I meant to write a blog earlier this afternoon... It's a little anti-climactic now, but I shall write it anyway.

A few days ago, amid talking to family members about my brother's high school graduation, and who is going, and who is driving with whom, and all that, I suddenly realized - Oh god, Rocker Boy's brother is graduating too.

Rocker Boy, being my ex. I use the term 'ex' loosely as we never "officially" a couple, as he had (still has) a 'real' girlfriend, so I suppose I was more like action on the side. It was more than that, though, at least for me. Anyway, for all intents and purposes, I consider him an ex.

The reason him probably being at the graduation was a cause for concern for me was that I turn into a complete basket case around him.  I panic and can't think right, can barely utter complete sentences.. all that fun stuff. I haven't spoken to him since May of last year, and hadn't seen him for as long, until tonight. Somehow, since we graduated high school four years ago, we've gone from being good friends who were couple-ish at times, to practically complete strangers. Rather than maintaining the friendship-with-benefits, I suppose you could call it, he turned into more of an ass than he ever was before, with the difference being that his jackass-ery and sometimes downright cruel behaviour is/was now directed at me.

Since the day of our own high school graduation in June 2005, I've only seen him a handful of times. A few months after graduation, he happened to come into the store I was working at, and I guess that got him thinking about me, because for a few weeks, he was texting me a lot, asking me to go out, etc. This pattern repeated for three years, I'd get a lot of attention from him for a couple of weeks, then he'd disappear for months, only to surprise me when I was least expecting it. It seemed, at times, like a very cruel game, like he somehow knew I had just about put him out of my mind, then bam! - back he was, calling me at 3 a.m. - "I'm in front of your house, come down".

I have to say, as infuriating and mentally unhealthy it is for him to keep popping in and out of my life, causing me to not move on at all, because I know he'll be back, eventually, I do like the fact that he's never totally out of my life (except I think maybe now he is, as it's been over a year without him turning up on my doorstep). I still care, and I like knowing that he's still alive. He drives all the time, always randomly popping down to Kingston, Toronto, Boston, wherever his little heart and VW take him, and he basically lives on a diet of marijuana and Red Bull, and rarely sleeps. It's a fear, always present in the back of my mind, that he's going to kill himself one of these, driving back from Toronto at four in the morning, tired and stoned.

So, the little visits back to my life every few months wouldn't be so bad, if our relationship was not so very awkward and essentially ruined now.  While I want nothing more than to just be his friend again, know what's happening in his life, hear his voice, see his smile - I'm almost certain all he wants from me is easy action.  Most of the times over the last few years when we've gone for a little late-night drive in his car, he barely says two words for me, preferring instead to sit in silence, smoke, and put his hands down his pants (MEGA awkward).  It'd be a whole lot less awkward if he just said "I want some easy action, wanna do it?" But no, that would not be enough of a mind game for him.  Anyway, this would happen a couple of times, other times he would involve me a little more (less awkward, but still high on the awkward scale).  The last time I saw/spoke to him was one of the mega awkward times - I was more involved, but by this point the mind games had really gotten to me, and I couldn't even breathe around him, much less talk or be natural or anything.

Hence my fear of seeing him tonight. Well I needn't have worried - I saw him from afar, but we had no interaction. I tried scanning the crowd to see if he was there, but it was a big place with a lot of people. I waited until his brother walked across the stage to accept his diploma, found his father down below taking pictures, than followed his father (with my eyes, I'm not that much of a stalker) back up to where the family was sitting. I think Rocker Boy escaped while the crowd was giving the valedictorian a standing ovation, and I didn't see any of the family at the small reception afterwards.

But.. at least I know he's alive, right?