I had horrible nightmares that woke me up on and off two nights ago, and one in particular was so terrible it broke my heart. I dreamt that I destroyed my city, the town where I live and have lived for years, and there was no indication as to why I did it. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about how vivid and disturbing my dreams can be, how sometimes I will have a nightmare so terrifying, I will have to keep checking in with myself to make sure I am really awake. An overactive imagination, combined with my confused emotions lately has equalled three days of violent, all-too-convincing nightmares. I dream of walking around with my entrails in my hands, trying to figure out how I can reassemble them before I bleed to death. I dream that my mouth is rotting off and that no one can help me fix it. I dream that I am causing thousands of deaths with the click of a button. I am not that into analyzing dreams, but I wish someone could tell me what the hell I can do to just sleep without watching something so unsettling.
The other part of my dream that was even worse was right before I woke up. I had shoved the throw pillow on my bed against my back at some point in my sleep, and in my half-waking, half-sleeping state of mind, I thought it was a person. I hate sleeping alone. The night that Gino told me he wanted a divorce, he asked if I wanted him to sleep on the couch, but I asked him to sleep in the bed with me because this would be the last time I could sleep next to him ever again. It was the last thing I asked him to do for me. The loneliness I felt all day long yesterday was scary to me. I felt sick, sicker than I had felt in months, and for two hours I sat on my couch and cried my eyes out over nothing.
I am starting to get worried that I might have only experienced the first wave of emotion over my divorce, and the rest is held back by a levee that is about to break. For months, I had a strong buffer between myself and all of this hurt. I was surrounded on all sides by so much love and support, and now that everyone has to get back to their lives, that constant support is melting away, and all I am left with is myself. I can, of course, depend on everyone in that network for anything, but I cannot shake the guilt over having to ask any of them to create time to deal with me. Some I cannot reach out to at all anymore because they have withdrawn, and I have to just accept that.
I felt so alone yesterday, and so desperately sad that I actually had to make a list of people I could call if I absolutely felt unsafe by myself. It's a precaution I have not utilized since I was 21, but it's a useful one. Something that they recommend to patients of the psych ward I visited when I was 21 was to actually have a list of people you can call if you feel even a little unsafe, before you think you might be inclined to hurt yourself, or to just call 911 and be re-admitted. I know I won't do anything like that again, but I started to think who would be on my list if I got to that point. Who could I call in tears, who would listen to me sob and hyperventilate for twenty minutes? There were plenty of people who would, but I cared too much about all of them to bother them with something like that. That is where I always stop myself from asking for help- I feel too guilty to bother anyone with something so dramatic. Instead of calling someone I am close to and tell them that I felt too sad and lonely to do anything but cry, I texted my friend Mike about really mundane things until I calmed down and the crying stopped. I said nothing about how destroyed I felt, aside from alluding to feeling under the weather, and it helped for the moment.
After years of feeling safe and secure with Gino, after getting myself off of the medications I had come to depend on so heavily and not even feeling the need to speak to a therapist again, I am seeing that I might not be able to do this on my own. I can deal with physical pain, and lots of it. I proved that when I broke my fibula in three places and still walked around on it all night, wincing and limping but never asking someone to drive me to the hospital. Physical pain is understandable to me. It is the emotional, internal pain that I cannot understand.
I rewatched Angels in America this week, for the millionth time, because I had not watched it in years, and was thunderstruck, once again, by how much I could identify with the sentiments certain characters expressed. Something Al Pacino's character, Roy Cohn, says to Belize, his nurse in the hospital, stuck out for the first time. Referring to AIDS, which he has just recently found out that he is infected with, he says, "Course they can't kill this, can they? No. It's too simple. It knows itself. It's harder to kill something if it knows what it is."
It is not the same by any stretch of the imagination, of course it's not. I am not dying from an unkillable virus, and it is not 1985. I am not sick, not dying, even though I feel like I am most of the time. Still, the language he used was what got to me. Heartbreak cannot be erradicated, it is not a disease that can be treated. It knows itself, knows what it wants. The reason I have lost so much weight, why my irises are rimmed with dark, gray lines and my face is paler than normal is because I have been run over by grief. The high I felt for the whole month of July was false hope, and the elation of moving out of my hiding place at Tony's house and into my new apartment. The high has lasted through most of this month because of the new information I came to know about how Mike feels about me, and it's wearing off now because of the mess of confusion that has erupted around me since learning it. I like him and he likes me, and the more time I spend with him, the more I want to spend all of my time with him, and that is not a good idea for either of us. I am trying with everything I have to understand the grief, to identify my enemy so that I can fight it, but it is evasive as anything and won't show what it is, or what it wants. It knows itself, but I do not know it yet.
Another part involves Mary-Louise Parker's character, Harper Pitt, as she hallucinates through her grief over her failed marriage to a gay man. She sits in an imagined Antarctica, talking to her imaginary travel-agent friend, explaining how it feels to be heartbroken, "I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die. But there's still the rest of you. There's your breasts and your genitals... They're amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs. They don't get it, they just want him. Want him."
Of course I see truth in that for the first time ever. I have experienced loss, but I have never truly had my heart broken this way. I have never been told by the person that I love the most that they do not love me. This is the part of going through a breakup that no one prepares you for. You feel dead, but you are still alive, and just when you think the waves have stopped crashing over you, the tides rises again. It has felt like two months of no oxygen, a few weeks of breathing, and now my head is underwater again. The other part that hurts even more is how much my body still misses his, how much I would give just to be able to sleep in a bed with him again. This is why my dream terrified me the most right at the end, when I thought maybe the past three months were the dream, and I was waking up next to someone who I loved, and still loved me. Waking up, holding onto myself for dear life, I felt more empty and alone than I ever have, like a starving animal trapped in a forgotten well. This is real grief, not the brave face I have been showing off to everyone. I keep it to myself, because this is the face no one needs to see. This is the face I only show to myself.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
The Lone Ranger
I am still getting used to living alone, having been in my new apartment for a few weeks now, and there is a lot about it that I love. I love not having to immediately do the dishes if I don't feel like it, I like always being in control of what I watch on TV, and I really like not having to hide all evidence that I have a menstrual cycle. I like living alone, but I still do not like being alone. My time spent alone still feels like in-between-time, the threads that connect the time when I am with the people I love. I can't be alone yet without it feeling like I am lonely. Loneliness is a pervasive and hard to shake- it sinks into your bones and won't let go. I get a lot of fulfillment from my life, I have great friends who keep me occupied and a number of side projects to keep me busy, but I still cannot stop noticing that empty space that was so recently occupied by another person. My ex's absence has left a vacuum, and instead of filling up, it's just an empty pocket I keep getting sucked into.
Even the presence of Mike is not enough to fill up this unoccupied space, and the degree to which I miss him when he is not there compounds the feeling of emptiness that is always creeping up on me. I can take care of myself, of course, but I like the way I feel when I am around him better than I like the way I feel when I am alone. It's that simple. It's so simple, it makes me wonder how it can be possible that I am so interested in someone so soon after I thought Gino would be the only man I would ever need to love. It makes me wonder if I am being too efficient, too speedy in my recovery by piggy-backing one new infatuation on top of an old, dying one. That is the truth- I was infatuated with Gino. The definition of infatuation is a foolish or all-absorbing passion, and that is what I felt for him. I was so infatuated, so lost in love with my husband that I failed to notice that his eyes did not light up when he saw me. The expression "love is blind' is not always a good thing. It blinds you to some one's complete lack of interest, to their exhaustion with you, to the look on their face that tells you it's over. I don't want that to ever happen to me ever again, which is why I keep trying to keep a lid on my feelings for my man-friend before they spiral out of control and I spin myself into butter over them.
I have been hyper-vigilant with managing myself lately, to the point where I am wondering what would be so terrible about letting go just a little bit. The worst-case scenario in my head, however, is so very scary that I can't let it play out that way. I don't want to scare Mike away by letting my passionate Aries spirit burn him up. I told him the other day that he calms me, that his presence slows down my rapid heart rate and makes it feel as though I can actually just breathe in and out. When I am by myself, my heart races, my breath is short and I lose focus every minute regardless of what I am doing. Being near him is my own way of self-medicating, keeping the feelings of dread from taking over. I hate myself for needing this, for needing anything from him because he does not need to be depended on for anything right now. I always thought of myself as not terribly needy, but the truth is that my needs were different from Gino's. Gino needed practical things from me, like food, and my needs were less easy to pinpoint. I needed comfort, and affection, and to be reminded, by him, that I was worthy of it. Our marriage did not last because he could not bring himself to pretend he could give me those things anymore. I cannot hold anything against him because I understand.
My abandonment issues are starting to become clearer to me day by day. I have abandonment issues that stem from my mother's death, of course, from most of my family members fleeing the area, from friends of mine just neglecting to contact me any more. I am hurt by all of these things, and thinking about them feels like pressing on a deep bruise, but I have nowhere to direct any anger that I feel over them. I have an abiding fear that at any moment, someone I love will simply disappear, and there will be nothing I can do about it. This is why I panic if I don't get a prompt response to a text message. This is why I cannot sit still when I am waiting for an answer. It is an impulse born from a lifetime of losses, both large and small, and it is a behavior I cannot grow out of. Gino jumping ship from our marriage is just another toothpick.
Even the presence of Mike is not enough to fill up this unoccupied space, and the degree to which I miss him when he is not there compounds the feeling of emptiness that is always creeping up on me. I can take care of myself, of course, but I like the way I feel when I am around him better than I like the way I feel when I am alone. It's that simple. It's so simple, it makes me wonder how it can be possible that I am so interested in someone so soon after I thought Gino would be the only man I would ever need to love. It makes me wonder if I am being too efficient, too speedy in my recovery by piggy-backing one new infatuation on top of an old, dying one. That is the truth- I was infatuated with Gino. The definition of infatuation is a foolish or all-absorbing passion, and that is what I felt for him. I was so infatuated, so lost in love with my husband that I failed to notice that his eyes did not light up when he saw me. The expression "love is blind' is not always a good thing. It blinds you to some one's complete lack of interest, to their exhaustion with you, to the look on their face that tells you it's over. I don't want that to ever happen to me ever again, which is why I keep trying to keep a lid on my feelings for my man-friend before they spiral out of control and I spin myself into butter over them.
I have been hyper-vigilant with managing myself lately, to the point where I am wondering what would be so terrible about letting go just a little bit. The worst-case scenario in my head, however, is so very scary that I can't let it play out that way. I don't want to scare Mike away by letting my passionate Aries spirit burn him up. I told him the other day that he calms me, that his presence slows down my rapid heart rate and makes it feel as though I can actually just breathe in and out. When I am by myself, my heart races, my breath is short and I lose focus every minute regardless of what I am doing. Being near him is my own way of self-medicating, keeping the feelings of dread from taking over. I hate myself for needing this, for needing anything from him because he does not need to be depended on for anything right now. I always thought of myself as not terribly needy, but the truth is that my needs were different from Gino's. Gino needed practical things from me, like food, and my needs were less easy to pinpoint. I needed comfort, and affection, and to be reminded, by him, that I was worthy of it. Our marriage did not last because he could not bring himself to pretend he could give me those things anymore. I cannot hold anything against him because I understand.
My abandonment issues are starting to become clearer to me day by day. I have abandonment issues that stem from my mother's death, of course, from most of my family members fleeing the area, from friends of mine just neglecting to contact me any more. I am hurt by all of these things, and thinking about them feels like pressing on a deep bruise, but I have nowhere to direct any anger that I feel over them. I have an abiding fear that at any moment, someone I love will simply disappear, and there will be nothing I can do about it. This is why I panic if I don't get a prompt response to a text message. This is why I cannot sit still when I am waiting for an answer. It is an impulse born from a lifetime of losses, both large and small, and it is a behavior I cannot grow out of. Gino jumping ship from our marriage is just another toothpick.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Stillness
This week I have been trying to master the art of stillness. It does not come naturally to me, and the main reason that I began knitting, which is my favorite pastime, was to occupy my hands so that I did not constantly fidget. I have trouble sitting still, keeping calm, and waiting for anything for longer than two minutes. I have had to learn, since my marriage ended and I started dealing with men who are not used to my natural inclinations, to be calm and serene. The other contributing factor to my inability to relax this week must be the fact that I just started taking birth control pills again, and I can tell that they have increased my blood pressure. I am trying everything to keep it under control, from biofeedback to meditating, but it is a hard skill to master.
I am very prompt, as a rule, so to be on time to me means to show up five minutes early. I am also prompt when it comes to answering phones, returning e-mails and responding to texts. I have trouble understanding why, for example, it takes anyone longer than thirty seconds to do any of these things. I learned some patience in my relationship with my ex-husband, slowed down to his speed, as it were, but the entire time, I see now, I was fighting it and trying to force him to speed up. His guiding principle was, "I'll get there when I get there", and mine was, "We're going to be late!"
I keep trying to keep this part of me hidden, hoping that if I do not nurture my neuroses, they will fall off and die. It's a silly way to address my flaws, but I keep telling myself that it might work and that if it doesn't, I'll think of something else later. I keep moving between moments of calm that buoy me, keep me from sinking into the panic that comes to me as easily as breathing. If I know I am going to see my friend Mike and I have something to look forward to, I am mostly calm. If I cannot get a hold of him, I feel completely untethered and restless, to the point where I cannot concentrate on whatever task is supposed to occupy me and I end up wasting hours just waiting. It affects me physically as well, as a churning in my guts and a spasm in my throat. This is the reason, the real core reason, I believe, that people enter into a relationship. There is something incredibly calming about knowing that the person you are trying to reach will answer you when you call.
The one person who knows me best is my ex-husband, and that makes accepting the fact that I cannot depend on him anymore even harder to swallow. There are others who know me well, my best friends and my family, who have seen shades of the manic obsesser who takes over my body occasionally, but none of them, with the possible exception of my sister, have any idea how I behave when I don't have to pretend. I was a good wife to Gino, but I freely admit that I was not the easiest person in the world to be married to. I work myself into a frenzy over projects that I decide need to be completed immediately, I am always in a hurry, I change positions every thirty seconds while sitting on the couch, falling asleep and driving the car, and arguing with me is impossible because I never slow down and think about what I am about to say before it is out of my mouth. I know I'm a handful, and that is one thing I never focused on while I was married. I don't know if it would have made a difference if I had actually addressed these issues, but it's too late anyway. All I can hope to accomplish at this point is working out the kinks in my system before I am involved with someone else.
For now, I am trying to understand why I launch into panic mode so often, and also what I can do to extend the moments of stillness that come and go. I have been intentionally filling my nights with other activities, other people, using reconnecting with friends and family as a buffer between me and my anxiety, just so that I do not fall into my bad habits so often. Still, I cannot shut of the part of me that is counting the minutes, ticking off increments of time in my head and comparing them to the last time I had to wait. Mike is pretty prompt, and he returns my texts in a timely fashion, but I am worried that I am showing my stripes already. My anxiety can be easily misinterpreted as a need to be taken care of, when actually I am pretty self-sufficient. As I told Gino once, if I need your help, you'll know because I will tell you. What I am trying to show Mike, however, is that I don't need him to be that person for me just yet, if ever. All that we expect from each other is someone to spend time with, and expecting anything from him beyond that would be wrong. I don't talk about my job, I try not to talk about my marriage, and he does the same for me. It's different from what I am used to, because the only serious relationship I have had so far is the one I had for seven years with Gino. It is a slow burn, when I am coming off of a relationship that began as a gas fire. I am adjusting my speed because I know that this is the best thing for me, because if I don't, I will never learn to.
I am very prompt, as a rule, so to be on time to me means to show up five minutes early. I am also prompt when it comes to answering phones, returning e-mails and responding to texts. I have trouble understanding why, for example, it takes anyone longer than thirty seconds to do any of these things. I learned some patience in my relationship with my ex-husband, slowed down to his speed, as it were, but the entire time, I see now, I was fighting it and trying to force him to speed up. His guiding principle was, "I'll get there when I get there", and mine was, "We're going to be late!"
I keep trying to keep this part of me hidden, hoping that if I do not nurture my neuroses, they will fall off and die. It's a silly way to address my flaws, but I keep telling myself that it might work and that if it doesn't, I'll think of something else later. I keep moving between moments of calm that buoy me, keep me from sinking into the panic that comes to me as easily as breathing. If I know I am going to see my friend Mike and I have something to look forward to, I am mostly calm. If I cannot get a hold of him, I feel completely untethered and restless, to the point where I cannot concentrate on whatever task is supposed to occupy me and I end up wasting hours just waiting. It affects me physically as well, as a churning in my guts and a spasm in my throat. This is the reason, the real core reason, I believe, that people enter into a relationship. There is something incredibly calming about knowing that the person you are trying to reach will answer you when you call.
The one person who knows me best is my ex-husband, and that makes accepting the fact that I cannot depend on him anymore even harder to swallow. There are others who know me well, my best friends and my family, who have seen shades of the manic obsesser who takes over my body occasionally, but none of them, with the possible exception of my sister, have any idea how I behave when I don't have to pretend. I was a good wife to Gino, but I freely admit that I was not the easiest person in the world to be married to. I work myself into a frenzy over projects that I decide need to be completed immediately, I am always in a hurry, I change positions every thirty seconds while sitting on the couch, falling asleep and driving the car, and arguing with me is impossible because I never slow down and think about what I am about to say before it is out of my mouth. I know I'm a handful, and that is one thing I never focused on while I was married. I don't know if it would have made a difference if I had actually addressed these issues, but it's too late anyway. All I can hope to accomplish at this point is working out the kinks in my system before I am involved with someone else.
For now, I am trying to understand why I launch into panic mode so often, and also what I can do to extend the moments of stillness that come and go. I have been intentionally filling my nights with other activities, other people, using reconnecting with friends and family as a buffer between me and my anxiety, just so that I do not fall into my bad habits so often. Still, I cannot shut of the part of me that is counting the minutes, ticking off increments of time in my head and comparing them to the last time I had to wait. Mike is pretty prompt, and he returns my texts in a timely fashion, but I am worried that I am showing my stripes already. My anxiety can be easily misinterpreted as a need to be taken care of, when actually I am pretty self-sufficient. As I told Gino once, if I need your help, you'll know because I will tell you. What I am trying to show Mike, however, is that I don't need him to be that person for me just yet, if ever. All that we expect from each other is someone to spend time with, and expecting anything from him beyond that would be wrong. I don't talk about my job, I try not to talk about my marriage, and he does the same for me. It's different from what I am used to, because the only serious relationship I have had so far is the one I had for seven years with Gino. It is a slow burn, when I am coming off of a relationship that began as a gas fire. I am adjusting my speed because I know that this is the best thing for me, because if I don't, I will never learn to.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Resilience Training
I had a back-and-forth text chat with Mike last night that reassured me in a number of ways. I was worried, after only a week-and-a-half of us spending time with each other, that I was already falling into my bad habits. I love too much, too fast, and with too much emotion all at once, and I was starting to see things get serious before they needed to. He texted me with what started off as an apology for being aloof the day before, then his reasons why he needed to be. I had been dancing around the same feelings as the ones he was expressing to me, but despite all my soul-searching and bullshit, I couldn't say what I meant to say to him. It shook out that we were both in the wrong place to be in a relationship and that we should just be friends for a while, and see what happens in the future. Instead of feeling disappointed by this, I felt relieved.
I had been harboring some concern over this situation since it started, with a text, from him informing me that he had a crush on me. I knew he had a newly-broken heart he was dealing with, but I also knew that I liked him too much to pass up on something with him simply because I wasn't healed from my break-up. I was actually worried that if we weren't clear with each other at all times, one of us would get hurt. We spoke a little about this the last time he came over, when I told him that I liked him alot, and thought he was the best person in the world, and that I wanted to hang out with him all the time, but that what I did not need right now was a boyfriend. I know what I will end up doing if I get too involved with someone at this point, and that is that I will dive headlong into taking care of them and making them feel special, and jump over the part where I take care of myself and make myself feel special. I told him when he left that I would try not to call him because I intentionally had been only seeing him every other day to prevent him from getting tired of me. That must have been what made it click for him- trying not to keep a consistent pattern had only created a different pattern, and now it felt like the pattern had to be addressed.
I told him when he texted me last night that I need time, too, that I am still regrowing my own heart, but that I still think he's the best person in the world and want to be a good friend to him. I told him I can abstain from making out with him if that means I still get to spend time with him, even if that hurts a little. So now I must wait and see, wait for the day that he either says he is ready to have feelings for a woman again or that he can't. I have a feeling, however, that my healing process will take much less time than most people's and that I might end up sitting like patience on a monument, waiting for this person to finish repairing the damage. I am a resilient person, and that is not a boast, that is merely a fact. I am resilient to a fault because I dealt with so much at such a young age, and now I heal at such an accelerated rate, people assume I am ignoring my problems instead of dealing with them. The truth is that when, at the age of 12, your mother passes away of a myocardial infarction, any other loss seems slight by comparison. I was not, by any means, a model mourner in the wake of this tragedy, but I was still a child and I had no skill set for it. I acted out, started self-harming and thankfully, had good parents who put me in therapy. The whole experience set me up more than adequately to deal with the other losses that would come later. I will admit that I never properly addressed the anxiety that landed me in the hospital at 21 years old, but when that happened, I made my mental health my only priority for years. Again, that experience set me up with the tools I needed for further survival. I am not sure if I handled an early-term miscarriage that happened when I was 22 in the best way possible, but as I recall, I cried a little, thanked the gods for not forcing me to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, and moved on. I spoke to the guy who got me pregnant a few times, but never really bothered him again. A few months after that incident, I met Gino, and we all know by now how that ended. I now can say that I feel stronger than ever, more able to understand what I am feeling than I would have if I had gone through this at any other point in my life. Going back to therapy might be something I look into again, but right now I am not sure that I need it. I have the time and the patience to wait for whatever comes next.
I had been harboring some concern over this situation since it started, with a text, from him informing me that he had a crush on me. I knew he had a newly-broken heart he was dealing with, but I also knew that I liked him too much to pass up on something with him simply because I wasn't healed from my break-up. I was actually worried that if we weren't clear with each other at all times, one of us would get hurt. We spoke a little about this the last time he came over, when I told him that I liked him alot, and thought he was the best person in the world, and that I wanted to hang out with him all the time, but that what I did not need right now was a boyfriend. I know what I will end up doing if I get too involved with someone at this point, and that is that I will dive headlong into taking care of them and making them feel special, and jump over the part where I take care of myself and make myself feel special. I told him when he left that I would try not to call him because I intentionally had been only seeing him every other day to prevent him from getting tired of me. That must have been what made it click for him- trying not to keep a consistent pattern had only created a different pattern, and now it felt like the pattern had to be addressed.
I told him when he texted me last night that I need time, too, that I am still regrowing my own heart, but that I still think he's the best person in the world and want to be a good friend to him. I told him I can abstain from making out with him if that means I still get to spend time with him, even if that hurts a little. So now I must wait and see, wait for the day that he either says he is ready to have feelings for a woman again or that he can't. I have a feeling, however, that my healing process will take much less time than most people's and that I might end up sitting like patience on a monument, waiting for this person to finish repairing the damage. I am a resilient person, and that is not a boast, that is merely a fact. I am resilient to a fault because I dealt with so much at such a young age, and now I heal at such an accelerated rate, people assume I am ignoring my problems instead of dealing with them. The truth is that when, at the age of 12, your mother passes away of a myocardial infarction, any other loss seems slight by comparison. I was not, by any means, a model mourner in the wake of this tragedy, but I was still a child and I had no skill set for it. I acted out, started self-harming and thankfully, had good parents who put me in therapy. The whole experience set me up more than adequately to deal with the other losses that would come later. I will admit that I never properly addressed the anxiety that landed me in the hospital at 21 years old, but when that happened, I made my mental health my only priority for years. Again, that experience set me up with the tools I needed for further survival. I am not sure if I handled an early-term miscarriage that happened when I was 22 in the best way possible, but as I recall, I cried a little, thanked the gods for not forcing me to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, and moved on. I spoke to the guy who got me pregnant a few times, but never really bothered him again. A few months after that incident, I met Gino, and we all know by now how that ended. I now can say that I feel stronger than ever, more able to understand what I am feeling than I would have if I had gone through this at any other point in my life. Going back to therapy might be something I look into again, but right now I am not sure that I need it. I have the time and the patience to wait for whatever comes next.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Conversation
Two days ago, for the first time since we separated, my ex-husband and I actually had a conversation. I was coming back from lunch, trying to call my stepmother on my cell, and he was on his way in for his shift. We work in the same place, at the health resort, and have avoided each other only by virtue of the fact that we work in separate departments. I knew this would happen eventually, that we would run into each other and be forced to interact, but I did not know that it would not be horrible. I waved hello to him, asked if he received the information on our taxes I had sent him via Facebook, and he replied no, he had not checked it yet, but he would. I walked up one parking level to meet him and we walked in together, catching up. From the outside, we must have looked like the old friends I am hoping we can still be someday. Later on, when I was telling Mike about the conversation, he asked me why I still wanted to be friends with Gino if he hurt me so badly. He doesn't seem to want to be friends with his ex, who he just broke up with pretty recently as well. I can't explain it, not really, other than that I need for my time with Gino to mean something, to have some lasting significance apart from how bruised and lacerated I feel now. I need to still be friends with him because it means we were not wasting our time for the entirety of our marriage.
There is a slightly unhealthy aspect to my pursuit of Gino's friendship, I realize at the same time. It is my way of atoning for getting him to marry me in the first place. I love too hard and too intensely, I see clearly now, and though I did not "trick" or "con" him into getting married, I did press the issue a little more than I should have just because I really wanted to be his wife. If we can be friends, that means I am not a devious villain to him anymore. Even after all that he has done to hurt me, I am still trying to show him how much I value him as a person.
My immaturity came out slightly when I asked if he was seeing anyone yet. He isn't, as I suspected was the case, but I told him that I was. I'm not, really, but I have been on dates and have been spending alot of time with Mike, and I wanted to show him that he has not destroyed me. Whether it was for his benefit or mine, I am not sure. On the one hand, I wanted to assuage his guilt for what he did, but on the other hand, I want him to feel like a loser just a little tiny bit. It didn't seem to bother him at all, but I didn't really expect it to. "Does he like you alot?" he asked me.
"No, Gino, he can't stand me, that's why we're dating," I answered, just to be flip.
It made him laugh, but when he went on to talk about how the "person he likes" isn't interested in a relationship with him, I started to feel the same way I had in the final months. I knew he was referring to a girl who works in the same place we do, who I actually made dinner for once when she drove him home, and I pitied him for the first time in a while. A number of factors went into the dissolution of our marriage, but he was probably hoping to get involved with this girl as a fringe benefit of it, and she turned him down. A little self-satisfaction crept up in me at this, I have to admit, because I have a great, fun guy to hang out with and he has no one at all. When I was sitting on the couch later, with Mike beside me, I knew it was childish, but I felt even more that my life is headed in the right direction even though I've had to deal with so much rough terrain.
I started thinking today about astrology, and the one obvious factor in my relationship with Gino that just about proves why we could only last as long as we did. I am an Aries who fell in love with another Aries. The reason why it felt like the skies were opening up for the first time when we met is because we are both highly passionate and love with an intensity that doesn't seem possible. The temperature of the room seemed to increase when we met each other. We loved fucking and fighting in equal measure, and once the fucking trickled off, all we had was the fighting. I could never have made it work, no matter how hard I tried, because the foundation of our relationship was built on a fault line. There was always the threat of an earthquake. I saw something fascinating in him, a spark that really caught my eye, and he told me a few times that he had seen a similar spark in me. We had no lack of spark, that is a fact, but what we lacked was an ability to put the fires out once they started blazing out of control. We fought them for seven years, in fact, and now we both have burn scars. Finding someone who compliments me, is not afraid to be affectionate, and doesn't require anything from me feels like a giant cold compress on those old burns. If I can keep myself from making the same mistakes that I made with Gino, and not scare the shit out of anyone by loving so aggressively, I might be able to stay cooled off for a while longer.
There is a slightly unhealthy aspect to my pursuit of Gino's friendship, I realize at the same time. It is my way of atoning for getting him to marry me in the first place. I love too hard and too intensely, I see clearly now, and though I did not "trick" or "con" him into getting married, I did press the issue a little more than I should have just because I really wanted to be his wife. If we can be friends, that means I am not a devious villain to him anymore. Even after all that he has done to hurt me, I am still trying to show him how much I value him as a person.
My immaturity came out slightly when I asked if he was seeing anyone yet. He isn't, as I suspected was the case, but I told him that I was. I'm not, really, but I have been on dates and have been spending alot of time with Mike, and I wanted to show him that he has not destroyed me. Whether it was for his benefit or mine, I am not sure. On the one hand, I wanted to assuage his guilt for what he did, but on the other hand, I want him to feel like a loser just a little tiny bit. It didn't seem to bother him at all, but I didn't really expect it to. "Does he like you alot?" he asked me.
"No, Gino, he can't stand me, that's why we're dating," I answered, just to be flip.
It made him laugh, but when he went on to talk about how the "person he likes" isn't interested in a relationship with him, I started to feel the same way I had in the final months. I knew he was referring to a girl who works in the same place we do, who I actually made dinner for once when she drove him home, and I pitied him for the first time in a while. A number of factors went into the dissolution of our marriage, but he was probably hoping to get involved with this girl as a fringe benefit of it, and she turned him down. A little self-satisfaction crept up in me at this, I have to admit, because I have a great, fun guy to hang out with and he has no one at all. When I was sitting on the couch later, with Mike beside me, I knew it was childish, but I felt even more that my life is headed in the right direction even though I've had to deal with so much rough terrain.
I started thinking today about astrology, and the one obvious factor in my relationship with Gino that just about proves why we could only last as long as we did. I am an Aries who fell in love with another Aries. The reason why it felt like the skies were opening up for the first time when we met is because we are both highly passionate and love with an intensity that doesn't seem possible. The temperature of the room seemed to increase when we met each other. We loved fucking and fighting in equal measure, and once the fucking trickled off, all we had was the fighting. I could never have made it work, no matter how hard I tried, because the foundation of our relationship was built on a fault line. There was always the threat of an earthquake. I saw something fascinating in him, a spark that really caught my eye, and he told me a few times that he had seen a similar spark in me. We had no lack of spark, that is a fact, but what we lacked was an ability to put the fires out once they started blazing out of control. We fought them for seven years, in fact, and now we both have burn scars. Finding someone who compliments me, is not afraid to be affectionate, and doesn't require anything from me feels like a giant cold compress on those old burns. If I can keep myself from making the same mistakes that I made with Gino, and not scare the shit out of anyone by loving so aggressively, I might be able to stay cooled off for a while longer.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Singled Out
I haven't written anything so far this week because I have been so distracted by moving, for one, and also by the way my life is starting to shape up now that I am single. I must be throwing it off in some new way because everyone seems to want to set me up with their guy friends. I have never had this happen before, but to be fair, I have never been single to most of my friends and I have also never looked this vulnerable. I am being set up on dates with guys I have never seen, being asked out by men I have known for years as just friends, and all the while feeling as though I am doing something wrong. Every drink I have with another man, every time one of these boys makes me laugh, or smile, or feel just a little tiny flutter in my heart, I behave as if my ex is watching me. Worse than that, I feel as if his whole family is watching, judging me unfairly for making the best of a terrible situation. I know it's wrong, but it is hard to train your knee to jerk in the other direction, and my knee-jerk is to suppress any attraction I feel for anyone who is not Gino. I suppressed attraction to other people for years, as I am sure most people do while in a relationship. Sometimes, a relationship can feel like nothing more than denying oneself what the heart wants, and the heart is a stupid organ. It is like being on a diet- you are doing something good for yourself by not partaking in things that you want.
I have been on a diet for years with Gino, a Spartan diet with not many indulgences, and now that the metaphorical buffet is open I have trouble taking more than just a few bites before I feel that I have had enough. My appetite is coming back, but not as quickly as I thought it would. I imagined I would throw myself into this, just grab handfuls of what life had to give with complete abandon, but I am, as always, conservative.
I am having more trouble than I need to over practical things, such as how to be sexually responsible versus how to not ruin the moment. That was never a concern with Gino. Gino did not want to get me pregnant any more than I wanted to get pregnant, so we were always responsible. Even if we had a slip-up, I was at the pharmacy the next day when they opened for Plan B just to be safest. When we first got together, I was on NuvaRing, then the pill, and then when I had to stop taking the pill because of migraines, we went back to condoms. We both got tested early on and took care of ourselves, and I never worried. Now, I am worried because public school health class fogged up my perception of what sex is like outside of a committed relationship. I came away from all of that education really believing that all men were out to get me pregnant and simultaneously give me crabherpegonorrheasyphilis. Another factor of this trepidation is the fact that I had a near-miss pregnancy scare with the only other guy I slept with before I met Gino. This might have been the reason why I waited until I was 21 to have sex with a man, and that I have only been with two. If I had met Gino first, I have to admit, it would be only one.
Somehow, this fact came to light in a conversation I had recently with one of the guys I hang out with, and I think it changed the way he sees me now. The look that came over his face was somewhere between admiration and fear. Now, I am not just the female friend of his who is newly single and available, but I am also, seemingly, unschooled. My sister told me I should have gone out and explored more before settling on one man, but I felt no need to explore. I imagined I would do all of the exploring I needed to with my husband, locked within the confines of my marriage. The sexual risk-taking ended around the time he must have decided that he didn't have to impress me. I do like the idea of knowing someone else, some other body that is not Gino's, but it's an abstract. I have no idea what to expect, how to respond to anyone else because marriage had me so trained to respond to my husband. Sex between two people who have been together that long is more like a choreographed dance than anything else- they are the steps you follow to get to where you need to go. I worry that I won't know the steps with someone else, or that they will want to improvise and I'll be just tap-dancing on the sidelines like a dork.
These things concern me, but I know where to focus my energy for the time-being. I have to make my tiny apartment feel like a home first, and then I can think about all of these other, less-important things. I expect I will know when the time is right for working these things out, so for now I am just going to watch everyone else destroy the buffet.
I have been on a diet for years with Gino, a Spartan diet with not many indulgences, and now that the metaphorical buffet is open I have trouble taking more than just a few bites before I feel that I have had enough. My appetite is coming back, but not as quickly as I thought it would. I imagined I would throw myself into this, just grab handfuls of what life had to give with complete abandon, but I am, as always, conservative.
I am having more trouble than I need to over practical things, such as how to be sexually responsible versus how to not ruin the moment. That was never a concern with Gino. Gino did not want to get me pregnant any more than I wanted to get pregnant, so we were always responsible. Even if we had a slip-up, I was at the pharmacy the next day when they opened for Plan B just to be safest. When we first got together, I was on NuvaRing, then the pill, and then when I had to stop taking the pill because of migraines, we went back to condoms. We both got tested early on and took care of ourselves, and I never worried. Now, I am worried because public school health class fogged up my perception of what sex is like outside of a committed relationship. I came away from all of that education really believing that all men were out to get me pregnant and simultaneously give me crabherpegonorrheasyphilis. Another factor of this trepidation is the fact that I had a near-miss pregnancy scare with the only other guy I slept with before I met Gino. This might have been the reason why I waited until I was 21 to have sex with a man, and that I have only been with two. If I had met Gino first, I have to admit, it would be only one.
Somehow, this fact came to light in a conversation I had recently with one of the guys I hang out with, and I think it changed the way he sees me now. The look that came over his face was somewhere between admiration and fear. Now, I am not just the female friend of his who is newly single and available, but I am also, seemingly, unschooled. My sister told me I should have gone out and explored more before settling on one man, but I felt no need to explore. I imagined I would do all of the exploring I needed to with my husband, locked within the confines of my marriage. The sexual risk-taking ended around the time he must have decided that he didn't have to impress me. I do like the idea of knowing someone else, some other body that is not Gino's, but it's an abstract. I have no idea what to expect, how to respond to anyone else because marriage had me so trained to respond to my husband. Sex between two people who have been together that long is more like a choreographed dance than anything else- they are the steps you follow to get to where you need to go. I worry that I won't know the steps with someone else, or that they will want to improvise and I'll be just tap-dancing on the sidelines like a dork.
These things concern me, but I know where to focus my energy for the time-being. I have to make my tiny apartment feel like a home first, and then I can think about all of these other, less-important things. I expect I will know when the time is right for working these things out, so for now I am just going to watch everyone else destroy the buffet.
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