HAPPY BIRTHDAY V-STER!!!
This post is a special one that is a tribute to one of my best friends. His name is V. or Vince, and it is his birthday today. We don’t remember how old, but we’re figuring he’s in his early 60’s. He’s aged well. One of those guys that just keeps getting more handsome.
We met V. per chance three years ago. We were used to visiting AOL Journals, but when we first saw his we were very impressed that he seemed to be the most complicated thinker we had met so far. He wrote about philosophers and psychologists and he wrote about Ernst Becker’s Denial of Death. I don’t think I was in agreement with some of his thoughts on Death, but I knew V was pretty darn smart. It was peculiar to me too because my Ex-husband had also hold that author and book in very high regard as his favorite book. I thought this was more than a coincidence. I hadn’t read anyone else on line that was writing about complex psychological theories. It impressed me to all get out.
I remember taking a long time to formulate my first couple of comments to his posts. What he thought of was hard for me, because thinking about hard stuff is not something I come by naturally. I can piece things together, but it is a study that happens slowly. I can appreciate when my mind is being stretched. I had a habit of waking up early so that I could read my favorite journals. I was very happy when Vince found his way back to my journal and left his first comments. I didn’t understand for awhile how faithful a reader he was going to be. He seemed to come back to our journal often and we started seeing him at the journals we were visiting. That seemed to be important in that he was fitting into my life and the community I had come to love.
I think it was early on that we started to IMing back and forth during those early hours. I remember the first couple of times that he IM’d me. I thought Man-o-man. He’s sooo cool, but I thought he’d made a mistake in IMing me in that I was pretty sure the more I talked the more he was going to know how silly we were. We didn’t figure that we were too smart. It was very early on that I figured V knew more of psychology, but it was a while before he told me what he did. I think this is funny now. He was hesitant in letting me know that not only was he a psychologist, but he was a doctor. He didn’t want people to be intimidated by the title. He asked somehow in giving me the information that I not start treating him different. I remember making a choice in that I could meet this person as a friend, or I could gush over his credentials. I felt that he was rather a loner like me and I was drawn to that.
This didn’t keep me from trying to hustle him. We’ve got enough of that “boy-crazyness” inside us that we worked pretty hard in trying to per say, “Pick-him-up.” I don’t think in our multiple way of being we realized the proper way to maintain a sex-free relationship. I don’t recall how Vince did it, but he maintained a boundary that hurt my feelings at first. It was a hard morning when I finally understood that he wasn’t interested in me that way, but he still wanted to be friends. As a female, there is always kind of a let down. I don’t know if he knew of our relationship with our friend before or after this period. I remember him encouraging that relationship as my only love interest. And, I received a feeling that I had had before in that the good guys in my life stick together in not interfering with established boundaries. In that same respect, Vince knew we had a psychiatrist, so he worked very hard not to interfere with that relationship. I think this had to be especially difficult, because I had a strong need to talk about our relationships. Neither our friend nor Dr. spent many literal hours with us. We were lonely. After we knew V a bit, it was another difficult point in telling him, due to his high morals that our friend was already married. I think though that he had figured that part out. He assured me that he was ok with that, but he made it pretty clear … he didn’t want to talk about sex! Shoot, that’s been hard … so, when I am need of saying something in that regard I will write about it in the blog. That was our compromise.
We continued our relationship for quite a while. I knew that we were pretty regular friends when I realized that I could get frustrated with him and he could get frustrated with us. For my first birthday, V. gave us a card saying that he’d be our forever friend. That meant a great deal to us. It took us about 2-3 months before we could handle getting the mail, but point was … we did. Vince has been patient with us, but sometimes he is very stubborn. We didn’t like, nor do we still like that he won’t accept our physical gifts. V. also has his cranky times when he withdraws. I think he talks too much about death and until just recently, he refused to take care of his body well. That’s right there is sometimes a bit of Mother Hen in our relationship.
We went through a couple of really cementing things in our relationship. One was the IMing in the morning, but he’s come in and supported us in other ways. He was a big proponent in not bringing work home, or staying so late at work. Vince was very supportive of the First Anniversary celebration over at AOL and we were exceptionally thrilled when he took us for a dance at the Anniversary Ball. He mixed drinks for the group and was in general, the Mr. Congeniality that he’s always been. Vince picked up the habit of participating in up to 100-120 journals as a time. And, as I became more introspective with our time and attention to selves, V stayed with us along with Deb in being the only two that has read us no matter what. V. was also a strong factor in getting us to think that we were smart enough to work on a master’s degree. He was the only one to read all our papers. When the time came for AOL’s downfall with the advertising in Journals, it seemed natural that we’d both leave to go to Blogger. We had both made decisions independently that we were too insulted to stay. Soon it will be a year of being over to the new blogs.
Another cementing element to our relationships is that we’ve followed his tale with Alucard and friends. I think he had written about 30 short chapters, before we jumped on the “James” bandwagon. V. was patient with us. He knew that it sometimes upset our system to be reading about things that were scary. But, one day we got over our own fears and have joined his story fan club. That was a really good “move” on our part.
I don’t know when or how things got so difficult for us. It seemed like my ease in becoming overwhelmed has something to do with it. I remember at a certain point … maybe 5-6 months into school that my problems were escalating in being able to hold a continuing thought that we were a student, or that we would have to initiate paper writing. V too seemed to be having more trouble writing new paragraphs to his story. It took a while for him to start the second book after he had completed the first and part of that was good in that he was continuing other mediums of writing. Vince has done poetry and stories other than James that allow us to appreciate more his talent and life concern, though we are usually the first one to applaud stories or poems with no indication of death. That’s been a hard concept all along, because it makes us think that our friend was immersed in depression, or that his job of counseling people who were dying was having a negative affect on him. We held onto our markers of the days that were better than others. Those usually were the days he would visit his son and family, talk to his special friend, listen to an opera, do some writing or visiting, and/or eat a Cherry Tasty Pie or Wawa sandwich.
V’s medical sense has always been a concern of us, because we’ve seen him very sick several times, when he has been adamant of not helping himself claiming the impossibility of cost over value for his life. Fortunately, his last bout with Pneumonia, he accepted help – mostly because he saw it as a means of helping his son. At least, that’s our take on it and now this last part with the TIA and the necessary operations he’s going to go through. We’ve told elsewhere that part of the story, so we aren’t going to do it again here. I will say again, and underline the point that as firm and unwavering Vince is, sometimes it feeds negatively into a sense of stubbornness. I think that he must have had very good doctors though, because he came back from this last hospitalization somehow appreciating the value of his life. Vince has started eating right and he discontinued the smoking.
This morning we talked to V, because he got home from work early and we were home as well. V continues to make us incredibly angry about his not accepting our gifts, where he has accepted gifts to others. He did offer us though the alternative of us getting a glucose tester for us like he now has. We will do that, because we want to make Vince happy, but we want to go down for the record of saying although we feel this relationship full of sparkle, we’ve both worked hard to maintain it. Because if the relationship is going to be as real as I think this one to be, people are going to confound each other now and again. I believe that we’ll both get through ummmm “V’s stubbornness.” We know I’m the easy going one hehehe. Ok, maybe not … maybe we’re both stubborn people. But, that seems to be a good thing in a relationship.
I figure that pretty soon, we’re going to need stopping these sets of thoughts. Our mind slips back into appreciation that our friend is having a Birthday today. We’ll hold back in discussing his immediate thoughts, because we figure we have to at least give V the opportunity of speaking for himself. Probably one of our faults that we on the other hand like to talk about everything that is affecting us. What is the likelihood … hmm, maybe here oil and vinegar. I’m such a strange match for the quiet, withdrawn person we know to be V. Hmm, wonder if this is an opposite attraction in our relationship? *Giggle* So V. my immediate gift is giving you what I know how to best do. Just writing. Secondarily, I will get the Glucose meter, and third I will try hard to like you on your birthday … though you get me FRUSTRATED~!!!!!!!
Denver sings … take my hand and follow me. Happy Birthday V! Please continue being a part of me and let me be a part of you. Happy Birthday Forever Friend
posted by Ann Marie @ 9/25/2006 09:53:00 AM
Comments: 5
