Love

This is the preamble to a three-part series of posts - they are confessions:

I’m not exactly sure why I decided to be this candid in front of anyone who wants to read this, but I think it has something to do with a type of therapy.  If I write it down and share it I’m acknowledging that I’ve done something, I’m confessing, it’s a penance and something like a punishment - maybe it's just cathartic (not in the same way a T. Swift concert is, a friend gushed once that her concert was a very cathartic experience for him.)

I started out this blog at a really low point. I was writing it as part of my steps toward stability and it did help me recover some of my frail confidence. It continues to do that for the most part as I show the online world how vulnerable I am, my bad choices, flaws and things I’ve learned in attempts to change my frame of mind. 

This is all kind of funny because I just wrote a post about having a bright and shiny outlook, I’m sure I’ll get back there eventually. Right now, this is what I want to say.

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." ~ Ernest Hemingway

Love

I was told recently that I think about the past too much, that I dwell on my former relationships and the irreversible choices I’ve made. This is all true and something that I was already well aware of. Example: I discovered CDs in my car this weekend from two different exes. I don’t know when the last time I listened to them was and I’m not sure why they’re still in my glove box but there they are, one with nothing written on it and the other in Sharpie cursive. 

I’ve only had three exes, three people I wanted to be in a relationship with (if you count my middle school relationship that’s four but I’m not sure anyone does that when the most intimate thing you did was hold hands at the movies.) Two of them I called my boyfriend with a sense of satisfaction I didn’t know possible. In high school, I wouldn’t call my long-term relationship anything, I wouldn’t admit that it was a relationship. I had some nice half-baked "relationships" along the way but none that rivaled those three.  Maybe that’s why I linger so much thinking about them. Without going into any detail, just know all of them ended like a broken bone that you never had set. They bother you and don’t heal quite right and they cause a lot more pain than they ever should.

I can take the blame for the ongoing discomfort; always looking back has a way of tinting everything and making it seem perfect. Even the bad parts can be overlooked and forgotten when you feel like you’re suspended in midair all alone (I imagine it’s what astronauts feel like in zero gravity only emotionally.) It’s scary looking around and having nothing to cling to. So, I’d look back and try to hang onto them to keep me grounded. I’ve never been the type of girl that needed a man , I still don’t think of myself that way, but once I’ve opened myself up to having someone be mine and I theirs it’s like removing a piece of myself to let them go (I assume most of you know what I mean.) I’ve only felt this three times, don’t get confused, I’m not like this with everyone. One of them I couldn’t even say “I love you” to because I was afraid what I felt wasn’t love, I didn’t want to be lying, I wanted to make sure it meant something every time I said it.

There have been periods of time when no one was interested in me romantically at all. Times when I was the friend at the bar, the one that had to be entertained by the friends of a dude that wants to meet the girl friend I came with. This still happens relatively frequently. There were times when a few people liked me at once, where I’d go on one date with someone and decide I didn’t feel anything and that we should just be friends (that was a common occurrence in college.) There were other times when I really liked someone that “friend-zoned” me hardcore. More recently, I’ve had guys at the bar asking for my number. I’ll half-heartedly give it to them thinking I should just give it a chance, to then be so obviously lukewarm and evasive they get the hint and stop trying. Maybe I really am disillusioned with the whole dating thing.

I’ve kind of always thought of myself as a bit bitter, maybe too realistic. I used to say it was because some of my family members had such hurtful experiences involving relationships. I can’t blame it on them. Maybe it came from being told at about 14 by a scorned boy that I'll never get married, and then told again as a 23-year-old. I can't be sure, this is just an aspect of life I struggle with.

So here we are, I melted down recently. Not that I haven’t had mental breaks before, but I would say this one might be the worst (not in terms of depression by any means, just in pure personality-lapse, I didn't react as myself) and triggered my deviation from more amusing posts to, you know, whatever this is. The whole thing had to do with a person, and none of that matters, right now, honestly. I will say however that if I wrote the series of unfortunate events that came to pass I could probably write a pretty decent TV show that could rival The New Girl, The Mindy Project and Girls in awkwardness (and possibly humor, I like to think that in a few months this might be funny.)

Here’s how I explained what I’ve been up to recently in Facebook chat to my daughter that's still in college (pledge daughter that is):

“I've been going to the country bar to line dance, and *                    subsequently melted down mid last week, so I drank for 4 days, proceeded to probably make myself look super psycho, but I'm better now 

I also play soccer”

*Redacted to avoid revealing what happened because at this point it's irrelevant.

I couldn’t really get out of the whole situation unscathed, I could have handled the whole thing better, but I try to handle everything without completely losing it (I'm not saying I don't fail at this sometimes, but in general I tend to not go too overboard.) I think it just wasn’t in me to do it this time. Everyone else gets to fall apart completely, they're usually forgiven. It's kind of like when you get screwed with enough and can't take it anymore you pull a Ralphie (OK so not exactly like that, but emotions are nothing to toy with.) So, it took me from Wednesday to Sunday to do this: 

And I've only kind of achieved the pulling myself together portion

I'm relatively certain the guys I've said "I love you" to have actually both stopped believing I ever meant it for various reasons. I did love them, however, despite my idiocy, poor choices and actions, despite everything they did to me and what I did to them. So, these are my confessions, a little less than a month before Valentine's Day, nearing my 24th birthday. Yes, the past holds me back, it holds a lot of people back because it will always be there. Yes, time heals wounds (kind of) and I know I'll be fine. Eventually, the embarrassment will subside, hopefully it's worse in my head than in real life (not so sure about that one though.) Yes, I am guilty of the typical Southern thinking that I am going to die alone because I can't seem to make this stuff work. Yes, I wish I could go back and react differently (like a lady as opposed to like... the opposite of that but crazy. I don't know what that would be.) Yes, I think I reacted on the side of dramatic and I wish I'd pulled an Audrey as opposed to a Britney, but what can you do. 

And if you think this is weakness you try writing your emotions out, how you're really feeling, try "bleeding" in front of other people. Anyway, no one can be strong all the time.