I was crawling out of my skin. I felt inadequate, insecure, out of place. I felt like I was from another planet, wearing a bad disguise, afraid of getting found out and being deported from Normulus back to Terra Weirda. I didn't feel the connection that I thought we'd had before. I tried to manufacture it, but it didn't work. I tried to look deep into his eyes, but all I saw was myself trying to look deep into his eyes for something I couldn't see. I tried to speak, but all I could say were things I thought I should say. I tried to listen, but all I could hear were my own thoughts, going, "Okay, nod, smile, look really interested, and hurry, come up with something honest and meaningful to say to relate to what he's saying when he's done." I'd try to impress him, but then I'd recant and say that what I'd just said wasn't entirely true, that I was exaggerating, trying to impress him.
If I have to try so hard, am I really "being myself"? Hell no! And who the hell am I? I still don't know. That's the problem from the very beginning. Being a serial relationshipper means I have absolutely no identity (I did record at a music studio this weekend, and I sang in church, but I was a horrible mother to my son because I was obsessing about this guy and freaking out about where it may or may not go and what I should or shouldn't do, I hardly contacted my friends as much as I normally do to ask how they're doing, I ceased writing my inventory of my past relationships in order to write about this relationship, I stopped thinking about and feeling the loss of my mentor Margaret, I didn't get any chores done, I lost a ton of sleep, and I just felt completely derailed, in general).
But it's not his fault, even. I had assigned him the same "magical" qualities I always assign men when I want them to want me and I want to want them (although I probably gave him more of 'em than any of the past guys combined, and the following list doesn't even cover 'em): "intelligent", "healthy", "sane", "normal", "musically inclined", "mathematically inclined", "physically active", "family man", "driven", "kind", "vulnerable", "honest", "handsome", "traveler", "Christian", "gardener", "affectionate", "composer", "fearless", "performer", "successful", "engineer". And my motives were all wrong. Damnit, successful guys always foster in me that Ooh,-he-could-take-care-of-me bobble-headed fantasy. No matter who he is, that's my motive. Oh, fuck, it's so messed up.
And another motive: Thursday, the day I met him when he first asked me out, was, not just in correlation but in causation, the first day I didn't have the searing chest pain that had, for the prior week on a (sometimes twice or thrice) daily basis, prompted me to scream uncontrollably and cry to the point of exhaustion over Margaret's suicide. Dating James was a way out of that pain; when the opportunity presented itself, my depression gave way to excitement, joy, thrill, happiness, and gratitude. I had no willpower to decline. I couldn't foresee that I would actually miss the pain, that yesterday, when it came back, after I'd heard from her lawyer that she'd put me in her Will and that I needed to go in for a reading of it tomorrow (today...in about an hour), there was something comfortable about it. It felt right. The pain of loss felt normal. What doesn't feel normal is dating someone so I don't have to feel it. That feels wrong.
Margaret's fiancé died over a couple years back. Within a month, she was with Crawford, and within another month they were living together, and within two years he broke her heart, and she killed herself. She told me, one of the nights we spent talking about our dismal experiences with men, "I just don't want you to be 53 and having to go through something like this. Please, please learn from my mistakes. Promise me." Her "mistakes" are resounding with me now, saying, "Stop dating...it's too soon...". The sex and love addiction book says that "wherever and whenever we are vulnerable, we will be tested". I've failed the test, damnit.
But...okay...stepping back here...I want to acknowledge that this is what my Catholic "ex-gay" best friend Peter calls a "Cadillac" problem (I don't know why I had to add the descriptors; he's just an interesting guy). One reason I hang out with people with much worse problems than mine (other than to fulfill my *ahem* purely angelic desire to be of service to them) is to get out of this deplorable self-centeredness and be grateful for the good in my life. There was this guy, Cecil, in the substance recovery meeting I went to yesterday, who has been living in his car for the past couple of years...former vet, now coming up on 3 months sober...who got a job. But, he didn't have enough gas to make it back "home" where he's used to parking his car. So one of the ex-cons who sells newspapers at an intersection threw him a few bones and said, "I'm supposed to give 10 percent of this to a charity, but I ain't gonna give it to nobody I can't see. I can see you need it, man." And Cecil was overflowing with gratitude as he shared about all this with us, his Bible clutched in his hand. It made me beam, and it put me right-sized.
Because I do have so much good in my life (my son, my church, my blues band, my recovery meetings, my sponsors, my sponsees, my friends, my family, my reading, my writing, my singing, my cats, my place to live, my jobs, my God), I do wonder, why does it matter so much whether I have a man in my life or not? Why does that have to be my focus? Why can't I just forget about the whole damn thing and just go help people?
I guess it's because this aspect of my life makes me feel so...lost...and it's driving me absolutely crazy. I do try to help others, but I don't have a lot to give just yet. I feel like I need to find myself -- and pull it all together before I'm just completely gone (like Margaret...although I would never do what she did; I'm an optimist, as it turns out). Right now, I'm scattered in pieces that I've left with every man I've been with along the road. I heal more and more as I go back to gather those pieces (even if, here and there, I still drop some). Through writing, however shabbily, I absorb the pieces of my self back into, what I hope someday will be, a whole.
"Being whole means being healthy, feeling content, fulfilled, and proud of one's accomplishments. It means being confident that you can handle whatever challenges might come your way. It means that you know that you are worthy of happiness; worthy of respect. It means you have the motivation and ability to follow your dreams. It means you are proud of who you see looking back at you in the mirror. It means you will be proud at the end of your days as you look back at a life well-lived." http://www.onbeingwhole.com/Here's a quote I really like: "I'm not a bad person trying to get good. I'm a sick person trying to get well."
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