we left portland early, made it home and promptly collapsed onto my bed.
the emotional tether ball of the past day coupled with a night of nominal sleep left me with no reserves, no last defenses and nothing to hide behind.
and for the second time in twenty-four hours i had a melt down.
but this time,
he was here.
this time,
i could ask my questions and name my experiences point for point, hurt for hurt and spread them out before us. but even though there was not a scrap of blame in sight from either of us, it took a long time to unfold. layer after grudging layer of my story revealed itself--each crease slowly releasing itself from the death-grip of my well disciplined defenses, cautiously allowing one muscle after another to relax but only after long ensuring it was safe to be open and vulnerable again. because in the span between twelve and three on friday i had decided it was no longer safe with him. even though he thinks in terms of it would be nice to end up with her someday or something of that non-immediate non-threatening to me nature, even though he had always been open and honest about her and what she meant to him, simply by harboring any desire to be with this other person, he rendered me worthless.
but let me explain that leap:
we arrived at something revelatory tonight curled up and soggy on my bed. though it parades around as being something simple, camouflaged well under the guise of it's simplicity, the red flags have appeared all over me pointing toward this bizarre and unhealthy mindset i've been inhabiting for decades. i've been aware of it on some levels, but it's a mindset i've been mostly blind to in terms of how pervasive it's been in my life revealing itself in my personality, my decisions, and particularly my knee-jerk reactions. but until it faced the ultimate threat which forced it to surface, i was never able to put together enough of the pieces to construct the whole.
and this is it.
i live in a dichotomy:
i am either everything or nothing.
to this man, i am not the first, the best, the most important to him {none of which are his words, but how i perceived his position}. and even though i do not want to be these things to him, since i am undeniably no longer everything to him i can now only be one thing: nothing.
though i didn't understand what was making me completely unravel on friday, i had unconsciously arrived at this conclusion of nothingness and was grieving profusely for the loss of a friendship/lover space that has come to mean so much. not only was i grieving for the loss of this space, but for the loss of my value, which i now realize i had surrendered completely to him. the only value that meant anything in that moment was the value he was able to find in me, or, more accurately, the lack of value i gave to myself on his behalf.
in the safety of my own space, my own apartment, and far from the threat of this other woman, with him beside me i could finally ask why this is all so. and the obvious came to me: my father is capable of great generosity, great kindness and great beauty. i have a few treasured memories where he was able to transcend himself and be the wonderful and supportive person he is capable of being. but a mentor of mine pointed out that the memories we treasure are the ones we don't take for granted and i can't take these moments of my father's glory for granted because but he is ill. and his illness rendered him unable to reflect a healthy and consistent love/mirror to me as a child. in it's place was most often some variety of violence--not of physical force, but emotional, which leaves its own marks. all that was left for me was to make some sense of my universe so i taught myself these lessons from the tumultuous climate of my upbringing:
if i receive something, then i deserve it, even if it's the violence of a rage-filled temper tantrum or the pulsating black hole of depression. conversely, the opposite must be true, so if i don't receive something, then i don't deserve it.
if what i received was good, like a playful roughhousing with my daddy as a kid or a supportive hug after my car accident as a teenager, then i deserved it and it meant i was good. if what i received was an illogical tirade at full volume or i witnessed yet another in a series of suicide threats, then i also deserved that and i must be worth nothing.
it becomes quite simple, really, when i look at it this way.
the next lesson: men are not to be trusted. if one moment i'm deserving and wonderful and the next moment i'm less than dirt, there is no consistency and nothing is to be relied upon.
as an aside: i realize i'm simplifying a lot in terms of details about my childhood, but coupled with the fact that i was recently diagnosed with chronic adrenal fatigue dating from early childhood, it doesn't take a genius to imagine what kind of environment would cause a child to be in 'fight or flight' mode so much that their adrenal gland would max out and not be able to right itself. yes, to a child i was scared often enough to have to be on my guard all the time. fight or flight. life or death. all here in my daily universe.
so it has been a long journey to trust men. to trust that i would have any value to them. throughout the years i've demonized some attribute or another depending on the circumstances: i am too tall. i am not pretty enough. my skin is not perfect. i am too emotional {which is actually one of the symptoms of adrenal fatigue} or not sexy or somethingelse enough. you get the point. and as another aside: now it's not so strange that my first boyfriend was a little past 20 and 9 years my senior. a flighty early 20's guy would never have been able to approach me cautiously enough for me to let me guard down. not that anyone was ever interested in you <-- ack, the negative thoughts are so automatic...
anyway, here i am today, with someone who i looked square in the eyes this afternoon and honestly said you are the most trustworthy person i have ever met.
and yet
yet
yet
littered throughout my time with him, and particularly this past weekend, i have only revealed how little i do allow myself to trust him, and how much what trust i have bestowed on him has cost me. and trust me, the price has been exorbitant.
on friday, all my cautiously bestowed trust was washed away in the space of three hours, {really, in the space of three minutes when it was confirmed he would see her} and as i sit and try to make sense of everything i finally see how high a price i have paid on a daily basis.
now we're sprawled on my bed, a tangle of limbs and cuddles, and i have brought him along on the above. we sorted through things, he asked me a few pointed questions: do you honestly want me to be madly in love with you? no. the answer i keep getting is no, he's not the one. but am i just being really dishonest to myself? i don't think so.....and: can you put this in terms of what feels threatened/threatening to you or what it is that is missing or that you are lacking? i want someone to just love me. so i can count on them hmm....{this led to the realization i don't believe he's trustworthy any more and that i have a long history of not being loved steadily}.
and i had just one question for him, but i couldn't couldn't ask it. i confessed my shame to him at even thinking this unvoiced question, i squirmed around the topic, hid my eyes from him and tried to ignore the desperate curiosity that defied the reasoning part of me that already knew the answer. but he asked me to ask and even said you deserve to ask. and those four little words set off something massive inside me. my breathing immediately changed and i felt a heat wave of despair course through me. my body jumped ahead of myself in response to its assumption that he was obtusely answering yes to the question that was silently staring us both in the face: did you sleep with her on friday?
but i still couldn't ask it yet. still. so i sat and spoke aloud my assumption and a description of my physical response and tried to hold on to my breathing until i hit the tipping point and finally tore out of myself the words:
just tell me, it can even be yes, i just need to know and i need to know the truth, did you sleep with her?
and he looked me square in the eye and said no.
and even though that was the answer i wanted to hear, even though that was the answer my body knew was true all along, i threw myself away from him and buried my head under pillows and cried as hard as i have ever cried for myself. for being hurt now. for being hurt the time a year ago when the answer had also been no, but fed through the filter of someone i couldn't trust. someone who fed me a lie. and while i question whether this other man really did cheat on me, the lie came in the delivery, through the way he made it shameful i was asking for the commitment to me he had so freely offered. and his lied bred more lies that i have told myself for a year that i didn't deserve the fidelity he offered and that he only changed his mind when he realized i wasn't worth it. i was nothing to him.
but i'm not there any more. i am here, with the most trustworthy person i have even met who is still holding me and now crying for me. but why are you crying? i asked. because you are sad. he replied so gently.
no man has ever cried for me. for my grief. for seeing me cry and hurting. for me and with me. and he furthered his gentle lesson by adding: and as long as we are together and you want to know, you deserve to ask your question and you deserve a straight and honest answer. and if anyone can't give that to you, you should tell them to fuck off.
yes. yes, you are right.
and for now, thanks for gently guiding me there, for asking me to ask, and for thanking me for asking you in the hope that later, i can stand on my own to ask. so that later, i won't put up with the loooong pause before the quiet no that i received a year ago. that i will build for myself the honest, consistent and trustworthy relationship that i was denied when i was young. and that i will no longer thwart this desire in choosing the wrong people, or, when choosing trustworthy people, denying myself by unconsciously behaving as though they are untrustworthy.
and as i work and rework through the parts of our story from this weekend and slowly put each piece of trust back where it belongs their price and worth stand out all the more and i hold everything and the two of us just that much more gently.
yes, you may be affectionate with me in front of others.
yes, you may hold me when i'm hurting.
yes, you may hold me when i'm laughing.
yes, i can look you in the eyes without hiding.
yes, you can say i love you.
yes, i can tell you that i love you back.
yes...
5 comments:
I had that one too, well a lot of those, and I can tell you my thoughts, though mostly want to say I'm proud of you after reading all that.
I guess what I realized was: as important as it is to learn, when someone betrays you for someone else, that it is very, very dangerous to live in that sort of dichotomy, there is something even more important to take away, which is let no one tell you that dichotomy is fundamentally wrong.
That is, when I realized I was wrong in letting someone become everything, in letting every thing I was become something they thought of, were conscious of, thought into being every day, it made me start substantiating myself, for myself.
But now sometime later I realize that it is also a beautiful thing in life that you can be constituted by someone else, and trusting someone to hold you, hold the very creation of you, is the joy of life. You just have to also become someone, through your efforts and the efforts of those who love you, who will remain, always, when that other person drops their hands.
Maybe this is obvious but I had to learn it and it was so, so hard. And now I see myself again letting my faith in another person order my world, I know that I was careful, that I asked him the right questions, looked him in the eye, and I didn't thrust myself into the care of someone untrustworthy out of panic. But also that he doesn't carry the weight of me alone, because I learned last time that other people, friends and family, carry bits of me too, like that game I played as a child where you lie stiff as a board and everyone puts a couple fingers under you and magically you are in the air.
He carries me, most of me, and if he lied and in his fumbling over the truth dropped me I'm sure I would crash, hard. But I know there is trust to be had in the world -- I see it in the care of friends, the footed bath, the hankie with the tree on it -- and I hope that I've come so far that I will never again be convinced I can never love again. And I still harbor hope of being everything for someone one day, and that hope enriches my life with him, whether in the end it be him or someone else. And I know I can't be everything for the ones I don't want to be my everything, even though this is still a struggle (when a loved one loves someone more -- I salute you for your wise words on that subject, as I tend to still be a horrible brat about it).
I'm reading Charles Darwin's journals for research and he writes, "verily the faults of the fathers, corporeal & bodily are visited upon the children." But we change our own anatomy with the kind of work you are doing, and bring a different sort of corporality into the world.
P. S. The other important thing I got out of your post was the point that being less than all for someone is a positive, beautiful, wonderful thing, and is going to be the natural state that one falls into with nearly everyone, and maybe ideally everyone, in one's life. Whether one gives a ray of light to a bus driver in the morning or is a substantial support for a close friend, surely there are others who love those people and care for them, and whom they love. That's a really beautiful thing, though maybe the thing that we all struggle to accept, as we grow up.
And I'll limit my comment to:
Congratulations for finding something so precious.
hey katie-love. life is swamped right now. class is almost done. the film festival where i'm interning is in full swing AND i have to help out with the auction for my acting studio.
all that aside, i haven't gotten around to responding to your lovely comments you left here. i appreciated them so much at the time and want to revisit them and revisit the realizations i made that weekend. it's easy to have a different thinking pattern when the problems are staring you in the face and easy too to go back to the old thinking patterns when the crisis has passed. i don't want to unlearn these lessons. they were too dearly bought.
so, thanks for reading and following and responding. and yes, there are many kinds of loves. many kinds of dear-ones.
all my love to you, yet another dear one.
~n
hey katie,
it's four months after i posted my first response to you promising a more completely reply later. and while i've never written the full reply to you that i anticipated, i just realized it's because i created this IDEA of what my response would look like and found this (intimidating) IDEA was never anything i felt like writing.
so, i guess, four months later, after re-rereading your words, i can think only of the gratitude i have for you and the full and honest response that you gave.
this blog is a very personal and vulnerable space and i am so overwhelmed when people join me here in the form of comments of any kind. but this series of writing/personal exploration in particular was stretching out of my understood limits of my self and so to receive a response, and such a response as what you wrote, my story and efforts felt honored and shared.
so thank you. i can't express the gratitude i have been harboring for almost five months, but it's been there, quietly sitting alongside your response at the bottom of my email inbox and every so often reminding me of how much i can't put into words everything you mean to me.
~n
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