"Thanks. My ex never said anything nice about my (insert anything about me here)."
This is what keeps coming out of my mouth every single time the man I am dating/seeing/whatevering says anything about me. I told him the line I wrote about my ex, into my List Of Things I Still Want To Say To All Of You (In No Particular Order) poem, which reads, "You say that you're an ass man only because you don't like what being a tits man says about you."
"That's a good line," he says, "But, you know, you've got those things too."
Before I can tell myself to shut the fuck up and just lean into this championship-round snuggle that is already happening, I say, "Not enough of one. Too much of the other."
Self-deprecation is my knee-jerk, my fallback, and now I have to see it as my bad habit that I might just have to break myself of. I like myself, I just assume the rest of the world doesn't. This is the manner in which my self-confidence has grown in the past year and a half or so: I have come to own the way I feel about myself, all the while assuming the rest of the world, apart from maybe three or four people, does not actually agree with me. I brought it up with Gabriel when I was sharing with him my big problem: the fact that this young man even wants to spend any time with me. "I can't get over it, because he is just so... much, and I know I should stop talking shit about myself in front of him but I can't quite stop it."
"That's a dangerous thing," Gabriel said, "Sometimes guys hear a woman's self-deprecation and think, 'Well, maybe she knows something I don't'".
Giver of best advice as always, I slump down into my seat away from the truth he is holding up in front of me again. Of course, I think, and because I don't see things until they are really obvious, I can see now why my ex undervalued me, and why he thought he could do better: I put those thoughts in his head. I fed him a steady diet of flattery paired with constant undercutting of myself, and he was just believing the hype. And now I'm seeing someone who is even funnier, more clever, more attractive, better at sex and more fun to be around than my ex, and even though I am trying not to keep falling into the frozen mud puddle that is my self-deprecation, I am still struggling with how easy it is to bring up various shitty things my ex said when we were together. I have identified what it was that made my ex think he had permission to do this, but it hasn't entirely taken the sting out or made me stop thinking about it whenever this young man who I get to spend time with, occasionally at least, says something nice.
I can't just come from a place of appreciation, I immediately have to swallow the nice comment and regurgitate something awful my ex once said to me about the same thing. I'm starting to wonder if this is just what comes with the territory when you are dating someone our age, someone who has dated literally anyone else and has any experience to draw from. It's impossible to approach anyone with an entirely blank slate, especially when you are someone like me, who has mined most of my personal life for the sake of my writing already, polished it up, took out the parts where I acted like a total jackass, and published a lot of it on this blog. I am trying to be the kind of person I want to be, who does not cock up the mood with too much information about my past, who can just be in the moment without perpetually bringing up some other jerk I dated, but I don't even think that is possible to stop altogether. If you are in your late twenties or early thirties and are not brand new to dating, even if you haven't been involved with a lot of people, like me, the bones of all of your past involvements are buried underneath your feet wherever you are standing. Whatever you build is going to be over a foundation of bad dates, awkward kisses, uncomfortable sex, and painful breakups, as well it should be. If you haven't had your heart broken or even just had a really embarrassing moment with someone by the time you are over the age of 25, you are either lucky or haven't really gotten out enough.
The past doesn't just stop existing because it is in the past, but I know I don't need to bring it up constantly, especially when I don't get to see this person that much. When I am lucky enough to spend time with him, I need to remember that at this point, whatever this is kind of only exists inside of a bubble, a bubble that really is too small for the rest of the world to even get into. Looking at it this way, it gives me the freedom to not think about my ex, and not talk about him. It's a relief.
