me rambling about relationships...

So, I've been having a conversation with a dear friend the past couple of days, and I think that in giving advice, I've realized that I really do know how to deal with things, I just forget, because it's me...and I don't like helping me very much. I'd rather help someone else. I have to put that on my list of things to learn: "Listen to your own advice."

Because, dammit, I give amazing advice.


Anyways, here's some advice I was giving her, and myself at the same time, that I wanted to write down somewhere so that I would remember it. And I got to the end of my "little" (note the irony, please) spiel, and decided that it could be my blog for the day. Even though blog is such a paltry, crappy word to describe this gem of thought.



"...I know how it feels. I understand. That's how it's always been for me, with my boys anyway. Even with [name removed], I wouldn't let him get close enough to love me as much as I loved him, although he did. I just didn't want to acknowledge that. Because if you're the one with the most love in the relationship, then you can feel like you're the one in control, you feel like you're the one who has more say, because if you can be in control, then you can control the hurt that you feel will come...because the hurt always comes, and so you get ready for it right from the beginning.

"I don't let people get close to me, because I like to be the one in control. If it's going to end, which so far it always has, then I am going to be the one to end it. I am going to be the one to push away, because then I get to be the one who breaks my heart, not the other person. And breaking my own heart is so crucial, because if I let them do it, then it hurts more, and it gives me something to resent about them, and I love them so much that I don't want to be mad at them for anything...even though I always am anyway. Besides that, I am so used to breaking my own heart that I feel like if I can break it, then it doesn't hurt as bad as it could.

"It gets so frustrating, and like you said, tiring. You get to the point where you don't want to care anymore, because the caring hurts so much. You don't want to keep trying, you don't want to be around anyone because you love everyone you meet, and it's the love that hurts, it's the love that scares and fascinates you. You loathe and need it so much that it becomes this all-consuming part of your life. My loves become my obsessions. And my obsessions are never a good thing. But in the end, there will come that good thing. There will come the guy who loves you no matter what, and who loves you so much it's overwhelming, and you can't be in control...and then you will see if you are ready. You learn if all of this hurt and control that you've gone through, which is so much a part of your life, so habitual to you, is something that you are willing to give up for happiness.

"It was so hard for me. I love my wounded places. I write my wounded places...if I didn't have them, I feel like I couldn't find anything to write about, and writing to me is so much a part of who and what I am that I can't not write, and so I can't not be hurting all the time.

"But I am learning that things are different. That you can be happy and still be creative and funny and a deep, thinking person. It's the controlling that is so hard to give up, you don't like being controlled by anything, unless it's your feelings. Because we love to feel. People like us love to feel more than anything else. We always need some drama in our life, and so as much as we hate it, we ride these emotional roller coasters until we throw up, and then we get off, and ride them again.

"Don't worry too much. Enjoy what you have, and the kind of happiness it brings. It's the overanalyzing, it's the always questioning and evaluating that will make you so depressed. At least, that's how it is for me.

"I wind up getting offended and hurt over things that people haven't even done...over things that I've concluded about some little stupid comment, that turn into this huge spiral of "Oh god, he really hates me, he doesn't mean that, he can't be sincere...I don't love me, how could anyone else? If he says he loves me, he's just lying to me, and if he's lying about that, then he's probably lying about everything, and I can't trust him and oh my whole world is going to fall apart and now I have to go write pages and pages and pages in my journal and stay up all night crying..."

"...And then when he senses something isn't right, he asks you what's wrong, and you say "Nothin'," choking over it through your tears, and he hears the hurt and the tears and aches so much to make you whole, to have you feel better, but you don't let him, because you doubt him so much, you don't want to doubt him, but you do, you can't help it.

"And then this doubt, this mistrust will consume every part of the relationship until it overwhelms the both of you, and everything just falls apart, it crumbles to dust, and then you sit in the ashes and the broken pieces and you cry, you cry because you're so mad at yourself, and you want to just be mad at him and blame him, but you can't because you know that it's you. It's always you in the end.

"And that is a hard and bitter thing. You have to learn, and this is the hard part, you have to learn to not listen to the nagging, doubting voice. You have to learn to be unassuming, and to push the doubt out of you when it comes, and shine a light on it, and say "You are the thing that does this, you are the thing that I should be learning to control."

"You name the names, and then you put the bad names away. You ignore them, and suddenly when you can't find your doubt anymore, you notice hope sitting small and timid in the corner and you gather it in your arms (you think, but it's really gathering you) and you look up with tear-filled eyes, and you smile.

"Because for once you're crying because you're grateful, and not because something hurts. And the gratitude grows until it fills other corners, and you find it in things and people that you don't expect....and you learn to be grateful for even the things that have hurt you. Because they have taught you, and you have come out stronger, and more understanding...even if you couldn't see it at the time.

"And one day you find that you can turn around and look at all the behind, and you find yourself smiling, and it surprises you. And that, that surprise, is a good feeling."