Friendship

I stayed angry at Nikolai for a number of days. Then I chose to go ahead and forgive him. A lot of what he did is stuff that I should've seen coming. He sometimes has this fault of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and expecting that others will understand him for what he meant rather than what really came out of his mouth. I guess I'm still trying to figure out exactly what he meant. Some of the things he said the night before we returned to Cincinnati do not match up well with the way he has claimed and continues to claim that he sees me. It might just be immaturity in action, perhaps. In any case, I'm not devoting a lot of time to figuring him out. I think I've made the mistake of messing around with another overly complex man.

I do have more clarity in terms of knowing where I stand with him. We are friends, and that's the extent of it, for the most part. That's a mutual decision. But the boundaries within the friendship are not drawn very well, I don't think. And in California, I think that we both did our share of crossing them. I'm not completely clear on how Nikolai sees the friendship dynamic, except to say that I think he sees us as closer friends than we probably are, and I don't think there's a whole lot I can do to make him completely change his perception of me as damn near close to moral perfection. On one hand, I don't like being on a pedestal, but on the other hand, it's an odd sense of security, and I know I can trust someone who does think highly of me.

As for myself, while I consider Nikolai a friend, and I trust him more than I trust a lot of people, especially men, I recognize that we have only been getting to know each other better for the past half a year or so. That said, the only way you get to know someone better is to ask "why" questions, and sometimes that means inadvertently crossing some invisible boundaries. I also find that, like Alex, Nikolai's life is too complex for his own good, maybe even more so than Alex. When creating a statistical model, the trick is to make it parsimonious (includes only necessary variables) and fulfill its purposes of explanation and prediction. The problem is that Nikolai has placed too many variables in his model, yet he expects it to fulfill its purpose. Unless he makes his model parsimonious, he will not be able to make it do what he needs it to do. I can and do accept him, even with his character faults and issues...

Speaking of that, the strange thing is, what I found over the course of this week is that although I have every reason to hate Nikolai, I don't. Even though there's not a lot about him for me to like these days, I like him anyway. Not as someone I desire to date (ain't gonna happen), but as a friend I would like to keep around in my life for a while. The truth is that, even though I don't let him in on this, I really do appreciate him for the mostly positive influence he has been on my life since I've been getting to know him better.

Yesterday, I had a flash of wondering about Alex, so I messaged him on his blog. Chances are, he probably won't get it, and even so, he probably won't respond. Maybe it was a mistake. But honestly, I've gotten to the point where I don't care anymore. I'm living each day as if it is the last day of my life. Honestly, to an extent I think that Alex still has my heart, but I think that the friendship as it had been was destructive, and I do not regret cutting him off. It needed to be like that. I might call him today, maybe not. If I did, I don't know how he would respond. But then again, does it matter? I'm in a forgiving mood :-).