An old friend returns (in a big, big way)

So....through the magic of FB, I have reconnected with an old friend, an old "boyfriend" if you will. We were like 11, and I would see him during the summer when I went up north with Renee to her family's cabin. We would write back and forth during the school year--until one day, I stopped hearing from him. I checked the mail religiously every day (while pining away for him every night) for like 2 weeks. Finally, I gave up...and never saw or heard from him again (I heard OF him, of course, through Renee's mom and stuff--I remember once seeing an oh-so-handsome pic of him in his baseball uniform or something like that at their house, but we never saw each other again). I went to the cabin with Renee a couple of times after that, but his family was never up at the same time we were....so alas, it just wasn't meant to be.

...Or was it? Although we became friends on FB like 2 years ago and exchanged a couple of messages (you know, the "hi, don't know if you remember me, how you been?" kind), we started to REALLY talk again a few weeks ago. He, I realized after reading some of his posts, was going through a rough patch in his marriage (which later became a separation and soon a divorce). I posted a few encouraging msgs to him and one day, he sent me a FB chat message. And we haven't stopped talking since then. No, literally. We stop to sleep and work, obviously, but that's about it. We've gone through (at last count) roughly 1300 text messages in the last 17 days, and the hours we've racked up on the phone? Fuhgeddaboutit. Our longest conversation was just on Thanksgiving Eve, which rang in at a whopping 5 hours, but I don't think we've ever had a conversation that lasted less than an hour, with an average phone call of 2 hours. (And we've talked every single night since about 3 days after we started texting.)

So what does all of this MEAN, you may be asking? Hell if I know. =-) I will say that we're definitely into each other. We'll be seeing each other when I go home next month, so we can MAKE SURE that this thing we think we may be rekindling is actually really there (although by now, we're both pretty sure). His divorce has to be finalized (although trust me when I say there is NO chance of a reconciliation). And, of course, there's the little matter of him living in Michigan (Beaverton, which is in the Midland-ish area) and me living in Paradise--I mean, Florida. As I told Kish yesterday, "I may have found the one thing that could drag my ass back to Michigan." (He couldn't move to FL, because of his 2 kids--who, btw, are both just beautiful.) Although quite honestly, I would be really, really bummed, as you all know how much I love it here. And I wouldn't do that unless I had a job lined up already and we were, like, engaged or something. I sure ain't givin' up Florida for just another boyfriend.

Sooooooo......who knows. I will also say that he's just as into me as I am into him, which is nice. We're actually quite stupid for each other right now. And sure, there may be nothing there romantically when we hang out in a few weeks, although that's becoming increasingly less likely. And there is, of course, a great deal of irony to the possibility of me ending back up with the very first guy I really really liked, after 23+ years of dating assholes, losers, cheaters and even an ex-con or two. (Although, as I told him, that just makes me appreciate him even more now.)

Oh, and by the way? He told me recently that he was crushed when he stopped hearing from me. I, of course, was stunned, and reminded him that no, it was HIM who stopped writing to ME. No, he said, one day my letters stopped coming, and he never heard back from me again, even after writing to me a couple more times. In fact, he told me that he kept my letters all the way through middle school, and high school--and that, in fact, they may still be at his dad's house somewhere. So we aren't sure what happened...but we're back in touch now, and maybe that's all that really matters.