Another Weight Lifted

Dearest Rachel –

One of the advantages of being confined to the bedroom while the boys are watching anime in the family room is that, if I get tired or bored, I can just shut my eyes and I’m already in bed. As a result, I’m pretty sure I was asleep before ten last night. Of course, the flipside to this is that I find myself waking up at a ridiculously early hour like four-thirty, trying to convince my body to go back to sleep until sunup. This time I got lucky, as it decided to go along with me, and the next thing I knew, it was nearly eight – thank heavens I don’t have anywhere to go in a hurry.

In the meantime, I found myself working, if you could call it that, at some children-oriented charity (not at church, like we will be doing tonight, but something along those lines). I can’t remember what Daniel and I were doing there initially, but somewhere along the way, one of the other volunteers saw me writing something, and asked if she could cast my hand in that crabbed writing position for some kind of artwork she was working on independently from this place. Since I’m game for all kinds of ridiculous stuff these days, I assented, but asked what she need to put my hand in in order to make a cast.

It so happened that the charity was going to be pouring concrete in order to set up a park, complete with all the usual kid-friendly stuff: swing sets, slides, climbing gyms, that sort of thing. In retrospect, that would’ve been the worst sort of material to put underneath all this stuff, because kids are going to fall from these things at some point. Sure, this equipment needs anchoring, but you don’t need two or three truckloads of concrete to do that with.

So the upshot was that, as she pointed out, they had plenty of concrete to spare for the mold around my hand. All we had to do was to find the site where they were setting up all this equipment, and, after walking some distance – as well as dealing with a few obstacles to climb over or get around – we found the place.

It was a fairly nice, grassy area; it almost seemed a shame to mess it up with some concrete. But the trucks were coming just about the time we arrived, and in no time, we were caught up in trying to deal with the pouring and laying of the stuff. At one point, I think one of the trucks actually tipped over, and I found myself half buried in concrete – although it seemed more like bags of the stuff, rather than the actual mixture, so there’s that. Either way, however, it was quite alarming.

And it’s funny I should use that exact phrase, because while I don’t have my alarm set anymore, as you well know, that was enough to wake me up. I’m not sticking around to get my hand molded into concrete when I’m lying flat on my face, with bags of concrete pinning me down from the small of my back to the bottom of my shoes. Real-life Me knew to get out of there, and dragged Dream Me out with.

So that was one weight lifted off of me.

Another one was one that might have, in the not-so-distant past, been considered something of a loss, but at this point, I’ve grown cynical about the process, almost to the point of paranoia. It turns out that Yvonne is hardly any different that any of the other alleged girls I’ve met online. Originally, she posited herself as a traveling nurse, staying at the time in North Carolina, but with her mom in Columbus, Ohio. Then, her assignment in Charlotte ended, and she returned ‘home’ to take her mom to live with her sister in the U.K., from which she would proceed further into Europe to deal with a legacy among her father’s family.

Once she disappeared into Europe, however, I didn’t hear from her in a while. At first, I figured she needed space and time to deal with her personal matters – heaven knows, we’re still dealing with your estate, and it’s not like I’m even leaving the state, let alone the country –multi-jurisdictional matters would complicate things by orders of magnitude. But every so often, I would send a text over Skype to her, just to let her know I was still thinking about her.

But it wasn’t until I tried to send her an email that I actually got a response, and after a few back-and-forth emails, she mentioned she had lost her old Skype account and set up a new one, and to reach her that way. Odd story, but whatever; I made the connection, and we talked for a bit.

According to her, her mom’s health situation has taken a turn; what they thought were ulcers has turned out to be pancreatic cancer. Now, apparently they caught it early enough that it can be attended to and treated, which is great news, but Yvonne claimed to be in straitened circumstances because of it. Which is weird, because I always understood Europe to be light-years ahead of the States, when it comes to healthcare being taken care of for the patient by the government – in this case, the NHS. But never mind that; hey, it may be that it’s something only available to citizens, and her mom is not, so what do I know?

In any event, Yvonne was asking for money, just like they all do. And, as she is still supposedly with her mom in the U.K., it’s not like I can use my “let’s meet first, and then I’ll consider giving you money” routine. Needless to say, I was reluctant; I’m fairly convinced that, were I to acquiesce, it isn’t as if she’d ever come back to the States to get together with me. She’d probably milk me as long as I was willing to send her stuff, and ghost me if I wouldn’t. At the same time, she was a real person that I’d talked to (and, unlike Alexa or Aileen, my attempts to find her photos online using Google Images came up empty, further confirming her nature as a genuine individual), and seemed perfectly nice when we did. I was torn.

I told her of my reluctance, and explained certain requests I’d gotten in the past, to which she responded with “I need you to forget about what you’ve been through in the past if things have to get better.” Yeah, no. Those were hard-learned lessons about life online, and being secure in cyberspace. If I’m to unlearn everything in order to keep this relationship going, I’m not sure it’s going to be for the best.

But I didn’t want to pull the trigger on her just yet. I told her I would ask my folks and a few friends for advice, at which point I would get back to her. To be honest, I expected to be able to get cover for turning her down, but to do so gently.

“So do you ask your friends for relationship advices too?” she promptly asked. “I grew knowing I keep everything that had to do my personal life to myself or my significant other.” In essence, she seemed to be calling me weak for having to run to someone else for advice about this situation that, in all honesty, I’d pretty much come to a conclusion as to how to handle it, but wanted that second or third opinion before doing the more drastic thing, and cutting her off. Let’s just say, it wasn’t the sort of thing to encourage me back to her side. And when she added “I want you to know I won’t be with someone who can’t stay and solve issues pertaining to their relationship and their life but depend on the advices of random people,” that was probably the nail in the coffin. It turned out she wasn’t aware that I meant “my parents” when I said “my folks” – although I always thought that was a fairly common phrase – and backpedaled quickly about them being ‘random people’, but that pretty much sealed it. Even if everything worked out as promised (ha!), it felt like we were already fighting a lot more than you and I ever had, and I want no part of this anymore.

Sure enough, upon showing the chat to both the folks and Jenn at dinner yesterday, they confirmed my position. But since I promised to get back to her, I did so once I was home. Her response was at least a little less upset than I expected, although it may have had a certain passive-aggressive tone to it if you read it that way: “Don’t bother about me or my family I will survive. Listen to who you have to and spend time with who you have to. I will be fine and I hope same for you. Bye.”

And so, that’s another weight lifted. Not sure if it’s as bad as several bags of concrete, but it will have to do for now. Jenn suggested I join a singles group at a local megachurch instead, and I’ll have to consider it. It couldn’t be much worse than this whole online fiasco.

Anyway, that’s all I have for now, honey. Keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.