"When our joy is at it's zenith..."

A has a bad cold virus. I was on the phone with him last night around 9:45, and I told him he needed to go to bed early. He responded that he wanted to see me and hoped he wasn't contagious, but conceded that he did need to go to bed earlier than his usual 1 am. We said good-night and hung up.

A couple of minutes later, my phone beeps: I have a text message. The text message reads, "Do you know how hard it is to be in the same city as you and not see you?" But the number the message was sent from is not familiar. There is a local area code, but I don't recognize the number at all. I called A back up, apologize for calling him again, and asked

"Did you just send me a text message?"
"No...?"
"Hm. Okay, I just got a message from a number I didn't recognize and thought maybe it was you. It must be a wrong number sort of thing." I said.
"Yeah, your phone would say my name if it was from me."

We said good-night again.

I put my phone down and try and accept that it must be a wrong number. I don't believe it though, not for a minute. I am suddenly alert, I hear each individual leaf rustle in the wind outside. In the universe, something is unsettled. Something is not right. I can feel that, from deep within.

When my phone beeped with another text message about 20 minutes later, it was confirmation that something is not right, that something is indeed very askew. I didn't even need to read the text message to know...but I read it anyway.

The text message was a short, one-line comforting joke B and I used to tell each other. It's a line from a Little Rascals episode, so it's nothing serious. But we used it to convey to each other, "I need you. I love you."

And there that line was on my outdated cell phone screen...from the same number as before...and this time, B signed his name at the end of the message.

Deep. Breath.

Deep...breath...

This is the first he's tried to contact me via phone since early August 2008.
In the "Break up" letter he sent me, he asked me not to contact him. I haven't.

So why is he contacting me, now?

Is it far-fetched for me to presume:

1. He still loves me
2. He's not healthy
3. He's now in the same city I'm in
4. Help me, what am I forgetting?

I still love B very much. I always will love him. When he was healthy, he was an amazing partner and friend.

But my love for him has evolved. I don't know...were he to show up at my doorstep 100% healthy, yes, I might go back to him. But I don't know, and honestly, he's not going to show up at my doorstep 100% healthy. He's not going to show up even 90% healthy.

*sigh* I think I am feeling rattled but solid. I like A, I love A, and I am not going to let B destroy or hurt my budding relationship with A. I have come to realize that I allowed B's illness to pull me down quite a bit, and while I don't regret any of my past decisions, I am in a different place now and refuse to be sucked into his unhealthy world. I truly wish B the best: I want him to be healthy, I want him to be happy.

But I deserve to be healthy and happy, too, don't I?

My course of action right now is to just lay low. I will tell A about the text messages later. I have "warned" my family and friends about B suddenly contacting me. But I'm not going to respond to the text messages, nor am I going to call the phone number from which the messages were sent.

It hurts, though. This really hurts my heart.

Yet I'm still able to feel happy I have A in my life?

And I'm even able to think of a quote from a movie and laugh:

Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at it's zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.