A Watched Pot

I wish things were normal. The snowglobe affect around here since Katrina has been life altering, and waiting while the flakes settle to the bottom is like watching paint dry. I keep having lots of thoughts of Espen, even though I'm finished with the web page. I wish I could stop thinking about him, but for whatever reason, the thoughts just keep coming back. It really bothers me because we weren't even in an intimate relationship...wait...we were in an intimate relationship! I guess I just didn't realize how intimate it was since I have nothing to compare it to...well, nothing positive anyway.

Thoughts of Carlos keep coming back as well. I keep thinking of how twisted that relationship was, and how I let it go on for far too long. Then I think of how clearly broken Espen was when I met him, and how I allowed myself to get sucked into an intimate relationship with him even though from my experience with divorce, I knew he wasn't emotionally ready for a new one. I was so enamoured with the intimacy that I lied to myself about how attached I was getting. All of this, plus what's going on around me with Katrina, sometimes feels like too much to bear.

I keep trying to hold down any hope that Espen will ever try to contact me, but I'd be a liar if I said there wasn't a small part of me that isn't still holding out that he will. Then I have to face reality...to face the "He's Just Not That Into Me" behavior he exhibited that demonstrated how caught up in his ex-wife he was when I went to Norway. Sometimes I feel inadequate because to me that shows that what happened in Rome was more significant to me than it was to him.

While in the midst of one of our conversations about him not being ready for more and the whole us being soulmates thing, I told him, "I can wait." He said, "Why does waiting have to be such a bad thing?" I told him it wasn't, but he didn't believe me. Maybe I had an impatient tone in my voice when I said it. He said that waiting could be a good thing. I liken it to watched pots. You can watch a pot boil water and count the minutes, seconds and nanoseconds until you see that first bubble while anticipating the next and the next and the next...or you can turn on the stove, walk away and watch an enjoyable movie and come back when you hear the water boiling.

I'd love to go off and watch a movie while my life gets back to normal, but that's not an option. I have to live this every day. One thing I can do is stop pouring the water out of old pots and examining the contents as they slip down the drain, testing the pot for flaws as to why the water didn't boil, and don't pour salt in the next pot of water to try to make it boil faster. I've learned a few things...now I just have to practice them.