Ghost calls

Today was an Off Day. I'm blaming it on the full moon. Now I will howl at it...

...

I opened my window and howled and it felt pretty okay. What's the deal?

Sometimes I get ghost calls. I look at my phone and see it's my ex-girlfriend and I start feeling Off. Things rush back. I put down my phone and continue working, or playing ukulele, or whatever it is I'm doing that isn't Talking to my Ex. A while later I'll have a message and when I check it I hear minutes of far-away voices.

I always listen to the messages all the way through. What if she were in danger and I was the only person she thought of to call, and I will only be able to help her if I listen hard to the garbled voices on the other end? So that's what I do. There's never any message.

Like I said, it's a ghost call.

I ran into my ex-girlfriend at Olives today. I've been wondering how long it would take for us to run into each other, and I thought it might happen at Olives, and it did, and I wonder if I accidentally willed it to happen. I saw her come through the door, saw her see me, saw her almost turn around and leave. I said hi and waved. I tried to be friendly and cordial. She did not seem capable, so I stopped talking to her and focused on my breathing and closed my eyes and then focused on ordering my food. As I was leaving I turned around and said goodbye, and left, and she followed me out.

She said sorry and asked if it was weird. I said, Yes, it is weird. We were both going the same way so we talked for a bit. She's been doing a lot of things for herself lately and has lots of interviews and I was happy to hear that. I was also happy to not spend more time talking than was needed.

She asked me how I was. I said, Very good. I told her I was writing a lot. I said, I'd better go.

She said, Your birthday's coming up.

The small hairs on my nape jumped. Yes, it is, I said. I knew she was trying to get me to say something about my birthday, about how I wanted to see her, about how I would save a slice of my day for her.

I did not say anything about my birthday. I said I had no plans. I did not say I would see her. This was me doing a good job of Protecting Boundaries.

Before we parted ways she asked again, Was this weird?

I said, Yes. Because it was weird and I wasn't going to lie.

She said, Why?

I thought, Why the fuck do you think, we haven't talked since you tried to wrangle me into the relationship again and you're trying to wrangle me into things right now, and it's just hard to see an ex-significant-other right after breaking up, and isn't that something everyone knows?

I said, Well we haven't talked since the break-up, so it's bound to be weird.

I could tell she wanted some sort of unsaid promise that things would get better between us. Giving those promises wasn't in my heart, so I didn't give them. That was me doing a good job Protecting Boundaries again.

Afterward, I felt off. Cold shivers. Need to take a shower. Bad juju. Fingers poking at stitches. Just—yuck.

Maybe that's why I've felt off today. I'm not sure. I'm happy if I'm happy, I'm happy if I'm sad, I'm happy if I'm lonely—because I'm feeling something. Now, I feel very blank, and that is something I do not like. Blankness has no energy. You can't do anything with blankness.

The best thing to do, I think, is to just let it go. I feel blank. Tomorrow, I will not feel blank. Two minutes from now, I may not feel blank. So, It's Okay.

I don't like Ghost Calls. I don't like Unexpected Run-Ins. Damn.