I just stood up to go into the kitchen and suddenly thought 'come on, Ian, just something'... the second thought was that I don't know if I can bear never seeing my little girl again... and the third thought was that it's time to accept it. Why am I still holding on when I know I don't want to be with him? Yes, I do. I do. I think about him at night, I feel myself cuddle into him, I am sitting on the couch with him, I am loving him. I can't help it; in the dark I let myself dream just a little bit more. I want to be with him and I want to be me. But he's with someone else so I am just going to have to get over it... and have patience with myself while I am getting over it. That's the tricky part.
God, I am so emotional... not repressing my feelings is hard work right now! I know this will ease in time again and I will get used to this new self awareness but it's like I'm finding out that all of the missing pieces of the puzzle were under the couch this whole time! I was frustrated and ready to toss the damn puzzle out the window but the pieces were right here. So I'm not having swinging moods but connections maybe. I'm letting things in. I am allowing myself to feel for others - out loud for a change. I am allowing others to feel for me so I am now able to feel for them, too? Yes, I am understanding something that I never really got before. It sounds so stupid but I just didn't get something. I don't even know how to explain it in words. Last night when Stacey was here and I couldn't pull out my computer, I wrote a couple of thoughts down... this is about the closest that I can get to an explanation right now:
"I always felt that I was so different from them but I didn't realize that they were also different from me and, in recognizing those differences, I finally understood the similarities."
So lets see where that takes me. I always felt that I was so different from everyone else. I knew that there was something in me, something different... it never crossed my mind to think that it might be something good. And I also didn't realize that if I was different from them, they were different from me, too... and different from each other. Everyone has good qualities and bad. It's okay to be yourself because eventually you will find someone that is the same different as you are. Haha! The parts of my personality that I have been trying to suppress my whole life are actually the things that people like about me. People are drawn to me - have you ever thought such a thing? How is that possible? How do they see something that I don't? Or, no, that's not right - I saw it. Why did I never want to let other people see it, too? And why did I not realize that they might love me for it?
If I am different from them then they are different from me, too... and the weirdest thing struck me - that's how we are alike. Our differences are what make us similar. I don't understand you and you don't understand me so we are the same. And if we are the same, even in our differences, then I think I can let go and be different with someone. I'm not a freak, I'm not crazy, I'm not disgusting, I'm just different than you. And the things that I used to hate the most about me are now what I love most about me.
It's like this... when I first moved here, my skin was terrible. It was bumpy and blemished and it really bugged me because I have had good skin most of my life. So I got new facial cleanser and I cleaned my face every morning and every night. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I just couldn't get to clear up. I tried stronger cleaners, scrubs, masks and nothing worked. Finally, I convinced Karl to get me a gift certificate for a facial. You know what she said? Kim, the woman that has been giving me facials ever since? She said that I have very sensitive skin and I was making it worse by working it and working it... leaving it alone was the only thing that would help. I never thought that I might be sensitive on the inside, too, and trying to fix myself just made it worse... leave it alone and it will be fine!
I just wanted to be like everyone else. And the more that I tried to not stand out, the more I blended in. Then I would be unhappy that I was blending into the wall (I remember telling Ian once that I felt like I was invisible to every man that I had ever dated, including him). Why didn't anyone love me? Why didn't anyone see me? What was wrong with me? So I would try harder to fit in with everyone else, more neutral, more colorless, more nothingness. Maybe that's why I was so difficult to live with. I could only be me around me so I always wanted to get away from Ian so I could be me. I couldn't let him see! Then he will know, he'll see that I'm not what he thinks I am. I was myself with Stacey because she didn't have the power to hurt me like he did and she had stuck it out with me through thick and thin for years by then. I didn't trust that any man would do that, I didn't trust that anyone would ever want to. Stacey and I were best friends for years before I let her in - I think I was on my anti-depressants for more than a year before I even told her and he thought that I should trust him as much after only a few months?! He, the one that could demolish my whole world in an instant? A few years ago I felt bad that I had to ask Stacey to stay with me over night because I had a concussion; Fabian was hurt that I didn't ask him to take care of me but I could barely ask Stacey... and she returned my calls.
Of course I was mostly comfortable with my family and close friends, people that had to love me. That's when my me-ness shined through. But inevitably I would laugh a bit too loud or tell a joke that was a bit too strong and my mother would be sitting over there doing her fucking tsk, tsk, tsk shit and I would back down, I would conform and not embarrass her. It was okay if she was having a good time, too... but then it was usually Dad shaking his head with that look that stopped me cold. I almost lost it on Mom once, when I saw the tsk, tsk in a different light... or maybe just realized that she always did it and I was finally ready for it to piss me off. Same old story... I was having a good time with everyone else (we were all home for the last Christmas and Andrew bought a bottle of red wine and we got wasted! We played games and we laughed and we drank and we joked and I was having the best time... until I looked at the woman next to me and her "Now , Bev. That's enough." and I almost drop kicked her. I actually wrote about it in the journal that I am transposing onto here... it was late December/early January of 2005. Read it - entertaining stuff (okay, well, I'm still working on 2003 so you'll have to come back to it!!).
When I was young, I participated in everything. I was asked to join my school choir a year before the rules said I was old enough, I was asked to be a mime in a school play in grade 6 (it was a traveling Christmas show and they needed one person to be the angel and they picked me), I was asked to represent my school in a Red Cross camp in grade 7 or 8 and I got to go to Newfoundland for a full week (that was fucking huge where I grew up!), I sang and danced in the school variety show, I sang in church, I was a cheerleader, I was in the drama festival regional competition, I was asked to be a group leader in a weekend retreat that we had in high school, I sang at a couple of weddings... always up front, always entertaining, always strong, always confident, the life of the party, the outgoing one. But inside I was starting to learn something.
I was always embarrassing someone, I would be silly or make a smart ass crack around a bunch of the older kids and Sue would be devastated, I would come out of my shell in a social situation and start to enjoy myself and Mom would tsk. I never heard any of those people that told me I was wonderful. They were saying it, they were telling me but I was learning how awful I was, that they were better than me. And eventually the bad stuff won and I stopped questioning it. I am still embarrassed about the mockery that I made of the song that I sang at my cousin's wedding when I was 18 (I didn't even bother to learn the song and poor Jackie sighed and said here sing this one instead and I got a cold and I sucked... okay I was afraid and embarrassed because I was making a fool out of myself) and I never sang in public again until karaoke at some strangers house a few years ago when I was first coming out of my shell. And they were telling me that I was wonderful and I thought 'well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion... but you're wrong, you don't know me, you are wrong'. And it never bothered me, it never pissed me off, I just didn't believe them. I quit cheer leading because our coach said I was fat (no she didn't, she said that I was really good and that I had so much potential, why not practice more and get in better shape so I could do more splits and jumps) and I passed in my pompoms and most likely went home for something to eat. If I got drunk and some boy hit on me, that was okay because I knew that they only hit on me because I was drunk and easy and they were drunk and horny. And I became very easy and then I was right... I was with so many different men that eventually people got with me because I was drunk and easy. That I could accept. I could not accept that someone would like me for me.
Mutherfucker! I just got another one! It never made sense to me that I dated all of those man troubles back to when Dave screwed around on me and broke up with me in grade 10. Yes, it was hurtful at the time but not hurtful enough to make such a huge impact on my relationships with men for the rest of my life. I just figured that it was because I was embarrassed more than I was hurt - which is most likely true - but it never made sense to me, it wasn't enough to cause the scar on my heart that has been with me all of this time. Ha! And it wasn't Dave breaking up with me that was the problem, it wasn't that he did it while everyone else was watching that was the problem - yes, those things sucked but - it was that he was confirming everything that I already believed about myself. Of course no one is going to love you, idiot. Even this guy. He liked me, I knew he did and I opened myself up to him and I trusted him but it turned out that he realized that I was crap, too. I think that was the first time that I truly received confirmation of all of the bad things that I thought about me. (Funny how it never crossed my mind that he was just pissed off with me for being so inconsiderate that I stood him up yet again because I was having fun somewhere else and I didn't even bother to call.)
After that (and before that, too, I guess) it was so damn important to me to not let anyone know what a waste I was then why would I let anyone in to see it? Are you kidding me? I'm not letting you know! Everything is wonderful, everything is always good, always good. I tried opening up in very small ways a few times over the years. I let people in, just a toe, just for a second. In the early days with Karl he told me that the first thing he thought when he saw me was that I was cute but too chubby (guess I shouldn't have asked... I was flirting with him and looking for a compliment - you could fucking lie, asshole!). I thought my whole life that that was what people saw when they looked at me and, when I became an adult and dared to start to believe my friends that I was wrong, he spoke and in one sentence everything that I knew was right was confirmed again. I knew it. I knew it. I was right. Up goes the wall.
I met Fabian in 2002 and barely told him anything about me (I lived with Karl for 5 years and he knew less than anyone). I was only whatever he wanted me to be and I never let him see inside... until he caught me wimping out about the Sun Run in 2005. He was so kind and understanding and I cried and and he held me and he saw right through me and I let him in. God, I don't remember ever in my life letting everything out like that, it just oozed out. Then I stopped answering his calls. I always looked at that as the end of anything good with us... but I was always sure that it was because of him, not because of me.
I let Ian in... probably faster and more than any non-family member - no, strike that - faster and more than anyone ever before. And he loved me. And that drove me crazy! He would hug me and I would just wait for him to be done, I always always always broke hugs first (with everyone always). Then I started hugging back longer. Then I needed more and got more. He got closer and closer. He got the power to blow me over with barely a whistle. And then all I wanted was to get away from him. And then I started looking for reasons to go. Ha! That realization is far too funny, too sad and too late. And I treated him like shit until he said fuck, just go already. But I was right. I proved to him that I was right.
Holy shit... maybe half of this is just because I always need to be right!! Ian always said that I needed to be right - and I know it's a problem that I USED to have (before I moved to epiphany city) - maybe... well, yes... of course, I was always looking for confirmation of what I believed, right? I always needed to be right. And I always made sure that I was.
This is exhausting. =)
