping up his gentle tirade with a reminder that I'm unstable, that I've just been through a lot and it isn't fair to Ben or to the kids to begin yet another relationship against the odds.
I was just about to ask him if he was prepared to break into song when I realized he contradicted himself ten times over in his closing arguments. I pointed that out and he didn't have any excuses left so I squished my poor little butternaut, got up and wished him a good day.
I believe at this point I have dealt with friends and jealousies to death and I'm not doing it anymore. Adapt or die, Joel. Everyone else did and he had fair warning that being friends with me was going to be hard and he was better off when he sat in his office on the other side of his desk dispensing pills that brought fog and relief from pain, conducting the symphony of mental health professionals who have walked in and out of my head ever since. When he was the objective band leader instead of another person looking for their cut.
You think I'm cruel? You weren't there this morning. The butternaut was so ludicrous it was the only thing keeping me from crying at the goddamned table.
Don't trash the first fucking thing that has made me happy in three fucking months. Just don't. I'm a big girl and I know the risks of what I'm doing.
I also know the rewards.
