So long, farewell... ack?! wtf are you doing here????

The chance meeting of someone you know is always a surprise. Sometimes these surprises are pleasant, other times it's excruciatingly painful. The chance meeting of a former significant lover probably lies somewhere in the middle, between "oh!" and "Warning: segmentation fault. Environmental pressures exceeds system recommendations" <---- that's to remind people how nerdy I am by the way. In any case, I'll just use the word "jarring" - it's a lot easier to type after all.

Yesterday afternoon, while on my coffee break to the outdoor coffee cart with some colleagues, I happen to look around while sipping my mug o' decaf and someone caught my attention in the periphery of my vision. It's that old familiar "caution: look at this" sort of feeling - the same kind when you notice that your boss is headed your direction while you've been idly typing away at your blog for the last 10 minutes. I didn't know why my attention was focused for that second on a girl with short hair and blue backpack coming up the hill - after a few seconds it hit me that this person was an old ex of mine.

My next set of thoughts:
"wtf?"
"maybe I'm wrong"
"nope - that's her old backpack with the funny red foam built into the straps. crap."
"Ok - do I be reactive or proactive? It doesn't look like she's seen me..."
"I'm going to act like the general campus population then... I'll ignore her and pretend I'm deep in thought about something scientifically mundane"

It's not that she and I had a bad breakup or anything. Ok, we sorta did - I dumped her after she was done with her week long finals back in '02. We were supposed to go out for dinner and I decided that it needed to be ended ( I actually decided 2 wks earlier, but I didn't have the heart to tell her while she was freaking out about her exams). Box of her stuff, the old familiar "we need to talk", chatting for a while, and then it was goodbye. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I've always felt a little guilty for the pain of a breakup that I caused. Although the thing with the box was probably a dick thing to do in hindsight...

It's odd feeling that familiar sense of "I know her" mixed with the "I hope she has a great life these days" with a liberal sprinkle of "oh crap, what do I do if she sees me???". I wonder if others get that same reaction. I suppose it's truly jarring for me to see her b/c I never expected to see her again - she should have graduated sometime in '03 or '04, and she never expressed interest in a PhD program. My thoughts later were "what the hell is she doing on campus?". I wonder a little whether I should have re-started contact to see how she's doing, or if I did the right thing by sparing her the bit of jarring-ness that I felt. And for the record, no I'm not interested in her - we were incompatible, I had no romantic feelings left for her and so I decided to dump her.

It's odd to see her again too since a few weeks ago I was thinking how interesting it is that I've now spoken to (and continue to speak to) all of my old ex's except her. I guess technically I still haven't, but it's good to know that at least she's not dead somewhere (that's a thought for another entry another day.... how people you've lost touch with are effectively as gone to you as people who have passed away). <---- looking at the bright side of things... kinda morbidly, I admit, but it's still a bright side :)