Can you tell what it is yet?

Well, not quite: she's still there, and not here...but I've been thinking about IQ for a while (obviously!) as I said, and I was thinking about her a lot yesterday. I had a flatwarming do - absolutely lovely; a bunch of my favourite people came over and I felt good...I cooked tortilla and oily peppers and made a nice dressing for a salad, and there was bread and sangría, and I did a good job. I hadn't heard back from most people as to whether or not they'd come, and IQ in her typical fashion went underground for quite some time and didn't respond to the email. I suspected she wouldn't come... had no reason to believe she would... and of course she didn't. But I had hoped: maybe she just hadn't let me know she was coming; maybe she'd want to surprise me... but it was all predictable. And there it was, that unjustified tinge of disappointment.

But today: an email! About our formal connection mostly, and with that slight sense of distance that I expect from many others but had grown used not to getting from her...it was friendly enough, but I think it's all in the salutations: Hi; all best; no more te extraño fuertemente, as I enjoyed a few months ago. So, with the extended absence and these normative salutations, I presume things have gone back to the way they were. Or were they ever like this? It seems to me that I disliked and feared her, and my feelings changed as a defence against that - wanting to take her, control her, have power over her - and then we became closer over a distance as she was on an extended holiday (that's when the fuertemente came...). Things have only become less formal since then...signing off with initials and x's, and multilingual phrases and greetings that speak not the language they're in but of a growing informality. So I'm not sure things have really been like this before between us, or maybe they have but I didn't notice because it was a waxing not a waning moon. Or maybe it's always been like this, that it never waxed as far as I thought or hoped. There is certainly something familiar about the tone of the email - not familiar like friendly, but familiar like I've seen it before. Perhaps this is just where we've been all along.

So who knows what will happen next time we see each other? I'm still trying to fix some meaning, to find something out with limited information...I've offered the hand of friendship in a very specific way, as she said there were some personal reasons for her lack of contact. Here's my new number; I'm thinking of you; let me know if I can help...will she take it up? What will the significance be if she does or doesn't?

I know full well this is going nowhere. It's a complete dead end...I have concluded that she's someone who is used to having other people fawn over her and stumble in the face of her, and she wants - maybe she doesn't even quite know it - to see what it would be like this time, to have me at her feet. But I'm working hard (and have been succeeding for a while) not to give her the satisfaction. But still I wonder, what does it mean, what does it mean? Is she playing the game I think she is? What does she think? Always living with a little hope, but equally knowing that the hope is false. More significantly wondering what she knows, how close to the edge I am, how thin the ice beneath my feet. Mind games are one thing; it's quite another when you're not even sure the other person is playing them.