Day 21: Defining Moments. (206)

Her voice was all wrong from the start. Something was out of sync. And so, when she asked if she could come over, I immediately went to a very dark place. I could feel the fear rushing up my body, wiping out the happiness I'd felt just seconds earlier. When I spoke, my voice was suddenly flat and cold.

"You're going to end it, aren't you?"

There was a brief pause before she answered.

"Well, I'd like to talk to you."

Now, what I should have said next (hindsight is such a bitch) was something like, "Sure. Come on over." Even a simple "Okay" would have worked. Instead, as a control freak with a pathological aversion to pain (another reason a person might smoke pot all the time), I did that thing I do. Sensing that someone might be about to hurt me, I responded by pushing them away as hard as humanly possibly.

I was right, of course - Maggie was about to hurt me. It seems her husband's new job (he works freelance) happens to be in town instead of out. This meant Maggie and I wouldn't be spending any real time together for the next few months - not unless she began actively lying about where she was going and what she was doing, which she refuses to do. Already consumed by the guilt she'd been keeping from me, she felt she had two choices: 1) Become an expert sneak and liar, a path to self-loathing that would put her marriage at risk, or, 2) End it with me. (I suppose there's also a third choice - to continue as we have been - but I guess that's pretty stressful, too. As she said in a much better phone call later today, "There's nothing casual about our relationship, Karen.") Anyway, she was up most of last night thinking about it, and when she called at 7:00 this morning, she wanted to come over and talk about it.

I said no. I was angry and felt blindsided and told her I didn't see what good talking in person woud do. Why get together to break up? I said she obviously didn't care about me, at least not enough. I told her I didn't want to see or talk to her ... and that was that. (Well, that was that until I called her back an hour later. After we resolved nothing, she launched into a meeting-filled day and I promptly began crying.)

As the morning wore on, I realized I wasn't crying just because Maggie wanted to end things, but because of the way I'd handled the situation when she called. She'd wanted to come talk, and I should have let her. Besides, it was what I actually wanted beneath my fear. Instead, I went all cold-bitch mental. An hour later, I desperately wanted a do-over, but that just wasn't gonna happen. Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy said it best: There are defining moments in life, and when one comes along, either you define the moment or it defines you.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this morning, I consider myself defined.

When I called Mom today and told her Maggie was ending things, she paused for a moment, then said, "So. I guess she really fell for you."

Yeah. She did. We both did. And now, despite what's on the table as far as a solution, I'm not sure either one of us really knows what the hell to do about it.