Skip navigation

Tag Archives: vulnerability

Self-Love

I used to buy an extra ticket to everything, for an eventual partner who never existed. When I was married, my husband would join me for some things, but his attitude toward anything I enjoyed was so negative that I stopped wanting him to go with me. So I stopped doing things I enjoy at all.

When I started seeing Nandi, I would buy an extra seat to anything I wanted to do, on the offhand chance he would actually join me. He never would. He even resented the last minute things he agreed to do with me like, trying a new restaurant or just joining me on errands. Actually joining me at a planned event was out of the question. His excuse was needing to be home with his kids and not being able to plan ahead because of them. But it never stopped him going to bars late at night and texting me about the flirtatious waitresses there. And if I asked him to meet me at a bar? He couldn’t, of course – the kids. But I would join him at things he had planned, out of town trips for martial arts events, that sort of thing. They were never about me or us – they were about something he wanted to do and I was just along for the ride. 

Later, when Mac came along, he would do things with me sometimes. I paid for trips out of town, concerts, all kinds of things, and he loved every plan. He didn’t make it to most of them because he would initiate a fight or just disappear the day of, and go missing for days or weeks, then claim illness or a drug bender. So I wouldn’t go either. Or if he did go, he would have a drug-induced psychotic episode and create huge drama that caused us to have to leave. So much wasted money buying seats and trips for us that never got used. The last one, he staged a huge fight the day before a concert I had bought us tickets for. I was too upset to go, so the tickets were wasted, as usual. Late night the day of the concert, I saw him post about having gone and how great it was. I don’t even believe he had gone – it was definitely intended for me to see it and honestly how would he have gotten tickets? He had no job, no money, and they were sold out long before. The story that a friend took him could have been true, but I knew it wasn’t. He had long before admitted that he often posted pretending to have been at events just so it would look like he had a life. 

After that, I would just try to plan things with friends. Sometimes it worked, but most of the larger ticket items just ended up never happening because no one could commit to go or not. 

I didn’t want to keep wasting my time and money on tickets for two that never got used, so I just stopped planning to do things. 

For the brief time I was seeing Caelus, I would suggest things – always something I could arrange, of course. Someone gave me tickets to this event, we should go. There’s a restaurant I can take him for his birthday. He would say “that might be fun sometime,” but it was never the right time. He never took me anywhere and never did anything with me outside his house. When we started coming out of this pandemic, I still considered making space for him in things I wanted to plan, just in case he came around. I resisted, of course. I no longer am willing to make space for someone who doesn’t exist or someone who doesn’t want to be in the space I create for them. 

From now on I plan things for no one but myself, and I do things for myself and with myself alone. Sure, I’ll offer friends to join me if it makes sense, but I make my plans without waiting for their decision if it’s not forthcoming.

I am entering a loving and supportive relationship with myself, and I will give myself every single ounce of the love and care that I used to offer up to others. 

Just Chill

Woman and hurting heart

Starting a new relationship. I’m certain I’m not ready – so many of Mac’s words and actions still surface, making me question if I am even worthy of connection, and already my anxious attachment style is causing constant uncertainty. But it happened and there is no going back.

He came on strong but not intense at first. Just being very open about how he felt. There was no love bombing, just attentiveness, protectiveness – and gifts. Sweet thoughtful gifts like remembering what I like and making sure I always have it. When we’re together, he’s sweet, attentive, and thoughtful. He texts me every day. He always responds quickly if I text him. He’s always available when I call. But he has boundaries about how often we need to see each other. He has things to do and a life of his own and he makes time for me in the midst of these things rather than immersing me in them or immersing himself in my life. He is very affectionate when we’re together, but his texts don’t contain many words of validation or affection or even sexting content. I’m equally relieved and wondering what’s wrong. It’s only been a month – this is the normal pace of a relationship, I tell myself. Yet, it’s hard to shake the pattern of feeling that if he doesn’t demand my constant attention and shower me with endless words of affirmation, it means he’s really not that into me. Little seemingly harmless things he says or does (or doesn’t do) send me into anxious hysterics inside. We’re both getting used to sleeping with someone again (yes, I’m sleeping with this guy in the same bed staying over at his place every weekend – I’m such a hypocrite). He made a comment about me pushing him off the bed and I took it to heart as a rejection. I didn’t express it, because I know it’s irrational and I have learned to be good at letting myself process and not immediately react. After all, he had previously mentioned missing me being in bed with him, and this comment was half humor, not meant to be cruel. And the fact is, I’m having a hard time learning to sleep with him too. It’s normal to have some difficulties getting used to each other’s sleep habits. I, of all people, should know this and not take it personally when he jokes about it, or even if he feels a little crabby after not getting a full night’s sleep. I wouldn’t even let my last boyfriend sleep with me AT ALL for god’s sake. And I’m so full of anxiety about being too clingy or attentive, or not being affectionate or attentive enough. If I text him with sweet words, he doesn’t respond with sweet words, though he does always respond gratefully and almost like he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t know how to communicate this way. So then I start wondering, am I getting myself into another avoidant situation like Nandi? I stop communicating affection. And then I start getting scared that my not communicating affection will make him think I’m not into him – and so I send a hint of it. And the cycle repeats. My god why can’t I just chill the fuck out and let this unfold naturally? It’s barely been a month for god’s sake!

What are the odds?

iStock-814301264.jpg

I saw you in that coffee shop

You didn’t notice me

Just like it always was

Those years before.

I saw you in that coffee shop

And I felt nothing

I did not even want your attention

After all those years of beating myself against your iron clad heart

Trying to get you to see me

To feel anything

I do not want your attention anymore.

I felt sad for you, staring down at your computer screen as always, missing life as it walks right in and out of the room.

There was a coffee shop chain Mac introduced me to and I was craving their food one day but didn’t want to go to any of the ones he might attend, knowing he sometimes has his friends pick him up there. The last thing in the world I want right now is to run into Mac somewhere. So I found one somewhere he would be very unlikely to go, and headed there. Walking in, I immediately saw Nandi head down in his laptop in front of me. It wasn’t his neighborhood either, so no idea what he was doing there. I thought about walking out but then thought, “Why should I?” I walked right past him, up to the counter, ordered my food. I sat as far away from him as possible, but the place is small so no way I could escape his range of vision entirely. I drank my coffee. I ate my food. He did not look up from his laptop once. I came, I ate, I left, with him never noticing me at all. Felt like old times. Except I felt no sadness, no desperation or despair. I actually just felt bad for him, still stuck in the same pattern after all this time. It gave me hope – that someday I may feel the same nothing in the face of running into Mac.

Peace

iStock-837440074.jpgSometimes I find myself reaching inward, trying to touch that need for you.  It’s only curiosity, an interest in knowing whether it could be rekindled even if I wanted it to. I don’t want it. But I wonder – could it ever claim me again? If I were to see you tomorrow, what would I feel? Sometimes I feel I hate you. Sometimes it’s only pity I feel. Underneath it all, I do feel a love, but it’s like the love of a sister to her brother.  And only that this time. There is no passion. No desire. When I think of us together, the intensity we once felt, I cannot touch it. I remember it like I’m watching a film with different people, just actors, not us. It doesn’t touch me. Sometimes I think it’s my own psyche protecting me from the memory.

Someone who is recently sober said they realize they will never again feel the highs they got from being on drugs, that nothing in the natural world will ever come up to that intensity, but that it’s worth the loss of that high to never again have to feel the incredibly unbearable lows that always came after. I feel the same when I think of you, of our relationship. I will never feel that rush again. Because it was unnatural – like addiction to a drug, not love.  But I am happy to let it go, never to be felt again, for the simple peace of your permanent absence from my life.

Second Brene Brown talk: Listening to shame – 2012

Brene Brown: 2010 TED Talk on the power of vulnerability

When I unpack my frequently fearful and anxious emotional responses to anything that confuses me or makes me feel uncertain in relationships, I tend to find shame at the core of most of them – and somewhere around that, a resistance against vulnerability. When I saw Brene Brown’s first lecture on Shame, it resonated with me. The second literally made me cry. I haven’t read her book yet, but fully intend to.