“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
~ Dr. Seuss
A couple of weeks after I settled into my new home, and got the internet properly set up, I went through my email notifications for news about Mr SG’s activities. I found that I felt no resentment towards him and reading the articles just seemed “natural”.
I continued to add on to the repository and saved images individually. When I had enough images, I emailed them to him labelling my emails with numbered subject headings, so he could figure out the set.
While in the past he would acknowledge having received a complete set, ever since that last meeting where I didn’t take a photo standing next to him, he just didn’t respond. I learned not to expect it.
There were some articles that did not sit well with me. He was becoming more involved in politics and some of the media pieces became more intrusive and not really newsworthy. Where I had an opinion, I wrote him. I cautioned him about how he was being presented, advised what I could for future reference and hoped he saw it not so much as nagging but a silent partner watching his back and being the voice in his head. If he read my emails.
It was not all hunky dory in celebrity land and I wondered if he ever thought that he had bitten off more than he could chew. As a demonstration that I harboured no hard feelings for things said in the past, and that I could set aside whatever personal affections I had for him to maintain a working relationship, I offered an olive branch.
It was about 5 months after our meeting as colleagues. The silence having started even before that. I sent him an email, said what I had to say about what I read, and offered him my ears as his sounding board whenever he felt he needed an outlet. While I stated that he need not reply to that email, I ended it with a proposal to forget what had been uttered and to pretend that none of it took place.
He replied a few hours after. His reply was simple: “Thank you” for the email and that he “appreciated it”. That was how we broke his silence.
Months after that, his PA had informed me that he was planning to visit my home country. He had asked if my family was interested to attend the formal event being held, for which he was the invited guest speaker. I extended the invitation to my sister and asked her to spread the word.
Unbeknownst to me, my family met him not only at the event venue, they also sent him off at the airport.
During the event, the sister who had met him before was re-introduced to him. He recognised her and in his opening address, she said he spoke of how good it was to see the familiar faces of people he regarded as his family. He then looked in the direction of my sister and the other members of my family.
How unfair is that??? They, he considered as family. Me, a colleague. If I had not had affections for him, I would have been very angry. :p
My family saw him leave at the airport and my eldest sister said he had taken the time to meet with them first before he left.
We continued to communicate through emails, snail mail for a few years after. I could still ask him what I wanted and when it counted, I always got a reply.
He eventually got engaged to the girl who had made an appearance by his side, as his date, at a community event. Mutual friends reassured me that I was better off. They got married in one of the most publicised wedding ceremonies for that year.
He was my Facebook friend for a while too but I had the strange suspicion (with less than concrete evidence) that she checked on my wall using his account. I promptly removed him from my friends list and was annoyed that he had allowed for my privacy to be compromised. I don’t think he noticed the disconnection. Most of his posts are probably updated by his PA.
When their first born was delivered, I made the conscious effort to stop contacting him. I left it open to him to reconnect – I keep the same email and that was the most common way we kept in touch, and he has my mailing address, if he kept it, if he ever wanted to.
I just stopped everything on my end.
It was not all that difficult to do.