Pay It Downward (1/10/09 Saturday)

The game has been joined, if not in the same spirit. Julie hasn't as much as greeted me in two days. I find myself a bit amused, if in a malicious way: Funny how people feel when something they've taken for granted has been removed. How much do the vapid niceties mean to people who share little else? Experimentally (and probably because I'm not taking quite as well as I've been giving), I looked at Julie as we approached one another, and she passed glancing away. My feelings are conflicted, of course. My conscience, my pride and my cowardice don't know which, if any of the others they're fighting.

*****

Then, with a simple, spontaneous, thoughtless act of kindness I bring it crashing round my ears. I'd been managing fine, ignoring Julie, thinking I just might pull off a full day of it, having just avoided eye contact as I dodged that cart of Easies she pushed. That was three o'clock. Then Angie asked who was relieving her at backup, and, checking the schedule, I saw that it was Julie, who must have read it wrong, her shelving not scheduled till four. Judy was present at my discovery and told me to get Julie. I didn't want to, but I did want to--I was already faltering. I found Julie and told her, but she was certain she'd read the schedule correctly and left the cart behind to check. Just as sure of what I'd told her, I brought the cart in. I was already trudging up the hall to the workroom when Julie, having recognized her mistake, started toward the door and her cart. She saw me with it and said, "You didn't have to do that." I said, without a smile, "I was there," and right then something fell away, both a burden and a power. My bad mood was spoiled. Just as I was feeling some power over Julie and some distance from her, I go and do something like that! The moment she thanked me I realized how much I owned that petty strategy and how much it owned me. Now, that bond is broken, and I want it back. I got an energy, a purpose, of sorts, from it, a callous inspiration. Now where am I? Can I possibly go back to ignoring her? Can I possibly be that nice guy but with no designs on her affections? What--who--can I be?

It's not that I"m concerned with a resurgence of the old feelings, but I"m not ready to let go of the ones I've cultivated lately. Why? Is this a maturity being forced upon me? or just a vestige of the old affections forcing their way through the affectation? I still want Julie to talk to me, but I want it on my terms--no more trying to draw her out. That won't happen. My petty little strategy lately has been to spoon out a little of her own medicine--hardly proportional, considering that, on her part, it's just indifference. I'm trying to punish her to compensate for my embarrassment. I don't want to be what she wants me to be, what I've always been to her, an innocuous wallpaper. But that's what I am, and if ignoring her helps me be that while still allowing me some degree of dignity, however artificial, I'll take it--if I can get it back.