<<work in progress>>

“Co-authors” A Dostoyevskian masterpiece? Or boring pretension?

It’s not that life is fiction, but I believe when people are in a relationship (of any type) the choices they have make them co-authors of each other’s story. In particular they are co-authors of the unfolding story of their own relationship. People are able to write each other’s stories by the choices they make, the things they say and do, their chosen interpretations and resulting perceptions.

I wanted to assure you that as co-author on your story right now, I do not intend now or ever to say anything unkind or unpleasant about you. I will never wish you harm. It’s apparent you want me as far away from you (and your wider story) as possible. I respect that’s your choice and fully intend to keep out of your wider life. However with this final part of the story - the story of “you and me” - rather than fighting over it - I was really hoping we could reach some kind of agreement? Your response is yours to choose, but the response I ask is that you give this a read. I guess the basic story I’m wanting is “She read what he had to say and felt more sympathy and understanding than she had previously”.

When I write a letter to someone I naturally - and without giving the matter much scrutiny -  imagine the person I’m writing to - not as a clear well-formed image - more as an out-of-focus shadow in the background. They are a mutated shadow of myself I guess. They laugh when I laugh, they cry when I cry. Except - in a peculiar way - they also seem to have a little life of their own - seemingly out of my control: I laugh but the shadow says “actually, I don’t find that very funny!”. I cry and the shadow is dismissive  “Look at poor you feeling sorry for yourself again!”. Sometimes I switch sides and join the shadow: “you’re right” I say to the shadow “I’m being far too self-regarding and self-pitying. I need to give more attention to other people”. The shadow approves. We are on the same side again and I sense a mutual agreement.

Sometimes the shadow will pivot again though - and I’m left alone. The shadow says that anyone who genuinely cared - in the way I claim to - they would be in a deep depression and absolutely feeling sorry for themself. As I appear to be bearing up, it’s clear my feelings were only ever superficial.”No, that’s not true” I chase after the shadow “I do care… I’ve been feeling like absolute shit”.

Of course it’s you I’m supposed to be writing this story with - not my shadow. But the possible  misunderstandings between us are nigh on infinite at this point. So there are some things I’m wanting to clear up before we start work on that.

One important thing I wanted to clarify is that I’ve always been approaching you as a friend - as if you were a surrogate family member. In particular I was approaching you as someone who I remember caring about me, being concerned about my interests and looking out for me. It was an expectation of that attitude that guided my approach when I first started communicating with you again.  

I recognise that is a filtered approach to history (perhaps “friends” doesn’t even seem right to you)  and it was way too presumptuous to think that you would still care - even a little bit - after all this time. However - ironically - it’s that presumption that’s enabling me to write something like this - because somewhere - somehow - I still believe you care.

You are not the only person I regret losing contact with, but you were the only one I was prepared to open up to and risk suffering the humiliation for… you are now anyway.

I should mention that I’ve had social anxiety disorder ( SAD ) most of my life. That makes it hard for me to make new friends and that in turn makes it more difficult to let go of past attachments in the way others do. For many people the idea of people coming into and out of their life at different times is good and desirable, but for me - excepting some - it’s different. I’ve tried to be a more normal person, but that didn’t go entirely to plan. It’s bad luck for me.

Yes … getting back to the story of you and me. With hind-sight I can see the frequency and quantity of the communications I sent previously was excessive and that could have seemed alarming. It was a period where I was unable to rid myself of the apparitions of what might be about to happen. Some of those apparitions made me feel very happy (e.g. you would be pleased to hear from me - there would be a “hello” and a smile ), some made me feel the opposite (all the emails going to the spam folder, I’m not even considered worthy of “sorry that’s not going to work for me, good luck with the rest of your life anyway!”). It was a torturous juxtaposition of feelings to be caught between. That “torture”  ( which I hadn’t initially been anticipating ) was also action motivating.

I don’t know, and I accept I will never fully know what prompted your choice of response. But it’s hard for me not to see it as deriving from an underlying hostility. I do not know how/why/when that happened. If that’s so - I wish there was something I could do about it, but must accept there isn’t.

I also think it likely that I simply represent a person, place and time you want to forget about and although I had been looking to create something new in the present - I can see that remembering the past could be unavoidable in either case. For my part - there’s plenty I’d prefer to forget too, but I wouldn’t want to forget you. It’s you as you are today that I would want to talk to though - but I’d have no issue with being reminded of who you were too. ( and of course - perhaps it’s not me - but you that you might not want to be reminded of? ).

I do learn from my mistakes, but that was an experience I was not expecting and - on first run - I did not deal with it very well (i.e me emailing every couple of days for nearly a fortnight!). The problem wasn’t so much writing those thoughts down - or the thoughts as they were articulated - it was my listening to the voice that said “it’s important that you email those thoughts to her now!! Quick - before it’s too late”, that was the “mental” bit. Perhaps I’m still listening to that voice…

At that time - already seems long ago - I needed a response, I got that, perhaps if I’d been more patient, it would have been a response more like the one I wanted.

So is that the lesson learned? Be more patient, be more sceptical of voices saying “do this now before it’s too late!”... Why does that sound suspiciously like the inversion of a lesson I learned at another time: “listen to what your feelings are telling you and don’t delay!”.

The actual content of the communications - I would stand by for the most part (although I’m always moving forward). It’s the excess and blatant failure to properly interact with you that’s the “cringe”.

But I’m a person that does expect and need people to say “no, you’ve got that all wrong, it’s like this actually” when I communicate with them. I think everyone does to an extent - especially people with various  “neuro-divergent syndromes” which mean they do not always perceive things that others regard as obvious.

It can be a recipe for blaming others: “why didn’t you stop me?!”, but there is a line where most people would see another person’s misunderstanding and offer a correction. E.g. “Please stop sending all these emails. I don’t want them and I’m not happy about getting them!”.

In case you weren’t already aware (perhaps the obvious isn’t always obvious to you either), I would have preferred it if you had not taken the alternative approach you did. But I suppose you not being willing/able to do that at least provides an illustration of something crucial.

I worked out long ago that hatred or devalueing of the rejector can be an antidote to the pain of rejection. It’s an antidote I refused for you before and one I won’t take now. Your response seemed needless/cruel/humiliating but I will take some time in the next few hours to looks at how that could look reasonable, necessary and justified for you. I shan’t be cross or denigrating you either way.

Rejection per se is easy, it’s losing someone you care about that hurts.

Technically it’s not someone that I care about though. It’s the dream of a meeting between two people - a simple “hello” and a smile - after a long time. It’s grief for an imaginary person who I imagined cared about me.

I have a partner who I’m in a committed loving relationship with. She was aware that I was taking a risk and trying to make contact with an old/new friend and was supportive. If I’d asked for her advice - I probably would have taken a much better approach - but I told her this was something I needed to do on my own. So she hasn’t been aware of progress until the end.

Amongst other things, I had been thinking forward to 25+ years time when - for both of us - the world might start getting lonelier. I was thinking - given our shared roots - and the obviously over optimistic expectation that us two 44/45 year olds might still have something in common - there could be something profoundly valuable about us having a friendship still. It would have meant a lot to me, but it was a 1 sided dream.

So - back to this story I’m wanting you to help me write about you and me

TBC