Truth Hits Everybody

Writing came to me a little too easily this past week, and I know that it can't all be because I am just bubbling over with inspiration. It also has to be because I was on steroids. Because of a virus that invaded my lungs, I developed pleurisy, and after a few days of feeling like I could not take a full breath without passing out from the pain, my doctor put me on five days of Prednisone to reduce the inflammation. As a result, I have been feeling like there is no stopping me when it comes to getting this out, not just in my blog, but in my NaNo novel as well. It's no wonder I feel powerful and strong and like I can not make a false move at the moment: I'm on drugs.
I have been pushing myself even harder to get down to the marrow of this, what there even is, really, to still be sad about. I have made peace with Gino, managed to keep my head above water despite the fact that shrugging back into being with anyone, even someone who hobbles me a little, is easier than being alone all the time. I also thought I had shaken Mike out of my system, forced him out of my thoughts through measured determination, but that might take longer. The reason I have been able to come to a place of resolution with Gino is because he actually communicates with me, and I have been given permission by him to outline, in minute detail, exactly how much this has hurt. He has been willing to listen. This has helped more than nearly everything else. Telling youself, telling friends, telling a therapist, even, is one thing, but to be able to look the source of your pain in the face and tell them just what they put you through is much more therapeutic.
I know this is why I still feel so lost at sea when it comes to Mike. With Gino, I have been able to look down the barrel of the gun, face up to where I failed as a wife, and where I continue to fail him as a friend, and more importantly tell him where he failed me as a husband. With Mike, however, there is no there there. There is so very little to examine, and if I'm truthful, I have to see that I didn't even get the chance to fail with him. The momentum was just starting to build, I was finding my rhythm with him, and then it just stopped. I was still careening down the tracks and he was miles behind, already over whatever he felt for me. It continues to bother me, like a tickle in the back of my throat that won't go away, and I know it's irrational and that I should just get over it. I can't imagine what knowing the "truth"about why he didn't want to see me anymore could show me. All it could do, at this point, is erase the imaginary reasons I have created from my own imagination, or just hurt me more.
It is not my philosophy that absolute honesty is essential, despite my ceaseless quest for answers. Gino and I were honest with each other, a little too honest if I really look at it, or at least, he was with me. I knew about every single female who gave him a hard-on, and many of them were women I knew, either through work or just as friends. He was always a little braggy when he talked about these women, I had this knowledge, once he told me, that they turned him on, and I could not stop myself from holding myself up next to them and finding all of the little ways I didn't measure up. I knew he thought about other women when we were having sex, and that was his right, but I didn't really want to know who else he was thinking about while he was having sex with me. I never told him about who I was attracted to, who I thought about during sex when I needed a little help, but then again, I didn't think it was any of his business. I could have given it right back to him, given him a taste of his own medicine just to see how he liked it, but I felt that it was, somehow, too personal. I couldn't deal with him picking them apart the way that I, occasionally, picked apart the girls he liked. It was my insecurity that made me do it, that made me tear apart these women. Allowing him to tell me about them had given me permission to tear them down, and he knew it, but I didn't want to give him the same permission. My fantasy guys were mine, and they were not his to judge.
Some people thrive on that much honesty, in sharing everything with the person they love, but I prefer a measured dose. I do need something, though. I don't know why I am so fixated on knowing the reasoning behind everything. It must have something to do with my overactive imagination, with my tendency to take the worst possible scenario and blow it right up, make it larger than life and scarier than anything possibly could be. I run the outcomes through my head, doing risk management, trying to map out how I might react to anything that could arise. I know the truth behind why anyone does anything is never interesting, that it is usually just an arbitrary decision they pull out of their ass at the last minute, or it is for a really obvious reason. I have been dancing around the one obvious thing about this, playing keep-away with the heart of this matter, which is that Mike just didn't want to hang out with me anymore because he wants to hang out with someone else. Sometimes, the rules that applied in grade school still apply, and whatever the grown-up equivalent of a lunch box is, this girl, evidently, has a cooler one.
I have been trying to decide who I am comfortable with showing my NaNo novel to out of the friends of mine who have actually expressed interest in reading it. I will, naturally, show it to Najwa and Gabriel as they are my best friends, and my sister of course because I wrote her into it and she is a very perceptive reader. I am also planning on letting my friend Kit read it, because she has always given me great feedback on my writing. When it comes to letting Gino see it, I'm not sure if he can handle that much realness, but I'm not really worried about it because he has never read much of my writing. I have told him that I am writing about our relationship, albeit through a fictional narrative and with a few things changed, but he actually hasn't shown any interest. Writing has always been something I do, and Gino knows this, but I think he views my writing as something silly. He professes himself to be a poet, and while I am not one to say that his poetry is good or bad, I encouraged him to write, read his stuff, and told him what I thought of it any time he wanted me to. The few times I showed him my writing, he did not even finish the pieces I showed him. Even if he starts reading my novel, he probably won't finish it, so there is little risk there. The truth won't hurt him because he can't finish what he starts.