I keep wracking my brain trying to understand why this particular break-up got under my skin so much. I've loved and lost before, but it has never been so impossible, so frustrating to move on from. Even knowing what I know now, it doesn't seem to help too much. I guess knowledge never can replace experience.
Small pictures come together now and then, as another part of the wound opens, gasps for air and begs for release. This week it has been a concept that should have been easier to see, but only came together upon more understanding of my own heart.
I don't trust easily. I know most people don't, but for me, it's not for lack of desire, but instead for lack of trustworthy people. I have been trained for a life where any sort of need, desire or emotion is much less important than others, if important at all. When you're a kid, or a teenager, adapting to becoming background noise is easy. Just keep things to yourself, worry about making sure everything is okay for everyone else and when you really need something... scream. But other than that, do what you can to just survive. So I did. It's hard to be joyful, carefree, happy, when everyone around you is drowning. You become a life-preserver. In my inept and young way, I struggled to do my best to save the lives of those closest to me. I fell pretty fair down the scale in importance. It was never much of a problem though.
The older I got and the more chances I got, I fought to change it, at least for myself. I did what I could to grow, to learn, to rise above. Through many ups and downs, I was getting there, but the relationships I had, my family, my friends, they remained the same. My only place in their lives was to keep their systems going. To have my own to feel my own, to believe in my own, that was all based on whether or not it fit into their system.
When I was first divorced I moved in with a friend. She couldn't understand and got really frustrated with me because I was so depressed. My whole world had crashed in, but clearly I was an inconvenience to her. So I kept my chin up and tried not to be too much of a burden. When I was in high school, my sister got pregnant. My normal childhood disappeared before my eyes. No one ever asked me about how I felt about it, I was just expected to babysit. I got two jobs and played sports to be out of the house as much as I could. I just didn't want to be a burden. A fresh newlywed, one of my best friends at the time ripped me a new ass for a good twenty minutes because I hadn't been there for her enough. I didn't even know she was upset with me until then. My parents told me two weeks before I was supposed to go to college that they didn't have the money they thought they would. I knew my place in my friendships and in my family. I was taking up space, a filler. The fun friend with a "great personality."
So when a man came along that seemed to really care, it was a breath of fresh air. He asked me about me, listened to my story and told me how strong I was. He was dedicated and attentive. He came charging up on a white stallion and I bought it. He was so believable, and I had always hoped it would look like this.
Over time, he would tell me I was his prize, his angel, his blessing. Slowly I let my walls down. It was almost involuntary, a sort of reaction to believing someone truly does love you. I let him into my bad days, my good days, my routine days. How would he handle this? How would he handle that? He was everything I could have wanted and more. He wasn't perfect, but he gave me what no one else ever had, true place in his life. I was important, at least that's how it felt. I felt valuable for the first time, not just a backdrop. I wasn't under someone's shadow with him, or vying for attention. For once, someone came along and saw me as special in and of myself.
It opened my heart in ways I had hoped love would do. Everyone says someone shouldn't be your everything, and he wasn't, but I was a love starved woman, and after enough time, I became drunk on having someone consistently love me with no strings attached. I opened up, I blossomed, I felt unbroken for the first time in my life. It was more than I had hoped for. I had searched for the heart of God for so long, I thought the way this man was loving me was part of God loving me. It awakened excitement and hope and colors I had never seen. I felt things I had never known you could feel toward someone. I hadn't ever known what it was to trust someone until him. To me, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I felt incredibly blessed. Maybe this was the consistency my chaotic life had been waiting for. Over two years this all came together for me and in the last moment, when I jumped off the cliff of forever, not more than a week later we went ring shopping and not more than another month later, he left me.
People who have a hard time trusting don't let their guard down very easily. We are afraid you will come back and say "There's something wrong with you." We are afraid everyone else will see us as flawed as we do and it will scare them off, but still, there is hopeful moment before the answer to the question is given, when we hold our breath, wondering if we need to brace ourselves. Do we put up the defenses? Or do we drop them and risk. I dropped mine with him and offered him the only thing I had: me. He turned and walked away.... with disgust on his face.
The only person I have ever really trusted and he rejected me at the core of who I was. I wasn't good enough. I was too difficult. The greatest fear met and exceeded. The whole time I was bit by bit revealing myself to him, he was more and more turning away while never letting it show, but instead playing at a future with me.
I've spent a lifetime perfecting my defenses, thick enough to not hurt, not so heavy to carry, and never ever able to be seen. They fell with him. The girl that had always lived in the background, used to disappointment had hoped, had trusted, only to find out it was all a lie.
Sort of leaves me with the feeling that I was reaching to high. Back to square one. Defenses up. Flower returned to the state of hibernation. More lost than before, my one and only quest now is for peace. Nothing grandiose, just simple life, hoping to recover from having my hopes brought out from under. It's like a hurricane has torn through and the places that were strong before are now weak and the places that were weak before, are destroyed. The hopes and dreams I had before the hurricane have been whipped along with everything else.
I know it's not his fault. I won't blame him for the others that have let me down, but his part is devastating enough.
For now it's just getting back to normal, whatever that is. It's trying to let light through when I can, it's crying when I have to, laughing when it's really funny and getting to work in a good mood. It's dinners with friends, it's beach days, shopping days and margaritas. It's books and therapy and glasses of wine on a warm night. And it's learning how to love myself the way I should be loved in the absence of those that choose not to love. It's a wing and a prayer.
No comments:
Post a Comment