Something happened to me last week at work that has really started to drive me crazy. Crazier than usual. Seriously, I'm starting to consider getting cats and becoming a hoarder. Without getting into the details, since I made a promise to myself that I would not get fired for writing about my job on my blog, I was talking with a co-worker and they said I was insecure.
It wasn't said in an accusatory manner, rather, as an observation of something they'd never noticed about me before. It was surprising to them, because for nearly two months now, I've come off as independent, self-confident, and headstrong. They were concerned.
It left me speechless, which as most know, is a rarity. Had it been as a judgment, or an accusation, I probably would have launched into a tirade and never considered it, but something about the tone made me think that they were concerned for me - as if there was clearly no need for me to have such insecurities. It really hit me, and I had to actually think about it. While my response was being formulated, I couldn't believe that this bullshit was still affecting me. I even felt the tears coming, but I knew that if I cried at my workplace, shit was going down, so I swallowed those tears and gathered myself.
I told her that I wasn't sure exactly where my insecurity came from, but that I had a pretty good idea. Before my first relationship, I was a genuinely confident person. I had the same silly insecurities as most people my age, like "am I good enough to get a job?" and "do I look fat?" and that nonsense, but when it came down to it, I was happy with me. After I fell in love, everything changed because I stopped thinking about me almost entirely, and completely focused my time and energy on the other person. All the while, people, including my boyfriend, were telling me not to do that, and that you had to love yourself first, and I agreed. I was still too young(?), ignorant(?), blind(?) to see that I was simply rationalizing them away so that I could prolong this relationship.
I know I've said it before, but it was a sick relationship. I think it was about as sick as a relationship could get without having heavy drugs playing an integral role in the relationship, even though eventually, weed did. Sometimes, I hate having to categorize it as "sick," because I feel like it implies that I was sick, that I'm damaged, that there was something wrong with me, and with us. No one wants to be labeled as a victim. And it's even more difficult to accept that this was my first love. I have a hard time knowing that my first love was a sick love.
The sickness was the need. The need to be needed, and the need to be wanted. All of my creative energy and ideas were shut down and out of commission for two and a half years because I didn't have it in me to create. All I had in me was a focus on this relationship, making it better and making it work, and sometimes, making sure he liked me enough. The few times that I worked at it and built up an ounce of creativity, I'd seek approval and never get it. It crushed me.
The attacks became personal. The messages were mixed. What I offered was never substantial, what I did was never commendable, and who I was never was enough. Lying became a way of maintaining friendships, because the truth would drive them away. I became someone who was scared of almost everything, but true to my performer nature, I was excellent at not appearing so - even though the cracks in my foundation were growing.
I started rebuilding myself almost exactly a year ago. It would take a few misguided attempts, but my direction started pointing in the right direction at this time last year. I knew what I wanted for myself, I just wasn't sure how to get back to it. The hardest part would be letting go of the need.
This struggle - to gain independence, to gain a new sense of self, to understand happiness, and to constantly propel myself forward rather than regress - has been the most rewarding one of my life. I can't say it's been overwhelmingly challenging - in fact, it's easier than I ever imagined it could be, or else I would have done it a lot sooner. But that's the thing - fear reigned. The concepts seem so simple: I'm the boss of me, no one else's opinion really matters, follow your dreams no matter what, be who you are, and allow yourself room to grow. And it is simple, it's putting them into practice that takes the real work.
Still, I hate when I slip up. I hate when people can still see traces of that in me, because I feel like it's such a difficult thing to explain, and even more so, a difficult thing for people to understand. I'm all about vulnerability and the openness it creates in friendships and relationships, but I don't think most people have been able to grasp what that time period was all about for me.
I hate it most because I'm done with that part of my life and I don't want to be reminded of it. It filled a dark need in me, perhaps to show me that I could have control of my life again, but that need is gone now. I have almost 100% cut him out of my life, and only hear from him randomly when he'll send me a text or call and leave a message. He's always friendly, but I never answer. I wonder if I'm being too harsh, if a friendship, or at least civil conversation is a real possibility. I wonder if my unwillingness to engage with him is holding me back in this growth process. It's the wondering that creates the problem for me, though. Because I spent so much of our relationship doing just that - wondering if it was okay to be called annoying, wondering if him wanting to have a threesome was okay for him to be asking me, wondering if breaking up for the 4th time would be the final time, wondering if I should forgive him again. Wondering rather than knowing. Part of me wants to know if he's changed as much as I have. Part of me doubts I'll ever believe it if he ever does. And it's all of this doubt, this wondering, this uncertainty, that drives me away from him.
I don't need to forgive him, because I already understand. I don't blame him, because I already understand. I understand that we were two people with the best intentions who just couldn't make it work and along the way, we got hurt. We hurt each other, a lot. That's a pretty easy summation of the events, but at it's core, it's true. I genuinely don't think he's a a bad person, nor that he ever was, just not the person for me. It's just - you can't write about the relationship truthfully, without it seeming like there was maliciousness or badness inherent in it. Perhaps one of us was more aware of the hurting, and perhaps one of us had more passion to make things work. I don't think it does any of us any good to put the blame on one or the other. That doesn't create a solution, and it doesn't lead to growth.
I'm pretty confident that there will come a time when the need to work through these feelings every so often will diminish until they become nothing. There's a good chance that there will come a time when I see this all very differently. What I've come to see is that I'll always have needs, and seeing that time in my life through my present self is something I need to do. I need to keep working toward independence, and remind myself every so often of what codependence was really like. Maybe one day, when the bad taste in my mouth has gone away, I'll need to revisit how I see that time.
Right now, though, I need to do right by me.
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