When hearts grow together and grow apart...

I'm working on grading...and I've got 5 IEP's I'm working on tonight in some capacity...

But I did want to take a break for a sec and reflect on some close relationships where distance has grown between us, especially between me and Brandi...

My last post on the topic expressed the very deep anger and hurt that I've felt about how Brandi has pulled away as a friend in a way that I am totally left in the dark about and have very little control over at all...

I've been having strange dreams, lately...

I had a dream last night about meeting Brandi in public, somewhere, randomly, and striking up a conversation...

Brandi had this thick, fake southern accent -- I'm sure because of my concerns that Brandi has kind of sold out a lot of larger concerns that we both used to share, largely because the most important among them was friendship and I've experienced not really much at all from her in quite a long time...even though she promised after we broke up that she wouldn't do what she has done, as of late...which is stop talking just because we were in other relationships...like a lot of Brandi's and my promises, this one isn't panning out...

She and I talked...though it was pretty superficial...and like the last few times I've talked with Brandi, I was just kind of disappointed in who'd she'd become...it's very possible that we just kind of grew apart in some very different ways...but I wasn't really impressed with Brandi as intelligent social-activist changing the world the last few times we talked...I do think that it's important to note that I was hurting pretty bad about our break-up, though...so everything I say has to be taken with a grain of salt, I think, given my being a jilted boyfriend...but that was just kind of how I was feeling at the time...but I don't even trust my own feelings on this because of how much other baggage I was carrying at the time and perhaps still am...

In the dream, her husband, Greg -- who've I've never met -- was being a real dick to me...I was being friendly...and he was acting like it was burden to deal with my friendliness...

Melissa traded on the internet for When Harry Met Sally for me, recently...

Which was really bittersweet to watch since so few people have that kind of relationship, I'm learning, and since Brandi and I had one pretty similar in a lot of important ways (the fact that we fought so much was the one most serious difference between Brandi's and my relationship and Harry and Sally's...but other than that it was definitely better than the movie in a lot of ways, especially in our mutual political idealism to match our falling in love...I don't know how much of this was shared or how much of it was me with rose-colored glasses, at this point in my life...but it was shared enough that I think it was a comparable if not closer romance...except no wedding at the end)...

I worked through those difficult feelings...and began to better enjoy the movie about half-way through...

I still wait for the day when I can sing Surry With a Fringe on Top to her...

But I'm actually wanting to just have some kind of mature closure on the whole deal...

I've been working through an awful lot of very bitter feelings toward Brandi in the last 6 months or so...how she's cut off communication...how senseless it's all seemed...how she's never even really communicated about why she's handled it like this...

She protests that Greg hasn't forced her hand, but something tells me that it didn't happen randomly and she insists she's not pissed off at me about anything, so then I'm left just feeling hurt and with no real decent explanation why I've had to go through all of this...
My dreams have reflected my more suspicious, hurt feelings, I think...

And I really don't want to think of Brandi in this light...

I just don't know what to think at each juncture when she's communicated less and less with me...

It's just kind of this dark hole in my life, right now, that is only balmed by good memories that I share with Melissa or on my blog or with whomever I'm talking with and they come to me, in the moment...

I had an inservice, today, and I ended up at 83rd and Metcalf, where Brandi and I used to live in Kansas City, looking for J.C. Harmon High School(which I'm still totally clueless about how to get to)...

It's so hard when you're as close to someone as Brandi and I were...and your most recent memories are all kind of darkened by fighting and jealousy and deep anger and disappointment...

But absent all of the good memories, that's all I'm left with...and they're just too painful to bear on their own without some good reason for all that pain...and the good memories are the good reason...

I honestly think that even if I fell in love, again, here sometime in the near future, I hope...that I'd still feel all this...just because it's a whole other relationship...one of my closest...and with no real resolution...

I have people in my life that I've been really close with with whom I don't have resolution with about bad situations between us...

But this one kind of sticks out in a major way, I'd say...

I don't talk to my mom, much, right now, just because I don't really identify with her, at all, anymore...I don't really understand her and I don't think she really understands me and I just don't trust her for advice about anything important at all, anymore...she wasn't there from about 12 years old on...and it took a while for me to forgive her for that...and more for her still insisting on so much of me with so little real involvement in my life...I understand better, now, that she's like so many adults who never really completely grow up...my mom's no wild child, in the least...but she's her own self-righteous, risk-aversive, less than grown-up version of a parent that you just don't feel like you can rely on very much...

My youngest brother and sister haven't talked much, lately...totally of their choosing, since I just haven't received communication back...though the two older sisters and I are on pretty good terms, lately...

I have some friends in Lawrence who handled a situation between us really badly, I think...and were so very terribly unsupportive for me during some really difficult points amidst one of the toughest periods in my life -- the time I spent working between grad school and this job -- that we haven't talked in quite a long time, as a consequence...

And I'm still going to make one more try to patch things up with my advisor and professors in grad school, here soon...

In all of these cases, I have either proactively worked to correct problems...asked explicitly about concerns that people might have had...or, generally, made far more proactive efforts to care for the relationship than have been reciprocated...or all of the above...

But the situation with Brandi stands out...because we were closer than any of the other relationships...including my relationship with my mom, by far...as much as I would wish for something better with my mom...

And because, as such, I trust Brandi more to offer me advice about life questions...
Perhaps that trust is misplaced, given that I haven't heard from her, on her own initiative, in several years...and hardly at all even as a response to some communication I've initiated...

But it was a trust I once placed in Brandi...and she's definitely one of the more quality people I've known in my lifetime...

And the dreams just remind me of what I am reminded of every day whether I care to be or not...

Which is that I miss her...and I hate this feeling of such total distance and unhappy mystery between us...

I just want the bad dreams to go away...

I have a kid in class who is having nightmares about really terrible abuse that he suffered under the care of his previous guardian...abuse that's been confirmed for me by other sources, so I'm more sure that he's not making it up...I've never really suffered that kind of abuse...but I can identify with the terrible feeling of wanting the bad dreams of some painful situation in your life to go away...to just leave you alone...or else resolve themselves...

Or give you some opportunity to resolve them on your own...

I just don't have that opportunity with Brandi or with far too many people, these days...
And I don't really know what to do about that, right now...I wish I did...

I'm going to be talking with some folks at KU about getting some resolution around bad feelings between us...I owe some apologies...and I'd at least like some mutual understanding, rather than the stand-off between Tom and I that we had the last time we talked...

But most of the situations I've mentioned either involved issues on the other end that I'm totally clueless about, despite making efforts to resolve (I'm thinking of my brother and sister, right now, which may be based on how young they are and where they're at in their young lives, right now)...

Or they involve hurt, on my part, that I haven't known quite how to get resolved with those people...and with very little effort on their part, at all, frankly...my mom stands out on this one since she's my mom, after all...though our last conversation, at Christmas, was nice enough to be fair to her...I just get frustrated that, like with my father and to a much lesser degree, my step-mother, there is this limit on mature conversation we can have where tough discussions can be had and we all come out together on the other side...

I don't know...I just wish all of these situations were resolved...and I wish I knew what I could do to resolve them...

Maybe I can brainstorm some ideas on how to get us closer to that point...

I've got to get back to work, here...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben