invisible forcefield

Home alone. First night to myself all week and…it’s not so great. My brain is going in too many directions, and Matthew is one of them. Still, he is in my head to a lesser degree than he was a few weeks ago, especially amazing considering I saw him last night.

I knew he was in town (thank you, fb) and was planning on staying in after my workout and watching vampire diaries and grey’s anatomy. But April texted me to hang out and it’s been weeks, so I wanted to go. I texted her back only to find out she was already headed out with Matthew’s niece (she’s 21-ish) and Matthew himself was going to be there. Brilliant. So I told her I didn’t want to hang out there if he was there (sooooo nooooottttt true), and that I’d meet her there and we could head out to a different bar. I figured I’d meet her in the parking lot, and play it off like it was no big deal.

Ugh. So I got there and her car was MIA…drove in circles around the place and confirmed that it was definitely not there. Texted her and got nothing, so I parked and went inside. The place we were meeting at is a restaurant I used to manage, so of course I walked in the door and had to start saying hello to people (yeeeeah, I’m not really a social person…so blah). Casually, I tried to scope the bar for April, but she’s a fucking midget and I didn’t see her. After I finish talking to the GM he points out toward the bar and is like "all the alcoholics are over there". Why yes, yes he was. My beautiful alcoholic Matthew was standing right where he always does, talking with his friends. I caught just a shadow of his face before I ducked to the left and went straight in the girl’s bathroom to text April again. What am I, 14? Anyway, she finally answers that she’s at the bar, leaving me to conclude that she could only be sitting close enough to Matthew that I hadn’t been able to look straight in her direction. So I put on my big girl pants and walked out to the bar, finally seeing her about 3 yards in front of Matthew, sitting at the bar with his niece and some other people I knew. Super awkward fun time ensued as I said hello to everyone at the bar, ignoring the group with Matthew and forcing my eyes to bounce off the forcefield bubble I imagined around him. This is even more super awful because he and I have been really close friends for years (plus this is the place where we used to work together, so he is as well known as I am), so people (the girls at least) noticed that I was avoiding him like the plague. Even more awkwardness gets piled on top of it all as the niece starts drilling me and April and asking questions about why we’re leaving (I found out from April that she’s been digging for weeks and suspects that my issues with John are tied to Matthew’s super depression…and I think we just gave her pretty hard fucking evidence that she’s right). Matthew hasn’t told anyone (to my knowledge) what happened with us and obviously isn’t interested in anyone knowing, least of all her (he pretty much calls her his daughter, and I think he practically raised her).

Anyway we managed to get out of there without me ever *really* looking at him…which was both an accomplishment and a tragedy. It’s been over a month since I’d seen his face. It would’ve been fucking nice to get eye contact for a second. Blah. I did get all the dirt from April though, which was heartbreaking and miserable for the most part. His car is totaled from a semi that practically ran over him in the rain day before yesterday. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have his own place yet and is still sleeping on couches down in austin. He’s lost even more weight, taking him from a smoking hot but crazy skinny guy to just…bones (according to April, I didn’t get a chance to judge for myself if he’s actually lost more weight since Christmas). 

I told April more about what went on between him and I, and she told me more of the stuff that she knew about his dating past (which is not really dating, but something in between one night stands and dating…apparently it rarely involves sex). I told her that the hardest thing for me has been the realization that I will never really get to know what was going on in his head. That I’ll never know his motive for going after me, getting with me, or for ignoring me and treating me like any other girl afterwards. I know from the books I read on unavailable men (he’s pretty textbook unavailable) what his motivators might be…but I can’t totally mesh what I’ve read with the man I (used to) know. 

Her response was interesting…and it was just her observations, but April is a pretty fucking keen observer…so I lean towards thinking she may have a decent grip on it. She said she hadn’t talked to him about it so she didn’t *know,* but she has watched him from a distance through this whole shit and watched him decline. She said he was obviously down from the shit with his most recent ex, but still happy and fun and making it. She said even after he and I had royally fucked up that one night and for the weeks afterwards, he still kept his game face and didn’t seem like he was doing *too* bad. But she says that since John and I decided to work things out and I stopped talking to him, he can’t even hide his depression.

I speculate that he misses not just me, but John. We were two of his most solid, dependable, normal friends. John can be a drunk bastard, but he has always been there for David, and they’ve shared some pretty fucking heavy shit. I, before all this shit, was probably one of the few girls he was safe from worrying about throwing themselves on him, and I used to give him relationship advice all the time. Plus I believed in him, and he actually respected my opinion so it elevated his self-worth (he told me that once). Anyway…I think he fucking misses his friends. And there’s no way to get around the fact that none of us are going to be friends anymore. And now I’m depressed over that too.

Plus, he’s still in fucking town, and I’m sitting at home alone with an itch to go see him. Like a fucking stalker. Let it go, Katie…let it fucking go.