Yes-ter-dayyyy....

All my troubles seemed very far away in one regard. In the wee quiet hours of the first shift I found an old friend who has been missing for many weeks. Yes, one and the same. I miss that camaraderie. He has an amazing ability to make all the little things that get in a persons way seem less like K-2 and more like an ant hill. But our friendship has had to go underground.

It seems silly, crazy and sooooo 5th grade. But I did notice a pattern. Whenever I expressed happiness or relief about things being normal, had my tow days off and came back he was more angry than ever before. I thought that he is just  one of those crazy Gemini's who never knows which side of the coin he wants to live on. That little voice inside my head told me that I had not gotten to the bottom of the back stabbing yet. So I told the last person that I trust, formerly the top of the only people I can trust list, there is no more talking about me with him. Period. I had been the Wabbit. Then I had been excised. Then I was the Wabbit again. Right after having regained Wabbit status I came back to an angry frozen tundra that makes the Hoth Ice Planet look like a Sno-cone machine. So I told her I am off limits. Left. Returned.

And on my return found an abysmal landscape. She tells him everything that she knows will make him angry at me. I can't fathom the motive. But I don't need to. The fact that it happens every time I say something to her is evidence enough that there is no one in my department with whom information can be shared. And now I see that he knows that is the case as well. He has seen it all along, I am afraid. Rather than be direct, he has been obtuse so that I never know exactly to what situation I am supposed to apply his pearls of wisdom.

My readings have told me that there was more to the situation than I could see. Of course I interpreted that how I wanted to, which was not how it is. How it is, is this: we still like each other as co-workers and friends, we miss each other's wit and humor, he thinks I'm crazy to go to Germany for a concert, I hope he is happy with his new girlfriend and that it lasts longer than the others have and both of us are working passed the "What Might Have Been". But the only way that we can connect is going to be when no one else is around. For whatever reason there are 5 people who do not want us to talk. Even something as harmless as being told the story of his car accident could set the gossiping harpies on the path to re-establishing a DMZ betwixt us. For all the world I don't understand that. It isn't new. I've had this kind of thing happen all my life. But it is still astounding.