2002-12-19 - 9:28 a.m.
I keep trying to come up with something to post. Something light hearted and funny. But that doesn't seem to be the flavor of late. I've always been lousy at small talk.
Yesterday, my best friend said something that felt like a punch in the stomach. Not on purpose, mind you. Regardless of how cranky he may have been, I know he wouldn't have said it if he'd known how it felt to hear it.
I'd taken one of those stupid quizes from Ladies Home Journal entitled "What Type of Lover are You?" Not as sexy as it sounds. It was basically trying to parse out what kind of partner you are. Here's the shocker ... I'm a PRACTICAL lover (can you smell the sarcasm?) Which means something about always having my eye on the future, creating relationships based on friendship, and being in danger of getting in a rut. Fine. Let this be a lesson to me that I can't escape who I am, the Ladies Home Journal says so.
Anyway, I was telling my best friend about this and, in response to the bit about always having my eye on the future, he jokingly said "you always have a plan to leave them". I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think of anything to say. I quickly ended the phone call and tried to go on with my day. But that comment stuck with me. I couldn't figure out why, I knew he wasn't trying to hurt me, I knew he was joking, but it wouldn't go. By the time I left work I was fairly depressed.
Went to see Two Towers so I didn't have to think about it for about 3 hours but after I got home I couldn't sleep. So, I talked to myself until I figured out what was wrong ...
He was right. How do I put this? I have always tried to make it ok for my boyfriends to leave. I have always tried to avoid situations in which I would say "I do not find living my life without you acceptable". A friend of mine keeps talking about how my ex-husband wouldn't do anything to keep me, he just let me go. And I hadn't been able to figure out why that mattered. Of course he just let me go, isn't that what you do? Fighting to keep someone in your life is just postponing the inevitable, isn't it?
But maybe it's not. Maybe there is a feeling out there that means you fight to stay together ... and fighting doesn't mean hurting each other. Maybe there is a way to feel about a person that makes living without them impossible. And if that's true ... why have I been avoiding it? Why have I been afraid of it? Why can I not even conceptualize it?
For the benefit of my myriad therapists I will say it is because of psychological damage done me during my parent's divorce. They may not be wrong. If it's always ok for people to leave you can't be hurt or surprised by it, right? Or, better, they can't leave you ... you get to leave them.
Nasty, ugly thoughts. Please don't get me wrong, I'm glad I left my marriage. I can't count the ways I didn't belong there.
But you can't escape who you are ... at least, not until you aren't that person anymore.
M
