Saga...Version 2.0
“I can see by your eyes you must be lying;
When you think I don’t have a clue.
Baby you’re crazy;
If you think that you can fool me…
So keep your auditions for somebody;
Who hasn’t got so much to loose.
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting,
That I’ve seen that movie too.”
I’ve Seen That Movie Too (1973)
~Elton John
It has been a while since I last wrote about my saga regarding Barb…to be truthful it was a nice break from bad memories. However, the story is not over. I believe the last time I wrote about this, I was finally letting go of my anger and trying to get on with my life. I had started taking depression pills. I also began writing new game stories and even trying my hand at gaming with others again. So let’s start anew in a chapter I like to call…Cheri & Barb Version 2.0
Once I started to let go of all that toxic hate inside of me, I could begin to think more rationally about Barb again. A few months earlier, I would have rather ate shards of glass than admit that I still missed her, but now with calming clarity as my friend I could admit this to Brian. My father had been working on me to give it another try with her for weeks. Knowing that he had been in touch with her, I thought maybe there was good reason for his meddling remarks. One day while I was shopping with my kids at the Discovery Channel Store, I came across a shirt that I knew that Barb would love. It had a Chinese symbol on it and said “chi” under it. Barb’s character Simon was all about “chi” and that sort of stuff – it was perfect. For no reason at all, I bought it. It sat on my dresser for a long time…
I thought and thought about contacting Barb. The only other contact I had with her since the big break-up was when I had written her an email on 9/11. I was all emotional and raw – as we all were that day – and I wanted her to know that I loved her and was glad she wasn’t one of the dead. She never replied and I honestly don’t even know if she ever read it. It didn’t matter. I wanted to write that letter and I am glad I did. Finally, I did decide the time was right to try. I sent her a package; it had the shirt in it, a game tape I had made during our time apart and a big new story that I had written about Martin & Ben. (My future therapist said that I was trying to “woo” her back with this act.) I sent it FedEx and waited to see what would come of it. It took her awhile to respond, but she did.
Barb sent me a short email. I remember a jolt of shock ran through my body upon seeing her email in my inbox. It was like an unexpected slap across the face. I felt dazed. I was afraid to open it to be honest…but of course I did. It basically said that she felt the time was right to contact me again. She had considered it many times in the past apparently but just didn’t. She called me “old friend” and told me how she spent most everyday thinking of me in one way or another (she admitted to listening to her game tapes all the time and reading over our old stories as well) and told me that she was happy that I sent the package. She then told me how much she loved her care package and how she had a surprise for me as well. She told me that having new game material to read was like a “breath of life” to her and that she wanted to return the “gift of the game” back to me. She never apologized for leaving…never explained…and that was how it would always be. For reasons unknown to me even now, I allowed this.
We only spoke about the “break-up” once. After a month of emailing one another, we decided to try to IM again. We spoke about this and that…it was very uncomfortable. I don’t remember now what made the subject come up, but suddenly we were talking about the break-up. I told her that I was angry that she never apologized to me – after all, I had apologized for my mean email following the break - and she still didn’t apologize! She was angry that I hadn’t wanted her to be in contact with my father. (Apparently my father was the “closest thing she had to a real dad” and I had no right to ask her to stay out of his life. Um, hello?! He was my real father! Besides that, my loser of a father just wanted to jump into her pants like all the other girls he spoke to online anyway.) Things got heated. I remember her telling me that she couldn’t handle my anger...I was so angry she said. Well, what the hell did she expect? She would have really freaked out to know the absolute rage that filled me all those months back! Suddenly she blurted out, “I though you were over this. If I had known you weren’t…” and she just trailed off. The bitch didn’t even have the balls to finish her sentence. Then she said something that I’ll never be able to erase from my memory: “You don’t get to be the martyr!” WHAT?! I remember saying, “How do you figure that YOU get to be the martyr in this scenario? You left me – with no explanation. You told my father what your problems were – but didn’t tell me. Now you are blaming me for not being there to help you! You better believe I get to be the fucking martyr!”
Let’s just say it is a miracle of epic proportions that we were still willing to speak to each other after that evening. Somehow we managed to agree to disagree and walked away from the topic – never to revisit it again. I never did learn what happened, or why her life was so terrible at the time that she wanted to kill herself. I never learned why she felt it was necessary to leave me behind either. I never did hear her say she was wrong or that she was sorry for the way she handled things with me. We just didn’t talk about it anymore.
More than nine months of absence in each other’s lives slowly started to move behind us as we began writing polite, careful emails back and forth again. Every now and then we might IM. I was committed to trying not to screw up again. I made a promise to myself to listen to my father’s advice about Barb – he had told me that Barb did not want me to fix her problems, but to just listen to her. So this time around I kept my mouth firmly shut when it came to subjects like her mother, sister, her boyfriend Charles and money. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard. Sure…I’d have loved to give her some advice and try to help her but I didn’t have too. I felt some pressure lift off of me. I wonder what she thought of my non-committal, bland “uh-huh” and “Oh, that must suck” comments. I wonder if she even noticed at all. In an act of self-defense, I also kept her at arms length from me. In truth, I had built a steel barrier around my bruised heart, and no one was fucking get in there -especially not her! I didn’t share everything with her and I only opened up about certain things. I was very careful – wary that she would suddenly leave me once again.
We focused on how to do our second chance the “right way.” We agreed early on that we spent too much time in the past talking about the game. Where had our friendship gone during that time? So we tried to make a rule about no game talk. It worked about as well as putting an elephant in a china shop. I remember one very awkward IM session…we were trying to talk to one another like girlfriends (as in BFF not life partners). It was pathetic. We ended up talking about what bubble bath scents we liked for God’s sake! After about 15 minutes of painful dialogue it became clear to me that we had almost nothing in common anymore. I bought us both a subscription to Glamour magazine so we could both read the same magazine and chat about that. She was polite about the idea, but (much) later admitted to me that she hated magazines like that. I had nearly no interest in farming or web design. In short…we were fucked.
All that was left was the game. Barb tried to address it in a different manner this time around. For years we had talked about turning our game into a book. I had even started working on pieces of it. I had worries about whether we could adjust it enough not to get sued by White Wolf publishing and/or whether we could work with them on the project. I also worried about Barb’s quality of writing. I liked to read her stuff because I loved the subject matter – an editor would not be amused by her rambling, poor grammar and obvious plagiarism of old movies and books in certain story lines. I could fix those problems, but I couldn’t change one very obvious problem – her tendency to just flake on deadlines. She balked at the very notion that to write a book, you must write everyday. Every writing class I had taken, or book about writing books that I had read, said otherwise. Still, when she asked me if I wanted to try to write our game as a book, I agreed. Soon we were talking about the game again…but calling it “working on the book.”
Can you believe how fucking ridiculous we were? Why couldn’t we just admit it? We weren’t really friends anymore…we just needed one another to continue our game. We were junkies and we needed one another to get our fix. If we could have just been straight up honest about this, who knows how things might have played out? Instead we had to pretend otherwise and act like friends even though it was obvious we weren’t. It was like watching the Titanic sink from a small leak instead of a huge hole from crashing into an iceberg. The ending was inevitable – but we went on playing our roles with blinders on and forcing smiles while the water began to rise all around us.
When you think I don’t have a clue.
Baby you’re crazy;
If you think that you can fool me…
So keep your auditions for somebody;
Who hasn’t got so much to loose.
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting,
That I’ve seen that movie too.”
I’ve Seen That Movie Too (1973)
~Elton John
It has been a while since I last wrote about my saga regarding Barb…to be truthful it was a nice break from bad memories. However, the story is not over. I believe the last time I wrote about this, I was finally letting go of my anger and trying to get on with my life. I had started taking depression pills. I also began writing new game stories and even trying my hand at gaming with others again. So let’s start anew in a chapter I like to call…Cheri & Barb Version 2.0
Once I started to let go of all that toxic hate inside of me, I could begin to think more rationally about Barb again. A few months earlier, I would have rather ate shards of glass than admit that I still missed her, but now with calming clarity as my friend I could admit this to Brian. My father had been working on me to give it another try with her for weeks. Knowing that he had been in touch with her, I thought maybe there was good reason for his meddling remarks. One day while I was shopping with my kids at the Discovery Channel Store, I came across a shirt that I knew that Barb would love. It had a Chinese symbol on it and said “chi” under it. Barb’s character Simon was all about “chi” and that sort of stuff – it was perfect. For no reason at all, I bought it. It sat on my dresser for a long time…
I thought and thought about contacting Barb. The only other contact I had with her since the big break-up was when I had written her an email on 9/11. I was all emotional and raw – as we all were that day – and I wanted her to know that I loved her and was glad she wasn’t one of the dead. She never replied and I honestly don’t even know if she ever read it. It didn’t matter. I wanted to write that letter and I am glad I did. Finally, I did decide the time was right to try. I sent her a package; it had the shirt in it, a game tape I had made during our time apart and a big new story that I had written about Martin & Ben. (My future therapist said that I was trying to “woo” her back with this act.) I sent it FedEx and waited to see what would come of it. It took her awhile to respond, but she did.
Barb sent me a short email. I remember a jolt of shock ran through my body upon seeing her email in my inbox. It was like an unexpected slap across the face. I felt dazed. I was afraid to open it to be honest…but of course I did. It basically said that she felt the time was right to contact me again. She had considered it many times in the past apparently but just didn’t. She called me “old friend” and told me how she spent most everyday thinking of me in one way or another (she admitted to listening to her game tapes all the time and reading over our old stories as well) and told me that she was happy that I sent the package. She then told me how much she loved her care package and how she had a surprise for me as well. She told me that having new game material to read was like a “breath of life” to her and that she wanted to return the “gift of the game” back to me. She never apologized for leaving…never explained…and that was how it would always be. For reasons unknown to me even now, I allowed this.
We only spoke about the “break-up” once. After a month of emailing one another, we decided to try to IM again. We spoke about this and that…it was very uncomfortable. I don’t remember now what made the subject come up, but suddenly we were talking about the break-up. I told her that I was angry that she never apologized to me – after all, I had apologized for my mean email following the break - and she still didn’t apologize! She was angry that I hadn’t wanted her to be in contact with my father. (Apparently my father was the “closest thing she had to a real dad” and I had no right to ask her to stay out of his life. Um, hello?! He was my real father! Besides that, my loser of a father just wanted to jump into her pants like all the other girls he spoke to online anyway.) Things got heated. I remember her telling me that she couldn’t handle my anger...I was so angry she said. Well, what the hell did she expect? She would have really freaked out to know the absolute rage that filled me all those months back! Suddenly she blurted out, “I though you were over this. If I had known you weren’t…” and she just trailed off. The bitch didn’t even have the balls to finish her sentence. Then she said something that I’ll never be able to erase from my memory: “You don’t get to be the martyr!” WHAT?! I remember saying, “How do you figure that YOU get to be the martyr in this scenario? You left me – with no explanation. You told my father what your problems were – but didn’t tell me. Now you are blaming me for not being there to help you! You better believe I get to be the fucking martyr!”
Let’s just say it is a miracle of epic proportions that we were still willing to speak to each other after that evening. Somehow we managed to agree to disagree and walked away from the topic – never to revisit it again. I never did learn what happened, or why her life was so terrible at the time that she wanted to kill herself. I never learned why she felt it was necessary to leave me behind either. I never did hear her say she was wrong or that she was sorry for the way she handled things with me. We just didn’t talk about it anymore.
More than nine months of absence in each other’s lives slowly started to move behind us as we began writing polite, careful emails back and forth again. Every now and then we might IM. I was committed to trying not to screw up again. I made a promise to myself to listen to my father’s advice about Barb – he had told me that Barb did not want me to fix her problems, but to just listen to her. So this time around I kept my mouth firmly shut when it came to subjects like her mother, sister, her boyfriend Charles and money. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard. Sure…I’d have loved to give her some advice and try to help her but I didn’t have too. I felt some pressure lift off of me. I wonder what she thought of my non-committal, bland “uh-huh” and “Oh, that must suck” comments. I wonder if she even noticed at all. In an act of self-defense, I also kept her at arms length from me. In truth, I had built a steel barrier around my bruised heart, and no one was fucking get in there -especially not her! I didn’t share everything with her and I only opened up about certain things. I was very careful – wary that she would suddenly leave me once again.
We focused on how to do our second chance the “right way.” We agreed early on that we spent too much time in the past talking about the game. Where had our friendship gone during that time? So we tried to make a rule about no game talk. It worked about as well as putting an elephant in a china shop. I remember one very awkward IM session…we were trying to talk to one another like girlfriends (as in BFF not life partners). It was pathetic. We ended up talking about what bubble bath scents we liked for God’s sake! After about 15 minutes of painful dialogue it became clear to me that we had almost nothing in common anymore. I bought us both a subscription to Glamour magazine so we could both read the same magazine and chat about that. She was polite about the idea, but (much) later admitted to me that she hated magazines like that. I had nearly no interest in farming or web design. In short…we were fucked.
All that was left was the game. Barb tried to address it in a different manner this time around. For years we had talked about turning our game into a book. I had even started working on pieces of it. I had worries about whether we could adjust it enough not to get sued by White Wolf publishing and/or whether we could work with them on the project. I also worried about Barb’s quality of writing. I liked to read her stuff because I loved the subject matter – an editor would not be amused by her rambling, poor grammar and obvious plagiarism of old movies and books in certain story lines. I could fix those problems, but I couldn’t change one very obvious problem – her tendency to just flake on deadlines. She balked at the very notion that to write a book, you must write everyday. Every writing class I had taken, or book about writing books that I had read, said otherwise. Still, when she asked me if I wanted to try to write our game as a book, I agreed. Soon we were talking about the game again…but calling it “working on the book.”
Can you believe how fucking ridiculous we were? Why couldn’t we just admit it? We weren’t really friends anymore…we just needed one another to continue our game. We were junkies and we needed one another to get our fix. If we could have just been straight up honest about this, who knows how things might have played out? Instead we had to pretend otherwise and act like friends even though it was obvious we weren’t. It was like watching the Titanic sink from a small leak instead of a huge hole from crashing into an iceberg. The ending was inevitable – but we went on playing our roles with blinders on and forcing smiles while the water began to rise all around us.
posted by Rainbow Ally @ 5:08 PM
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