I had a little lesson in listening to my conscience. No crickets with purchases from a
haberdashery were involved. And OMG – I am
writing this post without a beer.
I had a moment of the slippery slide of emotions that was so
greased, I couldn’t keep ahold of it.
Granted, I held it long enough to edit the really unnecessary stuff out
that were blatant indulgences from pent up years of feeling repressed, attacked
and what would be the equivalent of an all night mindf*ck every night.
On an unrelated note, and a brief one, why do I have do take
the NPR media player out to dinner, desert and beg for it to play straight
through while I use the internet simultaneously? It’s like walking through a house of bubble
wrap in brick shoes trying not to wake a baby.
*Conclusion of rant.
So I decided in this last very long round of Break-up
Aftershocks to try try try and stick
to the point, and at all costs, if I can’t keep myself from going off in a
backward direction, to at least be respectful.
Not so much last night. I suddenly found myself exhausted of all
his special rules – when I first moved in, little by little I learned that if I
acted certain ways or said certain things, I was going to trigger horrible
fights. Even trying to compliment him, I triggered fights. (I still
haven’t figured out how that works.) I
molded to what was needed to keep peace as much as possible (and it didn’t work
many times but was good enough when it did). It also meant biting my tongue,
hiding my thoughts, not sharing who I really was in order to make the world
that he seemed to want, available. He had a vision of how Things Should Be
and I thought he was so smart and must be right. When I caught on that maybe he wasn’t right
per se, I found out that by challenging things, I would just make the household undulate in
anger, resentment, blame and indignation.
Then there was me for a long time – confused.
Flip
never divulged his severe depression to me for over a year. It wasn’t until I tried to leave him the
first time that he fessed it up. The fact that he had been out of work for over
a year, years earlier due to depression. Maybe it would have helped to
have known. Instead he blamed me for everything and I had a hard time understanding his logic. So much that I thought I was just aging faster all of a sudden. My brain was in a fog.
This
all adds to a build-up. All these things that have been put into my head
– certain boxes – ok to do this, not ok to do this. And then he does
things that he would freak out if I had done.
Anyone can say, “Well, you don’t really know what he would do.” Anyone in a long term relationship gets a
little view into the patterns of their significant other. Sometimes – rarely – they can be surprised by
their partner’s reaction to things. My
guesstimate is that more often than not, you know exactly in what realm they
will react. Will they end blasted to
Saturn from a freak out? Or will they
ground, take you into their arms and slather you in compassion? I don’t know what that last one is. That’s foreign to this relationship for
me. I had basically one person who this
type of compassion came naturally to.
That was El.
I’m
not exactly sure whose emails he is reading but I certainly don’t think I am worthy
of the comment telling me that I am psycho and “out there” For such a smart guy, he never could
understand points that I made during anything resembling a disagreement. He rarely offers a reason as to why I deserve
to live and breathe on the planet but is quick with the insults. (See The List). It’s only natural that
I would ask him again - why are you hanging on to me, why do you want me – the
Embodiment of Evil Who he says cuts him down constantly? I’ve barely
heard him say a bad word about his ex….he told me her Cosby Sweater “colorful” story
but he told it in a gentle way, like he felt bad for her. Through her serial cheating and drug
addiction and child abandoning while on drug binges, at least he had compassion.
Always “Saint So and So is a good person” no matter what she did. (I did
resort to calling her Saint. I did. Can’t I be just a tiny bit bitter? Enough to
be part of a cocktail?) I am told how
“bad” I am on so many levels. Even though financially I kept the household
running for a couple of years and made sure he had health insurance for his
many ailments and psychologist. Even
though I paid off his jeep so that he wouldn’t have a car payment (even though
I still had one). I’m still paying for
the jeep. I took the loan against my
401K and even though it’s been 2 years, it’ll be about 2 or 3 more. I’ve been there for him through surgeries/procedures
and to care for him afterwards. I don’t
know how to achieve his good graces at this point. Flip hasn’t fessed up to any wrong doing or
heart breaking at all. Instead I get the random email at night about how I’ve
broken his heart. Once again. Geez hon, ever think there is a reason that I
moved out twice and am so dissatisfied?
Ever think there is a reason that the cops had to be called in three of
your relationships (ours thankfully did not have such drama grandeur).
But
this morning I have a Hate Hangover. It feels like Restraint Failure to
have gone outside my boundaries of what I would want to have actually said (as
opposed to what I was really thinking) and diving right in to the emotional
purge. I admit, the plunge felt
refreshing at the time.
So
I decided to send a follow up email this morning to say that I apologize for
the barbs but that the accusations are true for me. I just could have stated it better the first
time instead of the tar and feathering that I gave him last night. I felt better apologizing for basically not
speaking my feelings in a more respectful way.
Do you imagine that he returned my email with anything remotely warm,
even 5 seconds on high in the microwave?
I believe I was called a horrendous, backstabbing blather-dee blah. Something to that effect. I fell asleep mid-insult.
What
exactly happened to cause all of this?
Oh so much over time I suppose. I
would have been hung by nosehairs and fishhooks if I had been conversing with
my exes for one, but especially if I had said during the relationship that I
outgrew that friendship, that I didn’t really need to be friends with that
person anymore and then went further to run to them every time Flip and I
separated, pouring my soul out to said ex.
How on earth this ex of his has such magical radar to suddenly call him
whenever I’m out of the picture is unreal.
He was on the phone with me the other day and the other line rang. He mind fumbled. He said to me that he’d let it go to
voicemail, then garbled what I had just said to him. The conversation turned elsewhere in
topic. I drove it back because the red
flag stabbing me in the gut was too sharp to ignore. “Who was that?” He paused and then said it was Saint, the
ex. He then went on to say that well he’d
only spoken to her once – a couple of weeks ago. So just once, right in all this time? But that’s weird, she happened to call you in
May as well. That’s twice (that I know
of). Ok so minimizing the truth. And attempting to let the call slide without
saying anything. Now in many other
relationships, this sounds really like, so?
It probably would have here, had he “trained” me differently years
ago. But he trained me to cut off my
male friends or deal with a lot of interrogation and unhappiness and
withholding from affection. No, he never
Said to dump my friends. Anyone who has been through the same thing
will totally see how this works. Then he
mentioned that well, yeah, they call each other during hard times and so now,
she has become Saint Shoulder. Well that’s
nice. I’d love to see his reaction to
the same situation if it were me.
Especially if the same ex kept recurring whenever we were apart. And we’d just been nekked the night
before.
So
things hurt. Or have been hurting or can hurt.
I can make decisions based on this.
I can go into that lull of rumination (oh wait, I did that here) and do
the back and forth with him, fighting for my feelings to be validated, but they
won’t be. These feelings would have to
go on a waiting list – there are still feelings from September of 2009 waiting
to get in the Validation Club. Or I can
really just say, wow, I’m tired of talking about this. Regenerate already! Get out of this once and for all, erase the
early 80s and start connecting with what is right now. From there I can figure out who I want to
be.
No comments:
Post a Comment