Two Sides of the Same Damn Coin

There are two sides to each story, right?

One right side, one wrong. One white, one black. One happy, one sad.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit for effect, but I think you see where I’m going.

CHEF once asked me, “Why is it always all or nothing with you?” I didn’t understand what he meant, but then he explained himself. Apparently, I have a habit of either being ‘all in’, or ‘all out’. I don’t have a middle ground. And I think y’all have known this about me for some time now- I don’t do ambiguity. And what’s wrong with that? With wanting to know where you stand with any given person at any given moment? And when I don’t know? I DECIDE. I don’t leave it to fate to make the choice for me.

I did it with THAT GUY, although admittedly it took me a while to get on board with the whole ‘in or out’ thing. With CHEF, the progression has been much quicker. He played with my head, so I walked away. It took coming and going a few times before I settled on a plan of action, but once I did I was outta there like priests at a whorehouse raid. And how did he play with my head? Sit back and get comfortable…this might take a minute.

See, CHEF and I had a budding friendship. We joked and laughed and -picked one another up when we were down. He’d be sad or frustrated with his job and I’d send him a stupid meme to make him laugh. He’d reply with, “You’re crazy!”, and I knew my plan to make him smile had worked. The truth is, I felt better when I made HIM feel better.

But then I made a HUGE error in judgement. I told him about that stoopid instagram account with all those racy, half-naked pics of me. He was in Mexico at the time, sick as a dog from food poisoning and I was in Vegas lamenting my own loss. I texted him to see how he was feeling and things just went from there. It seemed perfectly acceptable and appropriate to send him the name of the account (though I didn’t tell him what the contents were, exactly). He responded with, “Oh. my. god. You are simply beautiful” and I think that’s when everything changed. I mean, how long had it been since a man said something like that to me? And this was a man who had seen me in a swimsuit, lol. he’s seen me in my PJ’s, first thing in the morning, when he was at the lake house with his kids. My hair all messy, no makeup, scrubby clothes…and he thought I was beautiful.

And nothing was the same after that.

We were awkward and clumsy with one another. Our comfortable familiarity was gone, and it hasn’t come back since.

Except…

One night, we got to chatting and it felt like the old days. Eventually it turned into flirting, then (ahem) intimate flirting. I THOUGHT it was understood that it was just something we both needed in the moment- two people who just needed a connection with someone who understood their loneliness. But it just made things worse when the next day, he admitted to regretting the whole thing. He said it less because he didn’t ‘feel that way’ about me, but I didn’t ‘feel that way’ about HIM either. We resolved to not let it ever happen again. Regardless, something was bugging me and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Needless to say, it happened again. And HE was the one who instigated things- not me.

And yet again, it ended the same way- with his regret and shame.

And then it hit me.

The problem is that even though we both needed the same thing, I wasn’t the person he wanted to get it from. I was a paltry substitution for…some unnamed woman he hasn’t met yet. And I’m ok with being ‘Ms.Right Now’, but not when he resents both himself and me afterward. I felt like a prostitute- you need her in the moment, but you’d never admit it to anyone.

He didn’t have much to say about it, which pretty much told me I was right.

So I walked away.

And of course I miss him. Not the intimate stuff, but the friendship. The innocent flirting. The laughing and joking and stupid memes. Feeling NEEDED by someone who is lonely and could use a buddy. But it’s just not worth the toxicity that comes with it. I have enough going on in my life right now with opening a business- I can’t handle the frustration that comes with the feeling of failure I have when I can’t help someone who clearly needs a friend.

So here I sit, back to square one. No one to flirt with, no one to joke with, no one who gets me.

But I take solace in the knowledge that even though I’m sitting, I still know where I stand.