… solipsubmissive …

It appears my blog has become more journal than creative endeavor. i pull up my workflow, the outline to which i have so closely adhered for as long as this blog has existed, and i see the incomplete works of serialized fiction, carefully spaced out over the days of the week on the outline that once kept me focused.

Perhaps it is good to shake things up, to live in the moment, as it were, with regard to my writing. And so, i will continue to go with what feels right when i am compelled to place my fingers on the keyboard.

We have had many beginnings and many endings, G and i. Some would say there can only be one beginning and one ending, such as one finds in the span of time between drawing one’s first and last breath, but i would simply smile and quietly disagree. There are spaces for which one must account, and, since my life was different in those times from the times that went before and after, i choose to think of each as separate pieces of a single forever.

i’ve tried, often, to remember the moment i first encountered G. It was in a chat room, as trite as that may be, a writer’s room into which i cautiously ventured some ten years past when i first obtained a computer. Words went by at an astonishing rate in this room that contained people who fancied themselves authors, whether or not they had actually published a work, and i was fascinated by the ins and outs and workings of relationships between people who had mostly never set eyes upon one another.

It was somewhere in this mix that i first encountered him, and i like to think that i noticed him right away, but the truth is i’m simply not sure. i do know when he noticed me, not long after i entered my thoughts into the fray, for he greeted me with an instant message … one of my very first.

i was far more comfortable, at the time, with this method of online interaction. He was incredibly courteous, as was i, and i began watching him in the chat room. For me, all the chat was the same color, same font. i had an ancient computer that wouldn’t allow for such niceties, so it wasn’t as easy to follow conversation threads as it eventually became. He was popular with the girls in the room, who pounced on the things he said in a way that made me snort in disgust. i don’t know if it was my reserved brand of sarcasm that made me stand out to him, but he spent a great deal of time in IMs with me, while still chatting actively in the room.

i liked it, though i wondered if he were close with other women in the same way.

My mental timeline becomes a little screwed up at this point. I know we spoke on the phone a time or two, long conversations into the wee hours of the night during which we talked about everything under the sun, conversations that became naturally more intimate … a first for me. i’m not sure how many conversations we had or how long we had them before he had to travel cross country for a job interview. Though we’d never met, we lived only three hours from each other, and i imagine if things hadn’t happened the way they did after this trip of his, we might have had one less ending and one less beginning. There is, of course, no way to tell.

He had an opportunity to meet another girl from the chat room we frequented while on this trip. And, even though i recognized the silliness of it, i was insanely jealous of her. Well, not jealous of her, per se, but jealous of the fact that they were going to meet when we’d never even discussed such a thing ourselves. Still, i maintained a polite distance in the IM and never told him how i felt. The feelings seemed somewhat unjustified, and when we both logged off, me to go to bed and him to do … whatever … i curled up and felt oddly unsettled, then fell into an uncomfortable sleep.

He did, of course, go meet that girl. i didn’t ask for details. After he met her, he was getting ready to fly back home, and took the time to send me an IM. The IM contained only the information about his flight, what time he was arriving, and then he asked me if i would like to meet him at the airport.

Now that threw me. Meet someone from the computer? Drive three hours to meet someone who had, until this moment, been typed words and a disembodied voice on the phone? Questions and questions and more questions flashed through my mind (no, i haven’t changed in that … i still over think and over analyze everything.) What would we do, i wondered. And what about my children, who were, at the time only 8 and 6 years old? It didn’t take me long to decide i shouldn’t do it, and i told him so. He suggested coming to my area instead, another time, to take me out for coffee or lunch, or even to do something with the kids included if i couldn’t find a sitter. i think, again, if things hadn’t happened the way they did on the trip he took, he might actually have worn down my fears and worries, and i’d have met him then, way back at the beginning of our first beginning, which was nothing more than the beginning of the first ending, as you will see.

The very next day, the girl he’d met while on his trip came into the chat room, and everyone seemed to know that she and G had met. She spoke enthusiastically about what a great person he was, said they’d had a lovely time, and generally basked in the glow of being a Person Who Had Met Someone From The Chat Room. i remained mostly silent, though i greeted her politely and expressed, with the other girls in the room, how glad i was they’d had a good meeting. Shortly after i extended my polite rejoinder, she IM’d me, something she’d never before done.

Her IM said that she hoped i wouldn’t hold what happened between her and G against her, and that we could continue to be friends. Somewhat taken aback, i said that i didn’t know why she would think i’d hold something like that against her. And, even though i really didn’t consider her a friend … she was far too in your face to be someone i’d like … i said that i didn’t know anything about what had happened, but that it certainly couldn’t be something that would affect our interactions.

Seconds later, i found out both how wrong i was, and how incredibly naive. In a method that could only be described as play by play analysis, she proceeded to lay out for me the entire sequence of events that occurred between them from the moment they met until the moment they separated. The incredibly intimate sordid details. She relayed it in a way that made it seem as though she’d found in me a confidante, and i could do little more than react numbly to the words unfolding before me.

And … it hurt me. For some reason, though i had no claim on G, though i hadn’t even met him, the fact that he’d been with this women i was quickly beginning to privately consider classless and vile ate at me from the inside out. By the time she finished, i was seething, though i didn’t reveal it. And, just then, as luck would have it, G logged on and IM’d me, asking if i’d like to go on an online “date” with him, popping through chat rooms making fun of the people chatting in our own private little IM. i agreed, and began following him around AOL. The girl he’d met, in the meantime, became oddly quiet. And then, she said the worst thing she could have said. “He’s IMing with both of us, you know.”

That was it for me. i closed myself off, as was (and still is, somewhat) my way, became cold and distant with G. When he asked what was wrong, i confronted him. And then i sent him a copy of the IM she and i had had. He was infuriated, and rightfully so, about the way we had discussed him. He did, however, make attempts to talk to me about it. i did apologize for my part in it, but remained cold, closed, and distant, otherwise. He made a few more attempts to engage me, then stopped.

Some weeks later, i IM’d him, and made an attempt at an apology. He accepted it coldly, and logged off. A few months after that, i heard that he and the girl he’d met had begun a relationship, that they had traveled to a meeting of other people from the room together, and that their intention was to live together. i couldn’t understand why she could be forgiven when i could not. In my eyes, what she had done was worse, because she had revealed to me things very private and intimate. The ways of manipulation were foreign to me … at least then.

And so i quietly accepted this first ending. It would be nearly three years before our next beginning.

part two