Grey and I were talking just the other day. He's never said it (in fact sometimes he's said just the opposite) but every once in a while when I listen to him I get the feeling I'm listening to two distinct conversations in his words. I hear the words he is saying, and then underneath that I hear what he really wants to say. At those times I feel like I'm the only person he really talks to. The only person he feels safe with. I can't begin to describe how meaningful that is to me.
I am cut adrift now and trying to figure out how I feel about things and where I belong; what I truly want and need and what things mean to me. I think he's in much the same place. It's like we're waiting on the same ride to open, except we're standing in different lines. I've found this to be true with us on many occasions, at many different places and times in our lives. We've always just "got" each other. I can remember the time when we weren't friends in name, we'd chosen for one reason or another to live separate lives, but even during those days we were still friends. Our friendship was just biding its time and waiting for the waters to calm.
I have other friends of mine and other friendships but I suspect some of them are woven of different cloth, cloth that wouldn't survive if it were pulled apart too roughly. There are always some things that you just cannot mend. I admit that there were times during the most painful parts of our separation that I thought Grey and I had happened upon just such an end. I thought we had weathered our course and had played out our hands. We hadn't. We've just been road tested. We went through some serious knocks and we came out the other side with an even stronger friendship. It's taken me some time to realize how uncommon that is.
I'm worried about him now. He's taking some more serious knocks lately and although I know he's strong and capable and weatherbeaten he's still got a tender core to him that he shows to very few people. I'm one of the lucky ones he trusts enough to expose his soft underbelly to. I suspect he feels very conflicted sharing his thoughts with me, as like most men, he can't help but equate revelation with weakness and doesn't wish to burden me with his troubles. I just hope he is also aware enough to know that to me, there is no stronger glue than that kind of self-expression. To really know someone demands nothing less.
Still and all, he's a strange duck. He may think he is doing me a favor by holding his tongue. At least he knows me well enough to know that I practice the mental equivalent of finding a thread dangling out of a fabric; once I get hold of something I'll worry at it until it comes out. I'll be after him to talk and let me listen. He won't bore me. If anything, he helps me take my mind off of my own personal messes. He's doing me more of a favor than I do him. I cannot stand to dwell in my own head for too much longer. It's way too crowded in there.
((Song: "Shades of Grey" by the Monkees. Lyrics here:
http://www.monkees.net/DOCS/LYRICS/SHADES.htm ))
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