The perfect distance apart.

So apparently I don’t talk about work. This is novel for me...it’s like finding out that I am not as whiney as I sometimes think I sound. Either way, I started my new job as a doctor this week. I haven’t saved a life yet, haven’t done anything magical. In fact, all I’ve done is realised that I’m going to have to be one shit hot secretary for the next 6 months. You know...make sure everyone gets whatever it is they want when they want it, including thinking about when they’ll want to pee and informing them of the fact (my superiors are really nice, I’m just being facetious). Tomorrow will be exciting...I will see my first real patients, probably panic at the thought in the middle of dealing with them, and run squealing like the little coward I am.

Anyway, so in the midst of a very fascinating talk on the importance of governance security, and the need to vary the location of capital letters in passwords (I tried to stay awake, I really did...), my phone beeped signalling an email. I opened it expecting it to be some horrendous news, like further delay to my internet or cancellation of my credit cards. All the email said was ‘hey’. Then I scrawled back up and read the sender.  4. (link 1 link 2 ). He was the one that I ended things with (link 3) because it was the right thing to do (and because he was averse to communication and I talked too much) thought that email would suffice as an apology. I laughed a little, which lightened the mood of the seminar, then replied with a curt ‘you’re alive.’

Ten minutes later and my phone buzzed again. This time the lecturer went silent and looked around the room. I feigned a coughing fit, excused myself, and departed to find a corner in which to construct a hideously rude reply (the kind that make you blush when you’re done sending it). His email read: ‘Paris next week, cross the channel?’

[Side bar: Paris is exactly like you see on TV (if you go to the right places), and because there is free-flowing wine, chocolate, shoe shopping, cheese and pastries, endorphins run high and people really do feel in love. At least I do. My only visit had me flirting with dogs in the street, dreaming of unicorns and chipping my toenails as I tried to draw maps in concrete. My return to reality was painful and cold, but the moment....momentous]

Now, I am quite the resilient person. If I decide to be nice, I usually stick to my guns, and same goes for if I decide to be rude. But I was floundering here. How does one reply to ‘meet me in the city of love’? And anyway, what kind of intellectual compromise on his part leads to such behaviour?! This clown was selfish enough not to care that I’d graduated from university (despite my own valiant attempts at the contrary), got a house and a job. Not so much as a congratulatory message; people I barely knew had cared so much more. Why would he think that ‘meet me in Paris’ would mean ‘I’m sorry’? Surely that's what he was trying to say?! Honest truth, probably not.

So I really don't know what was the right thing to do, what with clouded emotions and revisited wounds. But I replied with ‘I think we are currently the perfect distance apart’, because really, we are.