Aight, I'll talk about it.
I don't feel like going into huge detail about the incident, but basically I came across something from an ex that seemed to rub the message "I'M SLEEPING WITH SOMEONE ELSE!!" into my face and it hurt so bad I spent most of yesterday morning trying to extract a knife from my windpipe. Which is decidedly not a fun way to spend a Friday.
But this isn't a NEW shitty feeling. It's happened a zillion times before. It comes accompanied with the horrible, awful, no good, very bad feeling of rejection. The "I'm not good enough but ________ (<-- insert prettier, bustier, more charming, etc. girl here) is" (because THEY are together, and WE are not). See? PROOF.
Even though the incident turned out to not be what I thought, I still need to examine this frailty of mine. Because the underlying issue is the same: how wrecked I get at the idea that someone I still love is intimate with another.
I've been trying to shift my perception of rejection since it triggers so much hurt and imagine it instead like a sweater.
If I try on a sweater, maybe I LOVE it, right? Maybe the knit is perfect! Maybe I'm excited about it but oh no, it's summertime and too hot.
Or maybe my arms are too long or it's too tight in the shoulders.
Does this mean the sweater sucks? Or I suck? No, it's just not a good fit.
If I could think about relationships this way, wouldn't that be freeing? Instead of me automatically assuming I'm not good enough. I mean, aren't we all trying others on to see how we fit? Some matches are better than others?
Until I figure this out, it's going to keep stinging for the rest of my life. Because everyone I love, or once loved, is going to either be with me, or be with someone else, and since there's only one BF at a time for me, this is a long string of people to torturously imagine having sex with other people.
I think the key is to love yourself so much and so hard that you take care of yourself. You fail and fall and fight and get the fuck back up like the line in this poem (towards the end):
And I will say: you are beautiful. And I love you so much.
Can't imagine it will be easy to shift your perception, but can't imagine you won't manage to do it.
ReplyDeleteRock on, Asplenia!
I love this. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI had thought of your analogy, your badly fitting sweater. I suspect that you value and keep things that you spent your hard earned life (currency) on. Believe me, it is very freeing to give away something for someone else to take as a new possession, for them, that might just fit and look better on them. To see relationships past with their new boyfriends, spouses and children, it may be a small twinge of "that could have been me." Yet to take a moment and think, I realize that the relationship was not "a good fit" and that no matter what good that person had to offer, it was not what I wanted, needed, was prepared for etc. And say, "THAT could have been ME! Whew!"
ReplyDeleteI see that a familiar relationship is like a country and language that you grew up living in and speaking. The words are easy, you know your way around, and to make the effort to learn a new language and start over in a new landscape is both stressful as an 'unknown', and never as easy as falling (or wanting to fall) back into the familiar. The familiar may be bad, abusive, and just plain wrong for us, but it is what we know.
I think of the pain you feel, and want to say that I know that it is no longer caused (directly) by another person, though it may be caused by someone you need to love.
You.
I say it is okay to still love them. I love people that have hurt me (past tense), and wish them no harm (present tense. It may not have always been the case, but
...that pain, that you mention, that knife, is You.
Why?
My heart hurts as I see suffering of others, and I realize that it is me that makes my own heart hurt. I do not mind, as it makes me feel human, a little sad, but definitely human. I only ask that you hear your own encouragements, the words that you have sent to so many others, which includes me, and take them into your own heart. [Note: This is what having friends are for, as mirrors that we hold up to each other] Having survived this long, I have faith that a shift in perspective is due. Trust me. Know that you are loved, even if you do not feel that it (love) is in the room with you. Trust me, it is.
- B