Friday, November 4, 2016

Mixed Signals

Wednesday was one of those days that I was trying to get back on the wagon. Sure, I woke up sore all over from my workout on Monday, and I was not nearly as prepared to share the music I was working on in anticipation for November. The whole day I was trying to forget one single fact:

Today is Joseph's birthday.

I'm glad I decided to delete his number from my phone, as I wasn't tempted to text him. I no longer can be prompted to reach out to him for any reason.

I don't think he deserves it.

In retrospect, I have learned something about myself--I deserve better than a one-sided friendship. I know that, and I want something far deeper than that. The sad thing, too, is that I admired him for his good traits, I understood him and loved him even more for his weaknesses...all except one. There was one trait of his that I simply did not want to accept, because the ultimate price that characteristic exacted was that of my friendship. But I have had to accept that one single fact:

Joseph is just...flaky.

I need to move on. But there just seems to be this nagging thing that keeps me from completely throwing out that box that insists on residing in the front room of my mind, rather than the attic, or better yet, the garbage. I can't help but wonder God isn't trying to tell me someway, somehow that our destinies are inseparably intertwined in some manner unknown to me.

My performances were organized in an odd way today--I had two in the late morning/early afternoon, with two more in the evening. During the break, I went to the local temple and did an endowment session for the first time in several weeks (I have done sealings the last few times I have gone). I went to receive the name of the deceased man whose vicarious work I would be doing. The temple worker gave me a card for a man with five names.

His first name was Joseph's. Not "Joseph", but his real name.

I walked away from the temple worker and said under my breath, "You've got to be kidding me."

Of all days, I just so happen to go to the temple and receive the name of the one person I was trying hardest to forget. On his birthday.

I don't even know what to think about that. The likelihood of all those circumstances lining up is so finite as to seem like the deus ex machina in one of those cheesy romance movies that unites the couple at the last moment, when all seems to suggest them going their separate ways.

But that's not going to happen. I don't want that to happen. But what does this all mean, then? What is God trying to tell me? I can't buy the "it's all coincidence" scapegoat--there's no possible way. And yet chances are good that I'll never see him again, or at least, not within the coming years. I surely haven't seen him since I last walked away from the singles' ward a month and a half ago, as I suspected would be the case.

What is it then?