Dear Diary
Let’s be honest with each other here. The cool, calm and collected Anastasia we both know hasn’t been her usual self of recent. The precipitating factor is lack of closure on the situation that is Karate Kid.
He sent a message to me this morning saying: “Morning wabbit. Come to the dance party tonight”. I couldn’t think of a more uncomfortable situation to be in – a night of pretending that I was fine, pretending in front of our friends that nothing was happening between us, and not knowing if I was being strung along. No, thank you.
Fortunately, today I had work to distract me. At points during the day I found myself thinking about moving city to start it fresh…the problem with this is that I’d probably always be wondering ‘what if‘. I told myself that I could still move city, but only after I tied up loose ends – otherwise it’s called running away from our problems.
So, with a friendly nudge of encouragement from a dear friend of mine I reworded the text that would set things straight. It read as follows: “Hello cuddly raccoon. I’ve been avoiding talking about where we are at. I haven’t felt comfortable enough to bring it up since hearing your response the last time we spoke at the dance congress. I’m hoping things may have changed for you. Are you open to exploring things further between us?”
Hitting the send button was like playing Russian Roulette with a faulty hand grenade – hit the button and run for cover in nearby shrubbery and quiver with hands over my head wondering if there’d be an explosion or not. I forced myself to hit ‘send’ and cringed until I could look at my phone. A minute passed and no reply. How frustrating. I tried to calm myself by rationalising that he was likely busy. Five minutes passed and still no reply. Surely, he’d read it by now. Maybe he was thinking about his reply? Twenty minutes and still nothing. Was he out at dinner and unable to reply? Thirty minutes passed and I had decided that I definitely wasn’t getting ready to go out dancing and would instead stay home.
Preempting a heartbreaking response from Karate Kid, I started preparing for Operation Armageddon. I brushed off the cobwebs from the 101 Ways To End A Reslationship manual filed in the darker regions of my brain. After reading that, I then revised ol’ faithful Breaking Up For Dummies, The Hitch-Hikers Guide To Self-Preservation and War and Peace (the condensed version) just to be sure that I had all my bases covered.
Satisfied that I’d done my research, my master plan for the battle to end all battles with Karate Kid would unfold as follows:
Step 1 – Upon receiving his unpalatable response I would immediately go into defense mode – unleash the wrath of a woman scorned.
Step 2 – Prepare a text message that had three simple demands: Firstly, instruct him to delete all photographic evidence of us – no memories were allowed as we were never a thing and I was never his. Secondly, telling him to not go to dance classes of the school he mentioned joining as that turf is now mine (you see, Dance Teacher cancelled my dance classes so I’m forced to go elsewhere and don’t want to see Karate Kid there). And, thirdly, telling him to never ask me to dance again, to not message me or talk to me.
Step 3 – Delete him from social media and block him on my phone.
Step 4 – Dispose of/destroy the painting I did at the art class we went to.
Step 5. – Sign up to online dating so that I have a distraction.
Step 6 – Find a new hobby or at least different dance parties to go to for a few months where Karate Kid isn’t likely to go.
Step 7 – Tell Dance Teacher that I can no longer help with the upcoming dance congress he is organising. I do not want to be in a position where I am forced to interact with Karate Kid.
My scheming was interrupted by a noise from my phone – a message! I scrambled to my phone. It was a message from my friend who’d recently moved to a nearby city. His message read: “Hello Anastasia. I have been given two tickets to see XX band tonight. I’m no longer able to go. If you would like them they are yours.”
Intrigued, I googled the artist as the name wasn’t familiar. The first search result was their one hit that went platinum earlier in the year – I loved that song! I next googled where they were playing at….it was in a nearby suburb. I then googled the concert details – it started in 30 minutes and I was still in my pyjamas! I called my friend and he was happy that I could make use of the tickets. He emailed them to me and said to enjoy the evening. I called a girlfriend who lived close by and she was keen (only 20 minutes before had she texted me to see if I was going dancing and she decided she’d have a quiet night too seeing as I wasn’t going out). We made it to the concert on time and had an amazing time.
Do you know what is a weird coincidence, Diary? The friend that gave me the tickets was the same friend that I went to dinner with the first time that I confronted Karate Kid about where we stood. He was the breath of fresh air that I needed most at that moment. How uncanny, tonight of all nights, to have him send a message with an amazing invitation that was the perfect distraction that I needed this evening?
When I got home from the concert I avoided my phone for a good half hour. I noticed two messages received from Karate Kid but didn’t want to open them yet. Aversion to pain is a primal instinct – can you blame me for enjoying the comforting embrace of denial?
After an hour, I have summoned up enough courage to open them. You see, Diary, if I read them now I will at least have the night to digest the situation. So, deep breath and let’s read them together:
At 8:55PM “Hey wabbit lets talk in person. Are you coming tonight? :)” and at 10:58PM “Earth to wabbit…”
Seriously? All I want is clarity in a non-confrontational manner. No. No, I had no intention of going to the stooopid dance party just to wait around for him to maybe reject me and make me cry in public. And what’s with the smiley face? Is that so we can still be ‘friends’ when he tells me he isn’t ready for anything serious? No. I don’t want to talk face to face. He had his opportunities for that and he didn’t bring it up. Nope, not reliving Rhetorical Questions – Entry 104 ever again. It’s text or nothing.
Nope, nope and nope. I’ve had enough. I am breaking out of the safety harness and getting off this roller coaster. It may be less efficient to scale my way down the scaffolding to safe ground (whilst mumbling to myself the whole way about how silly I was to even get on the ride in the first place) – but, at least it’s my way.
Anastasia
The Contemporary Princess 