This town ain't big enough for the both of us

Now, what I should be writing about is "further adventures in the world of humiliation play" or "when humiliation becomes degradation and how you deal with that". But not today.

Today I got an email from The Photographer. It wasn't a long email, and I'm sure I will spend more time, thought and text on it than its words merit (I'm always the verbose one), but it brought a few things home to me. It was a shock getting the email, because I'd asked him to only get in touch if he'd decided to leave his partner and give us a proper, monogamous, try. So my heart was racing when I opened it, after all, this had been the stuff of dreams for a good few months after he'd left: that he'd realise how amazing we were together and want to be with me, just me.

It wasn't about that. No moment of high romance or riding off into the sunset for me today. It was much more prosaic, and much harder to deal with because of its tepid tone. He's moving to London. He wanted to get in touch and see whether we could build up a friendship or at least be able to be in the same place as each other. There were going to be "other things" but he'd "deleted them". Ever the man of mystery, or perhaps the man who doesn't know how to say the right words.

At first I was upset. I cried a little. It brought a lot of things back, especially compounded by the indignity of it all: realising that even after all this time he can still get to me, still hurt me. How vulnerable I am to him, how unprotected my feelings are. How many feelings I still have and what a mess they are.

I developed a split-personality over the email as my heart and my head instantly picked up banners and weaponry over how to proceed. I wanted (desperately) to respond, to congratulate him on what must be a new job, to find out all that has been going on with him, to book in a date and meet him. At the same time, I wanted to respond with a torrent of abuse, demanding to know why he thought that getting in touch now would be a good idea for me and if he'd even considered the impact it might have? After all the conversations in which I'd patiently explained that I really, really didn't want to be "friends", that I had lots of friends and that what I wanted from him was something much more. And how I didn't want to be around him if I couldn't have those things because it hurt too much.

I deleted the email.

It was the only thing I could do. Because there was no response that would ever be adequate, ever really get across the mixture of love, hurt, dismay and anger that it inspired. I'm good with words. But I'm not good enough to compose that note. And I know that either way, whichever tactic I took, I'd end up involved in emotionally draining conversations to no purpose.

If nothing else, it did help me drop a few illusions I've had about him. The first being that he will ever come back into my life in anything like the manner I would like. The second that whilst I might still have love and desire for him (diminishing, fortunately), I don't like him very much anymore. I really don't want him to move to London, however I don't have the ability to close borders so I guess I'll just manage as best as I can and hope like hell he doesn't try to come out on the scene. Or if he does, then that enough time will have passed that I will have a better response than turning on my heel and walking away.