I’m going to have to ask for suggestions.  I got another message from Mr. Cheap Phone yesterday.  He asks, “What can I do to regain your friendship?”  Then he says that he would love to talk to me.

Here’s the backstory.  Mr. Cheap Phone and I met on our first day of college.  (And just in case you’re wondring, he’s Mr. Cheap Phone because in an emergency situation he refused to make a call on his cell phone because he didn’t want to use all his minutes.)  We became best friends and became more involved than that as time passed.  After three years, our relationship became somewhat romantic, yet casual.  Then he started dating someone without telling me, which violated all the rules we established.  I was willing to try to salvage our friendship, but when I invited him to meet for a meal he gave flimsy excuses why he could never meet me for either lunch or dinner at any point in the future.  After that I didn’t speak to him again.  He worked at the same place where I went to law school, and at least once he came to a public place where I was and took the long way around to avoid having to walk near me.  I felt heartbroken, angry, and scared.  I had fantasies about keying his car or punching him in the nose.  I was really angry.  After I finished school I kind of just forgot about him for a long time until he started contacting me within the last year.

I am really confused as to what I should do.  I want to try to be as kind as possible, but I don’t want to get stuck in our old pattern of having an unhealthy and co-dependent relationship.  I am now leaning toward contacting him, but I do not know the answer to his question.  The question is leading and implies that there is something he can do to restore our friendship.  Also, it seems like almost any answer I could give would either sound too pious  or too saccharine or too demanding.

Manchester says I shouldn’t contact Mr. Cheap Phone because I’ll be doing exactly what Mr. Cheap Phone wants.  He also says that he thinks Mr. Cheap Phone will constantly contact me thereafter, against my wishes.  Personally, I think Manchester is just feeling a little insecure, even though there is no chance that Mr. Cheap Phone and I would ever bee romantically linked again.  As I said in an earlier entry, I’d want my apology to be acknowledged and accepted.  And even yesterday when I contacted someone to apologize, I can tell you I would have been crushed had he not accepted my apology graciously.

Any advice you can give about the proper way to handle this situation would be helpful.

Well, I did it.  It was uncomfortable, and not the way I would have wanted to do it, but I did it.  This was the most difficult goal that I’ve completed so far because I was embarrassed for my past behavoir and nervous that I’d be rejected.  I was afraid that he wouldn’t accept my apology or that he’d respond with anger.  He played the same game that Mr. Cheap Phone played, pretending that he didn’t know what our problem was.  Perhaps that’s a male ego saver.  Anyway, I feel better after having apologized, and I truly hope he doesn’t feel worse.

It was pretty hard to ignore the music video for Crash Into Me if you ever watched MTV during the 1990s.  The grainy still frames of geishas and muses who looked like they had been splashed with watercolors were captivating, yet I was not a Dave Matthews Band fan at the time.  Then I met my best friend, who reintroduced me to Crash Into Me.  As I sat on his bed in his college dorm, it was perhaps the first time I really listened to the song, or any music by DMB.  That night I fell in love. 

For the next two years I was obsessed with Dave Matthews Band.  I had a Diamond Rio MP3 player that held almost no music, and I’d fill it with DMB until it overflowed with falsetto love songs punctuated by acoustic guitar.  I would sit outside the gym and write in my journals for hours, blasting DMB so as to drown out the sound of the rest of the world.  Then my best friend and I broke up, and from that point forward I could no longer force myself to listen to that music.  All I could think of every time I heard any song by DMB was all of the hours I had spent with him. 

It seemed like for the next few years I couldn’t escape DMB playing everywhere.  The last staw was when I was working out in the gym and Crash Into Me was blasting so loud that I couldn’t turn my newly purchased iPod up loud enough to mask the music that suddenly made me want to slit my wrists.  I left the gym angry and vowed never again to stay anywhere that would play such horrible music.  My first week of work at my first real job I went to happy hour on Friday and met the person who would be the greatest lawyer I’d ever meet.  Unfortunately, he was having a drunken discussion about the merits of the Dave Matthews Band, so it would be about two years until we’d become friends.  I didn’t think I’d ever change my mind about the music of Dave Matthews Band.

Yesterday Manchester and I were talking about DMB for some reason, and I realized, I really miss the music.  As much as that music used to make me feel sad or angry about breaking up with my former best friend, I realized I can listen to it now without even thinking about him.  Plus, with my new Napster account, I can get lots of DMB for a flat monthly fee.  The only problem, is that my green 4th generation 4 GB iPod that was once filled to the brim was stolen in a recent burglary, so for now it’s only my computer that’s filled with musical storytelling about friends who become lovers for a night, unrequited love, and snapshots of life.  But I must admit, sometimes I miss the way things used to be when I lived that simple life where I wrote in my journal outside of the gym.

Mr. Cheap Phone tried to contact me again.  This time the subject was a frowning emoticon and the body message was a simple, “How are you?”  I’ve decided that I still won’t contact him.  I hope that I’m doing the right thing.

My brother just told me that I have a “New York edge”, which apparently means I speak with a New York accent and am not afraid to talk about roughing people up, even though I’d never follow through.  I called my brother because Mr. Cheap Phone contacted me recently through the Internet, and I was trying to decide the best course of action karmically.

The subject of the email is “Lola!  It’s me!”.  He goes on to give a pseudo apology without really accepting blame.  He says he was an asshole and that no apology will do me justice, but he says he can’t even remember the details of our falling out.  Well, even though I forgave him long before now, I still remember the details.  My breakup with him really hurt me because of my unhealthy attachment to him.

I am trying to put myself in his shoes.  If I reached out to someone to give an apology, or at least to try to apologize to the best of my ability, I might feel hurt if the other person didn’t acknowledge and accept my apology.  So, although I had no intention of responding to his letter, I felt guilty because I would want an acknowledgement and acceptance of my apology.  However, my brother pointed out that the email really didn’t seem like an apology, and he said he didn’t think I had any duty to feel guilty about not responding to someone who completely abandoned me.  My brother’s and boyfriend’s theories are that Mr. Cheap Phone contacted me just to see if I was still single and available.  They also think maybe he’s moving to the area.  I tend to believe they’re right, although I’d like to believe he’s trying to make personal improvements.

I’ve decided not to contact him.  If he was apologizing, then I accept and would want him to know that I’ve already forgiven all the wrongs.  If he wasn’t apologizing, then it was still good to hear from him and to at least know that he is ok.  Either way, I ended my attachment to him some time ago, and I would never want to find myself caught up in such toxic emotions again.  I feel a little worried that maybe he lives here now, and maybe I’ll run into him, or he will try to contact me in person at work or at home.  When I really think about these worries, it really just seems like that toxic attachment is trying to creep back into my life.

What are your thoughts on all of this?