[BrightFuture]

Oops, it should have been “new buddy”, not “new body”, LOL.

Day four. The kids wanted to go to the pool, so I dropped them off. I came to the pool later and joined them. There was H again, talking to his pool buddies. I didn’t approach him. I think he saw me, but didn’t come to say hi. The kids said that they went to talk him when they came to the pool. I’m glad that my son, his GF and H had a lot of interaction during the weekend. H left the pool with what appears to be his new buddy.

All the kids left for home later in the afternoon. My GF wanted to stay with me, but she didn’t feel good and decided to drive back with her kids.

My mutual friends called and told me that they were in town at the festival and asked me if I was going to join them. I completely forgot about the festival, so I hassled up to get ready and went there. Again, they didn’t bother to tell me that they had a company. I came to the restaurant and there was H again. They all expected me to be with my GF. I told them that she was sick and went home. So, we were sitting there as two couples, just like in the old days, except H sitting on the opposite side. They already had a couple of drinks. We ordered more. H already ordered his food. I ordered my.

We talked a little. We discussed the fire that was at one of the condos on the previous day. Then I mostly talked with my GF and H talked with her H.

Then again… H got up, said good bye and left without giving anybody a hug.

This is where I finally got some info from both of my mutual friends. We went to their house after the dinner and they kept telling me things about H. They told me that H said to them that he “didn’t expect to spend the whole weekend with Bright”. I said that neither did I. I thought that I would not see him at all, just like last year, when he was on one of the support teams for the race. I was actually surprised that he was not on the team. He seemed to enjoy it last year. This is supposed to be his life. Hanging around with his drinking buddies, driving the sand rail he wanted so badly, drinking and partying again…

I told my friends that this is the life H wanted and he is probably a lot happier now. They both looked at me with the sadness and said that it doesn’t look like H is happy. His drinking friends were not so much of friends. He pushed some of them away, and some of them pushed him away. He hasn’t taken his sand rail anywhere this year (this was my educated guess a couple of day earlier) and it seems that he lost interest in it. He was very happy that my son and his friend enjoy it though.

He is not drinking as much. My male friend said that it is probably because H is trying to conserve the money. H is asking to come to their house for dinners a lot. And when he comes he seems to be enjoying watching the TV shows with them, and my friend told me that they are not even drinking on these nights. So, H is back with his original friends (our mutual friends), and he is even tolerating the baby. H doesn’t like little babies and he always tried to avoid being around them. The kid is about 15 months old and gets into everything in the house. I’m very amazed how H is able to tolerate this. He would be very annoyed in the past. The only explanation is that he doesn’t have much choice, as he wants to be around his friends. And they are true friends.

My male friend told me that he still doesn’t understand what H is going through. He mentioned MLC though. To my surprise, he said that H doesn’t open up to him at all, so my friend doesn’t know what is going on in H’s head. He said that he thinks that H is dealing with some trauma or something in his life, but he doesn’t say anything to him at all. I mentioned H’s parents’ divorce when he was 12 and how badly he treated his Mom for a while.

Both my friends said that they felt sorry for H. I had tears in my eyes at that point and told them how sorry I was for not being able to help H though this when we were married and that I was sorry he was so unhappy with me in the last few years of M. They told me that it was not my fault and it is H’s issues that he needs to sort out. The male friend said that he wants to talk to H to try to open him up. I told him that knowing H’s stubbornness, it is probably not a good idea and just to leave H alone.