I'm not quite sure how to write this article, but I'll commence by saying it is a true account of how I feel about myself in regards to intimate relationships, and perhaps why I find them extraordinarily difficult. It will be emotional both to read and write, but these things have been on my mind heavily for the past week (with a sort of happy ending), and I therefore believe that writing it all down may function to allow me to let go of the more damaging issues.
Development of a Hopeless Case
Having grown up surrounded by dysfunctional, broken and loveless relationships, I largely did not understand cuddly partnerships when I did witness them (usually friends parents, or people I'd see in public). Add to this the fact that I grew up obese with a razor sharp personality which lent me to being 'one of the guys', one has an exquisite recipe for an utterly confusing love life. Though I had no lack of male attention in the form of formidable friendships, it was devoid of anything intimate. I would often day dream of someone wanting to touch me in some loving way, but from 10 to 23 I found myself so unattractive that when someone did show an inclination for such activity I'd shy away; sometimes I would even shake involuntarily. I could never do anything intimate without the assistance of booze until I was with my future fiancé for about a month. This is an issue I actually still struggle with, the fat is gone but the instinct remains.
To be fair I did have a 'boyfriend' in 6th or 7th grade, but it was on/off and we never did anything past holding hands. In fact, I'd never genuinely dated or had another boyfriend until I met CJ (only real relationship/future fiancé) at 24.9 years old, a late bloomer indeed. My first 'kiss' happened when I was 18 and was a pretty weird experience. Though it was my first time, I didn't think it was normal to lick someone's teeth while making out, hahaha. I lost my virginity at 21 exactly as I knew it would happen: a booze-sodden misadventure devoid of any genuine connection. Worst still, it happened on the first night of a 3 day Graduate school interview, and made the rest of the weekend pretty awkward as all the other interviewees had easily deduced what had transpired. Even severely hungover, I got into the PhD program! Every time afterward was basically a duplicate of that affair, lacking the self-esteem to actually enjoy the experience. A scientist tried and true, it was almost as if I did it as a series of experiments; chasing the supposed feeling of affinity that chicks usually developed afterwards. No such feelings ever materialized, however, and I feared that the series of unreciprocated crushes throughout high school and college, as well as lack of intimacy, had left me emotionally broken.
Despite these issues, I've been in love with exactly 4 men. The first 3 relationships were all the same: I'd become enamoured with a male best friend who, though caring for me deeply as a friend, did not return any sentiments of love or the intimate inclinations that I felt. There is no way to articulate the acute pain that that repeated rejection conjured in my Heart, but the damage is evident now as I try and sort out these issues.
A Love to Forsake All Others
How do I know I was in love with these men? Because those feelings still persist. Each of those people hold a special place in my heart, but except for one (and it's not the one anyone would guess, namely CJ) I've allowed those feelings to ebb and flow out with no lingering emotions attached. To this day I'm affected by that one loss in particular. A profound friendship that spanned distance, time and personal transformations but came to a sudden end by his doing after I had lost weight and returned to Denver after some time away in New York in Florida, while I was on leave from graduate school. A love so strong it led me to start a replacement relationship without realizing my inner motives because I was incapable of being honest with myself; that I had loved this person much more intensely than our friendship allowed, a relationship which I thought was impenetrable. We were simply inseparable, never having to talk to understand each other and laughing constantly together. His family even paid for my plane ticket home when my sister died, knowing that my family could not afford to bring me home for the funeral. When I came back to Denver, however, he had a new girlfriend who took an immediate dislike to me. Polar opposites, she was a 'girlie' girl and I was the loud, crude and odd best friend. No doubt I was explained away as a harmless portly friend who swore a lot, instead I returned a pretty and thin threat, though I was still rough around the edges. There was no room for me in this new relationship, so after a 13 year friendship that remained steadfast from LaFargeville, to western New York through college, and finally to Denver where we even lived together for awhile, the calls stopped and the relationship died in its worldly form. It lingered in my Heart, but I suppressed that sadness because I couldn't deal with the emotional pain. I dreamt of him, painful dreams that we were together. To this day I still do, after 6 years.
About a year after the split I saw him at the end of a Rockies game, 30,000+ people leaving Coors field yet we somehow locked eyes as I descended a staircase. I'll never forget the way I felt. Wanting to flee but knowing I couldn't, I walked up to him saying nothing. We had never needed words. He said he'd been thinking of me, wanted to call me to catch up or take me out to lunch; I wanted to believe him. I tried to speak but couldn't find words, instead I burst into tears. Those who know me understand that speechlessness is an extremely rare occurrence, and therefore comprehend that any situation that silences my ceaseless chatter is indeed significant. I distinctly remember the sadness I felt knowing that I would have been the only person to love him, despite his many flaws, and never expect or ask him to change; she would alter my best friend into someone unrecognizable. That was the last time I'd ever see him.
The last dream came only a week ago and led me to finally understand myself. I left Denver fat Summer, someone he loved, but I returned skinny Summer whom he rejected; from that day forward I began blaming this new version of myself and that self-hatred manifested in many ways. All of which were unhealthy. Yet I must accept that he did what he felt was best, and I take solace in the fact that he married that girlfriend and started a family. I sincerely wish him all the happiness in the world, but my priority must now be to focus on eradicating this crippling fear of being hurt so that I can have a functional loving relationship.
A Relationship Doomed to Fail
Even after 3 years I have not the strength to recount the whole of my union with CJ, but in parallel with this article I will publish a
previously written work that comes as close as I ever got to recounting the episode. Like any partnership at times it was beautiful, other times gut-wrenchingly painful. Having suppressed emotions for the majority of my life, my relationship with CJ helped me reopen and feel a plethora of confusing and distressful emotions; uprooting scars from my past that I failed to recognize until he elucidated some of my unconscious behaviors. I will always be grateful for the better understanding of myself that I gained from that exchange. Like Humpty Dumpty, though a pain so severe I avoid legitimate relationships to this day, the break-up led me to disassemble and reassemble myself (though only in retrospect upon years of self-transformational work). Building a strong foundation of self acceptance, I moved forward in life as a whole unit albeit a little more selfishly, guarding my inner happiness with the ferocity of a pitbull.
Bringing the scenario full circle, while working through Step 4 of the
Twelve Steps of AA with my Stepmother Brenda, I made a mind numbing discovery: my entire relationship with CJ had been about the love that I had lost. My attempt to replace my best friend and the only relationship I had ever wanted; it was never about CJ at all. He was the first person to show me the love and attention I had always craved, so I latched on to him, rationality be damned. I immediately both pitied and admired CJ for two reasons. One, he had authentically loved a crazy person, someone rife with inner displeasure and even hatred, and who continually starved herself as a revenge tactic. Two, he had loved me despite the fact I made it fairly evident he would always fall a bit short in my eyes. It was never him I truly loved. He was a Body, a shell I filled with the Soul of another in an attempt to experience the love that was denied me. How could I not pity him, and myself as well? Finding him on Craigslist of all places, the fundamental premise of that relationship was founded on an enthusiasm for a twisted cartoon on Adult Swim that my friend and I had constantly quoted to one another. Additionally, I fell in love with him the night he displayed that we could duplicate the unspoken communication that I had shared with my best friend. Worse still, after my habit of falling for guys who did not return my love, I never truly believed CJ when he told me he loved me. Now it's clear that mistrust was a manifestation of the fact that I didn't love myself. Without inner self acceptance and love, how could I hope to believe that anyone else could love me?
A Sort of Reawakening
As I've said many times, the agony I felt after the end of these relationships has led me to an emotionally incapacitating fear of beginning another. Alas, there is hope, though it takes an odd form. Despite a few failed attempts at dating, for the first time since CJ I have an authentic crush on someone. Feelings I hadn't experienced in so long they look me utterly by surprise, made more surprising given the person on whom the crush formed. Giddy anticipation, dreams of reciprocated affection, all those odd behaviors so long elusive to me have magically found their way back into my Mind; the excitement of a new connection. It's awakened a part of me I had feared would remain in its endless coma, or had died altogether. This fervour is bittersweet, however, as I know there is no possible future with this particular person. Regardless, these feelings have formed and although I know they must come to an end, I'm relieved at having felt them at all.
Having mentioned him in a couple of previous posts, I won't go into details; but any logical person can deduce the object of these feelings. Physical and Spiritual polar opposites, he is not at all the type I'd ever imagined myself to be attracted to, yet he makes me laugh constantly by both the silly and shockingly profound things that he says. Indeed, it takes nothing less than formidable logic for me to change my stubborn mind, yet in the month I've known him he has altered my perspective on many subjects. For example, earlier today he suggested that every component of our emotions are driven by an underlying desire. Additionally, humans cannot be blamed for these desires as they have no control over them since they arise from the primal, animalistic, parts of our Minds. The control freak in me was extremely disturbed by this notion, yet I couldn't ignore its validity. All I can say is that if my driving force is a desire, it must be my honest desire to rid myself of the constant fear that plagues my Mind, keeping joy and happiness at an arms length. I aspire to be free, whole, carefree and jubilant; difficult conditions to evoke in the face of irrational fear and its companion, unrelenting anxiety.
Later on the conversation turned towards how I might allow these thoughts and fears to flow out, enabling me to invoke and cultivate relationships in the future. My friend suggested that by writing on the subject, I might feed these thoughts and make them worse. Instead, I feel my writings assist in delineating and organizing my issues, bring them to a conclusion. The sentiment of finality thus allows me to put these concerns to bed, once and for all (sometimes). He suggested I simply 'let them go'. Yes, well, there's a damn lot of things I'd like to let go, and if I knew how to do that I wouldn't be in this situation to begin with! After some interrogating as to how I might accomplish that task, he shocked me with something I had once known very well (the proof of which lies within
Thoughtful Diffusion): don't feed these insecurities by analyzing them, trying to fix them, or yielding any other form of emotional energy which feeds them and makes them grow. Instead, just let me be there and accept them for what they are, thoughts that are not real, floating them down the endless stream of other thoughts that constantly and involuntarily arise in my Mind. I may fear that I'm incapable of love and will never have the relationship I desire, but that thought is no more real than thinking I'm a Hobbit. Interestingly, at some point during this existential conversation I also realized that, just like my frustratingly unreasonable fear of both eating and not eating, I have a fear of both falling in love and living a loveless existence. Ordinarily I find such irony amusing, yet I remain unamused.
I once wrote about the
critical components of a future partner and one of them included self-awareness, the ability to survey one's own thoughts without judgement (the hardest part) and to surmise life's enigmatic conundrums, drawing subconscious thoughts into the light of consciousness. I've understood my awareness since the age of 3, when I asked my Mother a question she did not understand: "Why are we here? Who put me here?" She could never have understood the depth of that question as it was coming from her toddler, but I remember pondering this question throughout my life and couldn't understand why others weren't asking the same. Today, my friend said that at around the same age he had likewise asked his mother this question. Her reply was,"'because it's nice." At the time he was chewing on what he actually described as 'a delicious rock, limes' and was banging away on pots and pans, so he agreed with his mother and was satisfied. [Important linguistic aside: I assumed up until a couple of days ago that he was chewing on a limestone rock or pebble, which creates a hilarious image. Instead, he meant he was eating lime flavoured rock candy, like pop rocks] Though I don't recall my mom's exact answer, two statements she repeated frequently were "life sucks and then you die," and the infamous "life isn't fair." Those, along with my Father's steadfast belief in both working hard and not trusting anyone, shaped my impression of this world we live in as well as the person I ultimately became; a confused, analytical, anxious mess. I think he was better off with his rock concert, but it's a relief to see this quality in another.
So, why is there no hope of a future? For one, I'm 99.99% certain he doesn't think of me 'that way.' In that, it seems I'm repeating my emotionally rocky high school trend. My hope lies in my awareness, self acceptance and esteem, which allow me to understand it's nothing to do with rejection. Most importantly however, he is precisely like me in that we both have a natural selfish instinct to keep ourselves happy, which seems to include constantly moving around the globe, regardless of the feelings for those we leave behind; making hard decision in the interest of self preservation. In two weeks he's off to Asia the same way I was off a month and a half ago to New Zealand. I hear the excitement and relief in his voice when he talks about it, and I understand those inclinations better than most; accepting the probably end of our friendship with authentic admiration. He's already given me all that I needed, simply knowing that I'm capable of feeling again is enough for me. Reciprocated and elemental love is meant to come from another, and someday I will meet him.
