Fish Meets Martyr

I'm trying to stick to a regular schedule of blogging on Tuesdays, but Char made a comment on my last post which I wanted to reply to, but I think it's going to make a really long reply. Plus, half of my reply was the topic of my next post anyway, so I might as well write it now. My blogging will probably die down as I attempt NaNo again this year (still undecided as to whether I'll try both NaNo and NaBloPoMo again. Will be difficult this year now that I'm working full time).

"...it takes a lot of will power to fight the heart that just wants what the heart wants. "-Char

I agree with her on that point, and I think there are friendships that can never be platonic, no matter how hard you try. I think I've written about this before, but I want to get it out now for therapeutic reasons.

It all started with the Korean Panda trainers. For some reason, they were causing the US WoW servers to be down, and so I was at a complete loss for something to do. This was during my more obsessive WoW days, where my evenings were usually clear for WoW, and it was what I did every day, other than the planned WoW maintenance Tuesdays. I can't remember exactly how he found me, but RH was also in the same boat, so we started talking. Even though we'd only just "met", conversation was pretty easy. The servers came back up, and we both went back to our respective grinds.

But we started chatting more and more frequently, and because his guild was a lot more progressed than mine, I learnt a lot about the raid dungeons that I had never seen before. I think one of the best indications that someone is interested in you is the fact that the two of you stay up late talking, even though it means that you'll both be so screwed up the next morning. It was worse for him, as he had a pilot lesson the next morning, and my chess lesson felt like one of the longest I'd ever been to, as I spent the entire time worried that he was going to crash and die. Thankfully, he didn't. One of the highlights of my day was being able to talk to him.

It was pretty obvious that we were into each other, but a part of me was telling myself it was a bad idea (for reasons of my own). Eventually, that part won out, and I ended up asking him not to contact me anymore. We didn't speak again for years.

Then, due to a bug, we ended up talking, and we'd talk again every now and again. I found out he was engaged, and was pretty sad for a while. Eventually, I ended up spilling the beans about why I severed all contact with him, and he called me an idiot and said stuff that just made me like him even more. So I think given the circumstances, I don't think we'd ever be able to be platonic friends.

However, all of this reminded me of what I thought was called the Martyr Syndrome (hence the title), but when I googlged it, that wasn't what I meant. So I'm going to call it Premature-Partner-Death Situation. Imagine you have just started dating someone. You are in the honeymoon phase, where everything is perfect. You barely ever fight, and when you do, you end up resolving it pretty quickly. You spend almost every moment together, and it's fun and enjoyable. You still stay up late each night talking to each other on the phone. Then suddenly, your partner is hit by a car on the way to work and dies.

You never found out that they secretly hide rubbish under the cushions in the couch because they were too lazy to get up and throw it away. You never found out that they have a weird habit of throwing away a block of butter after using a small amount of it. Or other assorted things that would piss you off. So in your memory, they were the perfect person.

Of course, that means whenever you meet someone new, they can never measure up to this perfect person that you've created in your memory. And because that person is dead, there is nothing to contest that memory. Obviously, it doesn't have to be something as drastic as dying. They could move away somewhere, or the relationship could end in a way that doesn't cause you to feel badly towards them. The point is that memory of a perfect person that cannot (or is unlikely to be) contested.

That doesn't mean that you are doomed forever. I think it is important to remember that the person you hold in such high esteem probably isn't as amazing as you remember. If you try hard enough, you could probably find a few thing that annoyed you, or would have if you hadn't been blinded by love. Though my mind knows that, my heart still stops to wonder every now and again what would have happened between me and RH. I don't think it's a bad thing, and I care about MrMan5.5 enough that it doesn't get in the way. I just know if we were to try to be good friends, it would be dangerous.