I’ve had a lot of stories on my mind
I just started typing and it stopped me maybe 50 words in. I’ve written drafts here. I wrote some very raw things in vulnerable moments that I do want to share, but I’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way. I balance my desire to share something that might help others against the fact that I’m ultimately a single person, with no family I fully trust, no one coming to save me. I’ve had things used against me in the past out of context: things that altered my life irrevocably by people I once trusted the most.
I’d like to review and edit the drafts I wrote since my last post, with the benefit of hindsight and a bit of clarity without taking too much edge off. Maybe just footnotes as I better understand something that I’ve never experienced before. I know I’m being vague, but at my lowest, I reached out to O for help at a particularly low point. Having that thrown in my face makes me pause too, but here’s a part I will share now with you.
That was probably a terrible mistake but I’ve learned through that process the sheer amount of … disdain? dislike? mischaracterization and resentment he’s been feeling about me? Those should not be question marks. He expressed all of those things.
I’ve also discovered his very rigid ego and poor memory which only clung to the worst of me, and often not accurate parts of our history. I have no interest in debating anything with him because his mind cannot be changed. O feels hurt when I mention something actually HUGELY important that any person who paid attention to a partner they cared for should and would retain.
Have you ever loved someone more than you’re able to describe, tell you that you essentially only caused them pain, and just thought: I can’t make someone who doesn’t like me, can’t see who actually I am once they’ve already decided who they think I am, AND I know if he can’t like me he definitely won’t ever love me? Maybe it’s just me. Hopefully.
It has been over a year of loving this man. He might not recall for many reasons I don’t intend to enumerate here, right now.
Once someone reveals how they profess to both love you, but also how they harbor negative feelings, they feel shame for having loved you, and they have many inaccurate memories of your time together, how do you live with giving up on them? If you’ve seen the good in them, how do you convince yourself you’re more valuable and worthy than someone who claims to love you but communicates a general dislike of who they created you to be in their head?
He once asked if I’d ever had a healthy loving relationship. I said no and I meant that honestly. I think I’ve loved others deeply but not had it returned. This single much older, thrice married man, said he had been loved deeply. When asked why he was single he explained that people fall in and out of love.
NO!! All I could think was NO! And I did respond out loud, an unoriginal and perhaps unattainable thought: men marry women expecting they’ll never change and women marry men expecting them to change. That’s absurd. I want a man who’ll love me as I grow through every stage of life and I want to love a man who I don’t want to change (notwithstanding reasonable compromise).
I don’t even think he was listening. He gets snarky and chastises me for interrupting but if I talk for more than 30 seconds it exhausts him. “Why bother ?” I think, as I keep trying again? He despises me. I’m foolish. Why I can’t walk away from him?
I loved the honeymoon phase. He’d lean in, listen intently (or pretend), tell his own stories, laugh the most amazing laugh, touch my arm or hand and stare into my eyes. I wrongfully clung to that person, who now only shows up in the rarest of times, when I’m desperately in need, then uses my having reached out against me like I’ve committed a crime. Everything I do is treated like a crime.
I’ve lived a of year loving THAT man, only occasionally seeing glimpses of his sincere kindness and love since then. My pain hurts him. I do everything wrong. Short of saying so, I feel like my feelings and thoughts and love, my stories I’ve shared— even if we started over — I am simply too much, my feelings are not valid — as his baseline, a hurdle I can’t overcome on my own, nor do I have the energy to even try anymore.
I’ve considered a FWB situation. Just the “fun” and no emotion. He’s not geographically desirable and frankly not making even that realistic. I could dispense with the past, the trust issues, the pain, the love, loss of any future.and just be FWB, but I’m not the sole arbiter of that choice and the struggle alone is exhausting. I actually offered this arrangement and he declined, stating he wants a partner.
I’ll write more once my life, outside of this ongoing and unnecessary mess, is otherwise untangled a bit and going more smoothly.
Dad is getting worse and I have not handled it well. I need to pull myself together and prioritize myself and my health right now.
I have read some stories here and there through my fog. I’m trying to heal my own darkness and deal with so many other things. I hope to write again more openly, once I’m Adulting better and dealing better about my own “stuff of life things.”
Much love everyone. Life comes at you quickly and we often only choose how we respond. I’ve neglected myself and I need to change my choices right now, immediately.
•edited
