The GeekHiker

Following up on the end of this post, there’s always a little bad to keep life balanced…

I am starting to be convinced that life is nothing more than a monkey who, no matter what I do, just likes to occasionally throw his shit at me.  Just to see how I’ll react.  Just to keep me in line.

And the truth of it is, I’m getting tired of it.  Things like last weekend’s backpacking trip are about what I’ve been attempting to do since the beginning of the year: move my life forward, and hopefully becoming a happier, more balanced person in the process.

Every time I start to feel like I’m making progress towards that goal lately, I see flying poo hurtling in my general direction out of the corner of my eye.

I come home Sunday, happy and tired from the trip, all to run into what I detail below.  And as stupid as it is to think, and even stupider to actually write out, all I can feel is “it’s just not fair.”  Which is dumb because life often isn’t fair.  That’s just how the game works.

It’s like the ‘fuckin monkey doesn’t want me to move on, so he throws a little more of his crap at me to drag me back.  And I can’t seem to duck-and-weave fast enough, most times.

Want to know the details?  Y’all are gonna love this.

So I returned home last night, tired and feeling great, to find these downers:

One: “Something” girl has not returned my e-mail.  So, we had The Something, she left quickly, responded to an e-mail saying very positive things about The Something, and then ignored my reply.  As it has now been a week, I’m fairly certain that despite her complimentary words (“I had a blast”), her actions (busting a move to leave at the end of The Something and not replying to last Monday’s e-mail) indicate a distinctive lack of interest in me in any capacity, friendship (which is all I was really hoping for at this point) or otherwise.  I have simply got to stop holding on to hope for things that aren’t there, so yet another one to write off, I guess.

Two: an e-mail from an old friend who was in film school with me, telling all the people he hasn’t heard from in a long time about the show he’s now working on.  He made it into the industry, I didn’t.  I don’t know that I regret not now working in the industry, but there’s always a part of me that will wonder about the life that could have been.  He’s a reminder of that potential.

The third was a message on my answering machine.

Whenever I return from being out of contact with civilization for a couple of days, messages on the machine seem to carry greater weight.  The pessimist in me tends to jump to the conclusion that it will be a friend or family member with bad news.  The optimist hopes it’s Publisher’s Clearing House saying “sorry we missed you, we’ll stop back by later.”

What it was was something I never expected.

It was The Ex.  Calling to wish me a belated Happy Birthday.

I had to listen to the message three times and check the call-waiting to be sure it was her.

Her voice was shaking a little bit and I could tell she was nervous.  She probably thought I was there, screening the message when, in fact, I was boiling up freeze dried food at the first night’s camp in Yosemite.

She rendered the belated wishes, ending the message with “I’ll talk to you later.”

And as I wiped the poop off my shocked face, I swore I heard monkey laughter.

I have no idea what to think or do about this.  I mean, it was, undeniably, a very nice, and certainly brave, gesture.  I’ve always said, too, that I wouldn’t have minded staying friends with her after the breakup.

Dammit, the monkey’s calling my bluff.

So what do I do?

Do I send another e-mail to “something” girl to remind her of my existence (i.e. the “uh, maybe she just had a busy week” e-mail-‘o-desperation), or just give up?  I know the answer, but I’m asking anyway.

Do I contact the old friend?  Tell him about my decidedly less exciting life in IT?  Admit that, for all of our dreams in college that we discussed, he pursued them successfully and I didn’t?

And the big one: do I call The Ex back?  Send her an e-mail to thank her for her well-wishes?  Or just laugh internally at her nervousness, tell her to go to hell in the back of my mind (which I wouldn’t do as I actually have zero malice towards her), and erase the message?

Okay, gentle readers.  I’m opening up the comments to everybody’s expert advice.  What do y’all think?