Yesterday, I reached out to the Hive Mind that is Facebook, and I asked about the logistics of post-divorce dating. Having been separated and divorced for five years, I’ve had some experience with it. Three years with Rango, the months that turned into whatever with Bounder… plus the dozens of others I entangled myself with to varying degrees.
But having unexpectedly met someone threw me for a loop. I am often hypersensitive to others, and I’m constantly on high alert for warning signs of disappointment (read: abandonment). I am persistently in a state of overthinking everything. Everything.
Ah, the joys of anxious attachment!
I wanted to know about the logistics of dating. I didn’t actually date in my teens and twenties. I married DH at 21. Though I’d been in a four-year relationship prior to him, it was abusive and tumultuous. Dating again five years ago was weird, for sure, and Rango was intended to be the last one.
Best laid plans, man.
So now having unexpectedly met someone, I have been struggling to determine if my feelings of anxiety and agitation are warranted, i.e., did he really pull back, or are those flutters and weird pangs in my chest just my own insecurities in a panic?
With rare exceptions, all of my romantic partnerships during the last five years started intense and immediate. We exchanged lots of messages, dates’ worth of information disclosed over the course of a couple of days via text and chat. Phone conversations were rarer, but it’s hard to talk when you’re both working and managing kids and lives.
Dating after divorce is hard. For everyone, there is the complication of past hurt, of trying to honor your own internal struggles and pain without getting caught in the same loops again. Those best laid plans were decimated, and it’s daunting to consider opening yourself to the possibility of hurt again. The demands of adulthood make finding time to connect even harder. And when one or both of you have kids, the scheduling difficulties and emotional concerns expand exponentially.
But what turned out to be my normal experience with dating again maybe wasn’t very normal at all. That constant connection felt fantastic, because it satisfied my tendency toward anxious attachment. While this new guy and I did have days of constant chatting and a couple of fantastic dates that first week, the communication dropped back. There are lots of logical reasons (see above), but the loosened connection made me agitated, sending me into days of hyper critical thinking.
Is the lack of constant, effusive attention normal, or is he an avoidant who's about to bail?
The thing about anxious and avoidant attachment styles is that they are inherently insecure--that’s why they’re not part of the secureattachment style. But secure attachment requires attachment to something (really someone). Even if I were secure in my own talents and attributes and accepting of who I am (which I’m plainly not), that doesn’t necessarily mean I could be securely attached to another person--though it would certainly improve the chances. An attachment is only formed in connection to an Other.
For me, this has most often manifested as this pathological dance between anxious Me and avoidant Them. We both want intimacy, and we connect immediately. When the feelings and connections become very intense, they run. Right on cue, I chase, trying desperately to maintain the lack of agitation that comes with being connected.
What I have finally learned is that the lack of agitation does not mean the attachment is secure. An absence of fluttery pangs in my chest does not equate to happily-ever-after. Because of the inherent insecurity on both sides, they are likely to bolt when they feel trapped by the intimacy they commanded. I’ve done the dance a dozen times and know the warnings signs, so I am always on high alert.
My rose-colored glasses can make even the whitest of flags look like they’re signalling the riptide that will drown me.
So did the new guy pull back, or is it normal dating behavior?
I don’t know.
I have polled my friends. I sought roundabout advice from the Hive Mind. No one knows, and I sure as hell don’t. The consensus is that I should wait and see, play it cool and just wait.
But I am impossibly impatient. Because I am not throwing everything at him at once, because I’m not demanding answers from him, I am agitated. At times, it feels as though my heart is about to claw its way out of my chest like a lovesick Xenomorph.
I don't know what to do with the agitation. I'm walking again, which helps. I'm down nearly 20 pounds since Rango and I split. I'm writing, though I recognize that almost no one but me sees these words. They are cathartic for me, however, and that has its own importance.
But the writing and therapy have shined a glaring light on my insecurities. I know why they came about, how they were formed, just not what to do to make them better. And not doing things how I always have, not demanding that he give me the weight of answers I may not want to hear, is uncomfortable
What worked before isn't working now, because I'm not letting it.
But this is driving me crazy, and there seems to be no peace to be found. The firefighters are at odds with one another, fighting inside me over how best to help me feel calm. All I can do is plod ahead, hour by hour, and do the things I need to do. I know that’s the managers, though, distracting me with to-do lists and minutiae that feels all too important.
I may feel like I’m coming apart from the inside, but at least my toilets will be clean.
When DH and I split up, it was devastating for us all. He and I had been together for most of two decades, and even with all the bullshit that precipitated our end, there’s no doubt that it was hardest on our boys. Max and Tricky weathered it all beautifully, for the most part, but their world collapsed in on itself. Their dad exited it for most of four years, whether physically or emotionally. While he and I have battled off and on for much of that time, I can very cautiously state that we have achieved a détente in recent months and have been able to effectively communicate and co-parent. I know it has been good for me and for the boys, and I hope it has been good for DH, as well.
When Rango came into our life, it seemed magical. Not only did he get me, he got my kids. His personal history gave him very specific insight into what my young sons were thinking and feeling. He bonded with them almost as quickly as he bonded with me. We were all happy when we intertwined our households and created an entirely new life for ourselves.
But somewhere, it all went awry. It’s not just in hindsight that I can see the landmarks pointing us toward destruction; I could see them happening in real time and spoke out against them. My aggressively railing against impending damage gave him reason to withdraw, and eventually I found myself with yet another avoidant, who could dismiss me and compartmentalize away until he felt the need or desire to deal with me. When I became an inconvenient reminder of his own damage and shortcomings, I was ignored to the point of feeling as if I didn’t exist for him until he chose to acknowledge me.
I could spend days psychoanalyzing him, breaking down his history as I know it and applying that knowledge to his behaviors, inferring meaning into every action and word ever exchanged between us. I could obsessively reread every email and text message and chat message, listen to the couple of voicemails I still have on my phone. But really, what’s the point? It won’t change anything, and it’s unlikely to offer me an insight I don’t already have.
I have spent days packing his belongings. I cleaned out drawers and closets and cabinets, looking for any lingering reminders that might blindside me if found later. Yes, it’s logistical, but it’s also a reclamation of the space. I have moved my knick-knacks and pictures onto the shelves where his things had been. I am slowly taking over the empty dresser and closet space again. I am gleefully eating glutinous yummies and not worrying about dropping crumbs, in case I irritate his wheat allergy.
When I told my dad that I really am okay, that it has been far less upsetting than other break-ups, he replied, “Well, that probably just means it was time.”
I’m not burying the sadness. The first few days were awful, and I cried a lot. But I also cried a lot during the last year, begging and negotiating and demanding resolution that didn’t come in the way in which I’d hoped. In the way in which he’d promised me when we met or during the first year of our relationship.
What I can’t get rid of yet is the anger. I’m not angry that our romantic relationship ended. I do think it’s incredibly unfortunate, given how wonderful the man I fell in love with was. We both changed in three years, and we couldn’t change together. He has his own damage and his own need for protections, and those needs are different than my own. In the end, we couldn’t meet each other’s needs, no matter how mindfully and intentionally I tried.
But he hurt my children. The last time he saw them, we sat around the kitchen table while he told us that he loved us, that we were his family, and that he wanted to be home with his family again. He asked the boys to think about his moving back home and to share those thoughts with him. But before they could respond, he was gone.
He ghosted on them completely. He told them he loved them and chose them and then never saw them again. He effectively unchose them with no explanation or apology. While losing a beloved family member and parental figure is hard under any circumstances, especially for children, this was eerily reminiscent of what happened with their father. Rango’s behavior mirrored what was the most hurtful and damaging experience of their young lives, and he knew better. He knew the exact way in which to inflict the most damage, both on me and on the boys, and did it anyway. He abandoned two boys who adored him, who relied on him, who loved him and just wanted to be loved back. If it wasn’t calculating and malicious, it was thoughtless and careless, cruelly reckless.
When I finally made the logistical break from his avoidant bullshit, Fluffernutter asked me if I could see the possibility of reconciliation in the future, maybe after a few months of no contact and time to settle and rethink everything. At the time, I ruled out the possibility of ever ruling him out completely.
But last week, Tricky asked me, “Will we ever be able to bring Rango back?”
I realized in that moment, as he looked down at his homework, floppy hair hiding his face from scrutiny, that I am no longer open to that possibility. DH is their father, and Max and Tricky love him very much; they will always find a way to maintain that relationship. I pray regularly that DH does the same.
But Rango was an outsider, whom we chose to love. The boys chose him, every time, until he didn’t choose them back. I introduced him into our world, cautiously and with the reservation that all single parents have in such cases. For me to ever allow him access to them again would open the plausibility of additional hurt, and I am unwilling to gamble with their hearts again.
So for now, for the foreseeable future, it will just be me and my young men. I’m not remotely interested in dating again. I’ll say maybe ever, but I understand the statistical likelihood of that actually happening. But if I even contemplate trusting someone enough to let them past my own mounting defenses, my heart and mind slam up those steely walls, unwilling to consider such possibility even cursorily.
I also remind the boys that this wasn’t their fault. His choice was his choice, and nothing they could ever do would warrant the kind of hurt he has inflicted. I remind them that they did nothing wrong, that their love is worth far more than Rango admitted.
About the time Rango moved into the house with us, I started to realize that I was having a hard time with his past.
Due to the constraints of time and distance and the necessary logistics for the boys, he and I never spent a night in his apartment. He insists that the apartment was never more than a landing pad and that it never felt like home. While I do believe home for him became wherever I was within days of our meeting, part of me still feels like I never got the opportunity to... I don't know... mark that territory...?
It sounds stupid, I know. I feels stupid. Every time some ex comes up, I cringe.
I know part of my insecurity comes from my maladaptive attachment style, which was established in my childhood and then reinforced over and over and over (and over and over and over) in my adult dating life, especially in the two-and-a-half years after DH and I split. I'm a fragile cat, without a doubt, but so is Rango. Generally we are very careful and patient with one another's emotions, lovingly treading across the scarred battlefield of the other's heart.
But really, I have no idea why the hell I am so freaked out when some former relationship of his is mentioned. Because I took the brutally-open-and-honest approach while I was dating, Rango learned probably far more about me in those first days than maybe he wanted, especially my history with the fragile cats.
When you're divorced, or maybe it just happens at this age when you have a good deal of life experience, first date conversation inevitably turns to prior relationships. Were you married? Do you have kids? Why did you break up? First dates are basically an interview, after all—a chance to see if their fuckeduppedness will play well with your fuckeduppedness.
So he knew very quickly that I was living in the same house I'd lived in with my ex-husband. He knew my most painful ex lived just a few miles away and semi-regularly sees me in passing. He knew I'd had a very active dating and social life on the weekends before DH moved out of state and dropped regular contact with the boys.
Hell, I wrote a book about some of it.
In the semi-autobiographical Persona Non Grata, Tierney talks about how she has a hard time hearing about her husband, Sam's, relationship with his long-ago ex-girlfriend:
"I worried for years that you had loved her more than you loved me," I admitted one night. I couldn't look at him when I said it. I kept my gaze trained on the darkness in the woods behind our house.
"Why? Why would you even think that? Didn't I tell you every day that I loved you? Couldn't you just believe that?"
"I believed you. I still do. But, Sam, you were so broken when you guys split. I kept waiting for you to come home and tell me that she'd called, that she wanted you back. I used to dream about it all the time."
I really didn't know that DH loved me more than he'd loved her until the day Max was born, more than seven years into our marriage.
And I know that love should never feel like a competition, but my head is sometimes a mess, and I sometimes feel like I am constantly at battle with the ghosts of the past. I am forever struggling to overcome my screwed up perceptions of how I think other people see me. Often this drives me to be bigger and better and faster and more. I feel like there is so much inherently wrong with me and about me, and that if I can perfect as many small things as possible then the huge amount of bad is still outweighed by lots of little good.
No one is harder on me than I am on myself.
I few weeks ago, I told Rango, "I won't feel secure until I've been with you longer than you've been with [your ex-wife]."
"But you already have."
I looked at him, puzzled. "You do remember that you were married for five years, don't you?"
"Yeah, but our relationship was over long before we even got married," he replied. "Emotionally, we were together for a week-and-a-half."
A few days later, we took our first trip together. Without the boys, we went to Texas for his sister's wedding, which also gave me the opportunity to meet and spend time with his family. We had a lovely couple of days in San Antonio, walking around Riverwalk and later dancing at the wedding, followed by a day in Houston.
A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 5:22pm PDT
DH and I had flown into San Antonio once, gone immediately to buy a car, and then drove straight home to Alabama. We passed through a section of Houston on the way. My 2012 trip to Austin by myself was my only real trip to Texas.
Rango spent his teen years in Texas, especially in and around Houston. He lived in various places before moving to Atlanta (to be with [his ex-wife]), but he still thinks of Texas as home. (Well, maybe until he met me.)
Although I'd never been to San Antonio, I set part of Persona Non Grata there. Tierney's life blows up (the climax without a climax) at the Marriott Riverwalk. I spent some time researching and wrote about what I'd never actually seen:
I walked out from the hotel and turned onto the wide walkways along the river. I knew there was a coffee shop nearby. I ordered a frittata and took my coffee to a small table. I ate slowly, trying to abate the nagging headache.
I was tired but didn't want to hole up in my hotel room. I spent a couple of hours exploring San Antonio. I walked over little bridges and through lushly landscaped mini-parks. I was impressed by the mix of modern and traditional, of historical and new.
I found a shady spot outside a coffee shop, sitting under a bright yellow umbrella. It was still early, but the River Walk was bustling already with people ready for the new day. I sketched the profile of a young woman sitting on a park bench, reading a book. The face of the sleeping baby, parked in his stroller at his parents' table next to mine.
A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 11:21am PDT
Rango and I stayed at another Marriott a few blocks away. On Saturday morning, he happily walked with me to find the spot I'd written. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was included in an earlier draft of PNG. (It was eventually cut and re-written because the scene was lifeless.) And while he knew this was a fictionalized account, that I'd never been to these places, he also knew we were living a moment from the fictionalized account of the events that triggered the metamorphosis that led, in part, to my divorce.
Never did he complain. Never did he express a jealous thought. Not once did he have to choke back an angry lump and leave the room to catch his breath and regain control.
But driving to Houston the next day, picked up by his best friend, some comment was made about an ex they shared. (Who am I to judge someone for dating their best friend's ex?) Sitting in the back seat of the car, I bristled at the mention, knowing full well that she was long, long before me, that the relationship was short-lived and didn't work for a reason, that he loves me more.
Days later, as we were talking about traveling again soon—something DH and I never did together—I told him I would never go to Sweden with him, because he went there to see a now-ex.
"But it's a beautiful country," he argued. "You would love to see it."
I'm sure I would, but I was never willing to go to New Orleans with DH (in theory, because we didn't travel together or take vacations) because India had lived there in her childhood and later gone on vacation there with DH.
I've talked before about how I am a hoarder of memories. Because I remember virtually everything, I hold onto a lot of shit on my big, broken brain. Combine that with my intense sentimentality, and my head is an emotional minefield that I can barely traverse—how the hell is anyone else supposed to get through?
What I realized is that I am more than willing to give Rango the chance to replace some of those memories. Sometimes, he does it and doesn't even know it. Maybe we're having an incredibly wonderful moment and a song comes on that would have previously tied me up in knots, a reminder of a past moment. While there are still songs I just can't bear to hear anymore, there are a few that are now associated with Rango. Maybe it's a trip to a place I've been before or only dreamt about with someone else.
His heart replaced theirs in that memory space.
His cautions that there are formative memories that cannot be replaced. Of course. No matter what he or I do, there's no possible way to replace everything, and I wouldn't want either of us to do that. What happened before is what has led us to here, to the place where our paths converged. It's all about the journey and not the destination.
Yes, I know that I am letting my own insecurities and fears get in my way. I loathe that I think and feel this way. I am repulsed by the dark, tangled emotions that swirl around inside me, ensnaring my thoughts and hijacking what should be a calm, normal moment.
The only way I know to fight the dark is with light. When I don't feel like my own, internal light is strong enough to illuminate the path, I turn into the disco ball, spinning and reflecting a broken, scattered mosaic of brilliance that can be as annoyingly blinding as it is charming in its kinetic chaos.
Through it all, Rango says he is more than happy to be in my shadow, to let me spin in the spotlight while he supports me. I want him to be where he is happy and comfortable. I don't want to ever lose him to the darkness that I refuse to face and enter.
But I really have no idea how to counter the jealousy. I don't know how to not feel like it's a competition, even though it's one I know I'd have won months ago. I don't have a clue how not to snarl back at any of his memories that I'm afraid are snarling at me.
It's been an incredibly busy six weeks, and I've been sorely out of touch. Summer break for the boys was surprisingly busy, especially for Max who was gearing up to start high school. (High school! My baby is in high school!) I was working when I could, and I was constantly doing homework or in class—completing the 15-hour class load for the summer session. It exhausted me, but I managed to pull off a 3.8 GPA for the semester and both boys are still alive.
In the midst of all of that chaos, there came Rango. While talking during our first date, I was telling him what my hectic life was like.
"How do you manage time to date?" he asked across a ginger beer.
"I just do it," I replied. "If it's important to me, I find the time."
That was an issue with so many of the Fragile Cats before. They would often say they were too busy to be regularly available, but they also had the expectation that I would be happy and welcoming when they wanted to drop a dead mouse on my doorstep. As most of the Castration Committee will attest, I thrive in chaos; I am generally at my best when I am forced to prioritize and organize and be efficient in my decisiveness. I could always find time to spend with Bounder or Katniss or Rex or any of them.
They wouldn't always find the time to spend with me.
As I realized over the year-and-a-half of dating after my separation, I was mostly drawn to avoidants—the asshole Fragile Cats who justified running hot and cold and often made me feel like it was my fault for wanting or expecting them to follow through on their word. Yes, if you tell me you're going to show up or call, I actually expect you do show up or call.
Somehow they were always surprised when I felt hurt or angry with them for not doing what they'd said they would.
Eventually I learned it wasn't me at all that had screwed up in these exchanges. La Bruja told me months ago that I would eventually find an amazing guy who wasn't like that, at which point I would cease to even see the avoidants who were trying to get my attention.
She was right. Kind of.
I still see them; I'm me—I can pick them out of a crowd in five seconds flat. But I don't pay attention to them. I don't feel drawn to help or empathize or soothe. Usually I smile and nod politely while mentally running through my to-do list for the upcoming days. Sometimes I just roll my eyes and walk away.
Given my own hectic life, it's surprising that I even bothered to try one more time. I was determined that July 2nd would be my last date for a very, very long time. I'd intended that to be the case if and when it turned out that he was another avoidant asshole. Never did I expect the guy to actually be Rango.
Because he mattered to me, I had to make the decision very quickly to incorporate Rango into my life. He was willing to accept me and my crazy, plus my two sons and the logistical issues that divorced parenting brings.
Somehow, because I matter to him, he finds the way and the time to make me and the boys a priority. When a recent family illness brought an unexpected road trip to Alabama, he didn't hesitate to offer to go with us. He hasn't shied away from meeting my family or friends.
More importantly, when I woke in the middle of the night crying a few weeks ago, he didn't shy away from me. The logistics of my life were taking a physical and emotional strain, and I woke at 4 a.m. to a barrage of hot, angry sobs. He was awake elsewhere in the house, trying not to wake me with his own sick and sleeplessness.
I laid there for a moment in the dark, paralyzed with fear and hurt. All the nights I woke alone like that came crushing back, and I couldn't breathe. Then I remembered that I had begged the Universe for someone who could help shoulder that weight for me. I had prayed for someone to be there in the middle of the night when I was crying.
I padded down the hall to where he was in the kitchen. He looked at me, saw the glint of streaming tears in the dim light, and dropped everything just to hold me and listen while I sobbed against his chest. Eventually he put me back to bed and stayed right there with me until I fell back asleep.
Impossibly, he was still there the next morning.
Rango doesn't shy away from my heart any more than I do. I warned potential suitors that I was a lot to handle, and they always said they were okay with that. He is the only one who has consistently and unabashedly embraced the intense chaos that swirls in and around me.
He loves me not in spite of but because of that intensity.
Queen Frostine commented the other day that I had not once called her crying or lamenting some stupid thing Rango had said or done—totally unlike any of my other relationships.
"He grounds you," she noted. "He keeps you centered."
I quickly pointed out that I do the same for him. Even though it's a tenuous balancing act some days, it's easy to be with him, to love him. We are open and honest in our communication. We are true to ourselves and to each other. He is the same way with me that I am with him... that I was with the others who couldn't manage to get their furry heads out of their own asses long enough to realize that it didn't have to be so damn hard all the time.
Interestingly, he doesn't make me feel like I want to puke. Yes, there is the excitement and the giddy and the uprush of love. There are no underlying warnings, no red flags flapping above choppy waters that bring the seasickness.
Invariably, I am me. Stephanie is prone to moodiness and difficulty. She attracts sea monsters, curiously dancing with both Scylla and Charybdis, struggling sometimes to stay afloat in a hopscotch board of eddies.
Hurricane Sassafras is always swirling, in danger of whirling me under my own upsurge. My biggest fear is that I accidentally pull Rango into that riptide.
But this one has his own undercurrents, his own battles and strengths that pull against mine. Somehow we manage to moor each other into the safety of our own harbor, like Puerto Rango is the capital of Glamazon Island. (In my head, it kind of looks like the lagoon on Gilligan's Island.)
It's natural and easy. We just fit in ways that we've never felt together with someone else. Even with all of the awareness of the past and cognizance of the present, it feels effortless to love each other in the ways we each need to be loved.
Rango and Sassafras live contentedly in the eye of the storm, looking up at brilliant skies in the midst of so much buffeting wind. And if it means a lifetime of my cracking coconuts for dinner and his building radios from the hollowed shells, so be it. At least there will be piña coladas and music.
When she first recommended it, I did a little quick research online and came to the conclusion that I have an anxious attachment style. "Anxious people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back." I realized I mostly have dated and been in relationships with avoidants. "Avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness."
According to Levine and Heller, people with secure attachments—those who "feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving"—make up about 50% of the population. Anxious ones like me make up 20%, while avoidants make up 25%. The remaining 5% of the population is made up of anxious-avoidants, and I can certainly include a couple of my exes in that narrow margin.
But when it comes to dating as an adult, the majority of secure people are in healthy relationships. They're the ones you know who are still happily married after twenty years. They're the ones I look to and wish I'd ever had a relationship like that.
Secure men are generally not on the open market.
There's a disproportionate number of avoidants in the dating pool. This is part of the reason I am far more likely to encounter a Fragile Cat when I'm on the prowl myself.
Anxious people are also more likely to be attracted to avoidants, as if something unconscious in us feels like we've found a missing piece of our puzzle. Avoidants are usually reflective of a powerful, dysfunctional attachment in our earlier life, often from childhood. Initially everything may seem really great, but then something happens and the avoidant backs away, which causes the anxious to move closer to close the gap, which causes the avoidant to back away even further. Both partners are having their fucked-up emotional attachment needs met, but it's a pathological dance of getting close and backing away.
In reading Attached, I was surprised (and thankful!) to learn I wasn't quite as screwed up as I'd thought. Yes, I am anxious, though not nearly so off-the-chain as I could be. (I'm less of an outlier than I normally am.) Levine and Heller argue that there is a biological, evolutionary purpose and need for attachment. Just as happens with parents and children, bonds are formed in the brain when we partner. Synapses and neurotransmitters and a bunch of brain shit that I only understand as a layman come together to imprint that person on our brain as a matter of survival. As inherently social creatures, especially ones who have sexual reproduction, we need other people.
When an avoidant backs away from me, it activates that attachment system, and I've learned mostly unconsciously to do things and work in ways that will get a response from my partner, to deactivate that system. (I'm talking phone calls and texts, not boiling bunnies, though I'd imagine this is exactly where and how stalking begins.) When I don't get the response I need, it amps up my anxiety, so I step closer again and again until I'm either soothed or I get so worked up that love feels like a huge waste of my life.
Because of these patterns established throughout my life, emotional security is something I need in a different way than secure people. That doesn't make it better or worse than anyone else—unless you're the avoidant on the polar opposite side of the need. The avoidant's need for independence, their oft-refused acceptance of needing another person, is a defense mechanism and a way to fulfil their own established patterns.
The avoidants' defensive self-perception that they are strong and independent is confirmed, as is the belief that others want to pull them into more closeness than they are comfortable with. The anxious types find that their perception of wanting more intimacy than their partner can provide is confirmed, as is their anticipation of ultimately being let down by significant others. So, in a way, each style is drawn to reenact a familiar script over and over again.
My secure friends, and certainly my avoidant ones, have a very hard time understanding this. They don't get why I can't always just suck it up and go on and get over someone, even when they've hurt me time and again. But when that attachment system is activated and spinning out of emotional control, contact with that person can immediately soothe all of my anxieties, much in the same way an upset baby is soothed by the presence of its missing mother.
Many individuals find it hard to follow through on their wish to break up, even after they've tried more than once to do it. Anxious people may take a very long time to get over a bad attachment, and they don't get to decide how long it will take. Only when every single cell in their body is completely convinced that there is no chance their partner will change or that they will ever reunite will they be able to deactivate and let go.
One of the things Levine and Heller stress is that emotional dependency is not bad. It is, in fact, a natural part of a healthy relationship to make your partner's needs more important than your own and vice versa. It's okay and normal and good to elevate someone else's needs above your own when you are healthily in love.
But I have this history of addicted men. Alcohol, drugs, sex—I've seen and dated and slept with them all. I've written before about how I am historically and enabler. So what about codependence? Isn't becoming so enmeshed in another person that your boundaries are blurred just dysfunctional? Doesn't dependency on a partner make you lacking or broken or just fucked-up in some way?
Not necessarily.
Need and addiction are not the same thing. Codependency exists, and it is especially relevant in the realm of addiction. The addict uses their substance as a tool to maintain emotional distance. They drink or get high or sleep with other people as a way to cope with their own damage, and that often means they are actively inserting something between themselves and their partners. There are other biological factors that come into play with addiction, as well. The times I have refused to leave because my partner needed me to take care of them—whether to pick up their drunkenly-abandoned car or make excuses to their boss or friends about why they weren't showing up or to clean up whatever mess they created while they were fucked up—that's where the dysfunction of codependence can actually be applicable.
Just because you need someone, that doesn't mean that you are addicted to them.
One of the things Attached recommends I do is date a lot of people, to go out with several at once. That way if an avoidant sneaks (bombards his way) into my circle, I am reassured by the fact that I have someone else over here who wants to go out with me. It's no big deal that this one fucked up, because there's someone else who finds me attractive and wants to spend time with me. Historically, I am not a multi-dater, but I'll see how it goes.
So I put myself back on the market.
Friday night, I had a date with a new guy. I'll call him S, because I don't want to reveal his name and—as you'll see shortly—he's not worthy of a jellicle name. We met nearby at a billiards bar. We had a couple of slow drinks and talked, though we never got around to actually playing pool. He was cute and smart and funny. We sat on the patio of the bar talking about sociology and music and dating as adults. We walked around for a while, still talking and laughing, and ducked into another bar for a last drink. I even messaged the Castration Committee while I was peeing that it was going really well.
With about thirty minutes left in my night, that first kiss was looming. Okay, you'll get a kiss, and it sounds like there's a chance you'll get another date. I was looking forward to the prospect of seeing him again and getting to know him better.
Cut to the chase, and he turned into a handsy ass. Now, I'm no prude. While I've been mulling imposing a Three Date Rule for sex, I have never been one to live by such social proprieties. That doesn't mean I've slept with everyone I've been out with, and certainly not always on a first date, but I am comfortable going quickly down that path if I feel the situation is conducive to such intimacy. Yes, sometimes, it's just a one-nighter. I had to be home in an hour; this was not going to be one of those nights.
For the first time in a really long time, I felt like a 16-year-old piece of cheap meat. I felt stupid and also insulted that I was being offered a quickie in the backseat of his car, parked down a dark side street. Again, not a scenario I'm unfamiliar with given my history, but I am not that girl anymore. I'm a grown-ass woman. I am worth far more than what this man was clumsily and uncomfortably offering me.
And after writing two weeks ago and talking with my therapist this week, it was like I was watching this from above, from outside my own body. For a moment, it felt like Stephanie was sitting there with Quinn as this recently-nice man imposed himself on us. I could feel myself now, knowing this was just insulting, but I could also feel Quinn sitting silent and petulant, wishing he would just take his rough hands and slobbering mouth off of her.
Something in me clicked and shoved him away quickly. I got out of the car and said I needed to go. I walked back to my car, a block away. I texted Pandy to let her know it had gone awry but that I was okay.
This is where I will also interject that I called Bounder.
In the now-14 months since we met, dated, broke up, dated again, broke up again, slept together, slept together again, dated others, slept together again, et cetera, we have continued to have this weird connection. One of us reached out to the other, usually via text, at just that right moment when the other seems to need us. We still sometimes dream of each other at the same time, as we'll find out a day or two later.
But in all of that time, with all of the men I've gone out with, Bounder always seems to know. He has never failed to text me while I'm with someone new, sometimes at the most inappropriate moments that I don't see until after the fact. He's never failed to reach within than four hours after I've been with a new guy. Whether he smells my perfume on the wind or has a bug in my phone (no, he doesn't), he just knows.
It is unquestionably the dance of an Anxious and Anxious-Avoidant.
I'd even joked on Friday afternoon that I wasn't blowing off this first date with S just to go sleep with Bounder. (It wouldn't have been the first time.)
I hadn't even left my house for the date when his text came.
Totally innocent response to something else from days before. I was leaving for the date when I saw the message. The man is uncanny, really.
And I didn't shut down this thing with S because of Bounder. He really doesn't have the power to cock-block my dates from a distance. I wasn't caught up in the idea of him that night; I was completely engaged with S until it turned weird. (Let me stress here that at no time with S did I feel unsafe or in any type of danger. I was simply very, very uncomfortable.)
My voice shaking and low, I called Bounder to tell him thank you for having never made me feel like I owed him anything. Honestly, I was thankful it was a late-night voicemail and that I didn't have to talk to him directly. For all of his faults, for all of the times I have done this fucked-up pathological dance with the man I love more than any other ever but who is such a heartbreakingly-close-but-terrible fit for me, he never made me feel sexually worthless. In fact, as I was working through some pretty ugly memories and trying to get past some things, he was incredibly, beautifully patient and supportive with me. He failed me in a lot of ways, but he never, ever made me feel anything but beautiful and wanted for exactly who I was, not because I should or might be something else, not because there was an expectation. And that, in and of itself, is its own kind of love.
So I'm still learning how to step differently, how to dance to a different beat. It's not like reading this book would suddenly make me not maladaptive. But it did open my head, giving me some insight and tools to work toward the healthy relationship I likely never would've possessed, had I not started this process of intense self-analysis and re-discovery.
As shaken as I was when I walked away from that uncomfortable moment, I know I am fully engaged in this process. I'm not watching from afar, checking out emotionally to just let things happen to me. Healthy or unhealthy choices are my choices, and they aren't dependent on what Cissie or Quinn might want, though their needs are sometimes still my needs.
I drove us all home and to bed. Alone.
And as La Bruja commented on Facebook as we talked about this date, "The good things that I see from this: 1) material—duh; 2) nothing happened and you're fine; 3) when you meet the right man, and some hot guy starts flirting with you while you're in line at Starbucks, you won't wonder if you missed any fun experiences by not dating more. You'll know you've got a great thing going and that 97% of all the guys who flirt with you would not come close to measuring up."
When I was a child and would misbehave, my mother would send me to my room, out of her line of sight, with the words, "I love you, but I don't like you very much right now."
I love you, but I don't like you.
I don't like you.
I love you, but....
I love you, because I have to.
I love you, because I am required to.
The more trouble I was in, the more of my name I would hear. Just "Stephanie!" was a warning. "Stephanie Karen!" meant I was treading on some pretty thin ice. "Stephanie Karen Quinn!" meant there was likely a spanking in my immediate future.
But when I was a good girl, when I was sweet and obedient and well-behaved, I was Cissie.
To this day, I'm not terribly clear on the origin of the nickname. I know it was given to me by a close family friend. It was not diminutive of my given name, nor was it reference to my being a sister; there was no sibling calling me Sissy, as is so common in the South. (I was raised an only child, and my (step/instant/in-my-heart) brother came to live with my mom and stepdad when I was in college.)
I remember being called Cissie until junior high school, when I demanded that both family and classmates call me only Stephanie. While it may have been sweet inside the family, it was hard to explain this other name that made no logical sense to anyone else. Eventually I rebelled against this thing I didn't understand and established myself fully as Stephanie Quinn. When I went to the alternative magnet high school, no one knew Cissie had ever existed.
Cissie was blond and blue-eyed. (Stephanie has green eyes.) She was smart and shy, though she could flourish as a chatterbox when she was comfortable. For Cissie, it was important to be what Mama and Daddy and everyone else expected her to be. If she wasn't, she was punished.
Cissie - Age 3 or 4
But sometimes, no matter what Cissie did, she was just not enough. She was tall but uninterested in basketball or sports of any kind. She was smart but sometimes didn't want to do the tedious, necessary classwork. Sometimes she tried to do it her own way, to challenge and entertain herself, but she would be chastised for doing it wrong, for not doing it how others wanted or expected it to be done.
Cissie was also scared a lot. Daddy had a sharp temper and would yell loudly at the least provocation. Sometimes he would rear his hand back in anger, and sometimes it made contact. Mama would nod and "Uh-huh" while Cissie talked, but she didn't always seem to hear those little girl words, especially if they weren't the words Mama wanted to hear. And sometimes Mama would lash out in momentary anger and pop her little arm with the hard plastic hairbrush. The oval red spot on the back of her arm might sting for hours, but it never felt as harsh as the pressing lump in her throat, the one she refused to talk or cry over.
Cissie learned to spend time on her own, to entertain herself with imaginary friends and wishes for things that just never seemed to come true. Cissie learned to bite the inside of her cheeks in just the right way that both kept her quiet and betrayed none of the anger she was harboring inside her little sweetheart mouth. She had repetitious nightmares of witches and of vampires who lived in the back of her closet.
Cissie was also the little girl who was molested by a man who said he loved her, by a man who told her that if she didn't go along with it or if she spoke about it that she would be in trouble.
It's no wonder that I didn't want to be Cissie.
Stephanie - Age 14
But lately that little girl has been trying to tell me something.
After another Fragile Cat skittered away, I was in a text conversation with Bounder (which is a whole different blog post's worth of fuckedupedness):
I'm tired of the hurt, you know? I'm tired of hiding in plain sight. I don't want to be afraid of the shadows, scared of what seems to be there but isn't. I feel again like my heart if wasting away. I can't take another one who stays for days or weeks, with all of his fine words and implications. I'm better with the balance, and I can't put these lessons into play without another person on the other side of that equation. I want that safe place. It's what I miss most, and I'm afraid.
And for all of my crazy, for all of my batshit and intensity, I'm a really good girl. A guy could do a hell of a lot worse than me.
Very true statement dear...
I feel like being me will never be good enough. I can either be myself or be what someone else expects.
And that little girl in me started to cry.
It didn't matter what I did sometimes. It didn't seem to matter that I was smart or clever or funny, loving or imaginative or curious, as long as I was doing what was expected of me. As soon as I defied expectations, "I love you, but...."
There is no caveat for love.
There should be no conditions on love. No one should ever have to negotiate the basics of their personality or their soul to feel that they are loved. If a man tells me now that he loves me but he wishes I were quieter, less impulsive, less brash, more submissive, daintier, more deferential, I shouldn't accept those things. I wouldn't accept those things, except I have accepted those things because it is what I learned as a child.
Be different for me to love you, because what you are now is too much, is not enough, is wrong, and I cannot care for this defiant creature that you are.
All Cissie wanted was to be told that she was good enough, that it didn't matter that she wasn't perfect, that she defied Mama and Daddy's ideals in ways that still made her special and beautiful and acceptable and likable and lovable. She wanted to know that she was good enough, that she didn't have to keep fighting and trying, that it was okay to be less than perfect. And she wanted to know that she was good enough, that they would be proud of her for who she was, not for the accomplishments and the grades and the good choices she made that were really never choices at all.
So for that little girl, to that little girl, I say, "Cissie, it's okay. You are a good girl. You were always a good girl. It's wonderful that you weren't perfect, and it's good that you made mistakes. You watched and learned, and you helped get me to here and now. I'm sorry you didn't feel safe and protected and loved like you should've. You deserved that, not just because you were a little girl but because you brilliantly, spectacularly special, and you were you."
Tonight, I will let her cry all she wants, to let out what is hurting her heart still, and I will tell her as often as she needs to hear it that she was worthy of all of that love, even when she wasn't always shown that.
Going forward, I will do my best to honor that, to remind her and remind myself that Stephanie is resilient and sensitive because of the bullets Cissie took, that I learned to rebel because of the deference she endured and the secrets she kept, that I deserve healthy love now just as much as she did then.
I was watching something insipid on television a few nights ago. (It's hard to remember which stupid thing I was clearing off the DVR between sessions of homework.) But I remember watching these characters on a couple of shows, walking through their lives and hoping to fall in love. They'd meet their currently-ideal love interest in some less-than-ideal situation and visibly fight the thought that just maybe that was the person for them. They were all looking for magic but refused to admit when they found it.
I want magic.
I spent a glorious Saturday evening with Pandy (née Hot Pocket) this past weekend. After hours of dancing and laughing and eating and a little too much whipped cream, we settled into the quiet while our babies slept down the hall. Eventually the talk turned yet again to my love life, specifically about what I loved about each of the men who have impacted my life so dramatically.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Not what qualities you want in a man—what things? If you could make a wishlist, what would be on it?"
Pandy knows damn well I've written a couple of times about what I want—the affection, the attentiveness, the lack of addiction. But I know Pandy, and this was her Practical Magic moment of daring me to put my wishlist out there where Fate might get ahold of it and take her chance at offering me exactly what I want.
I started to think about it in terms of these prior relationships—DH, Absolem, Bounder, Katniss, Rex—that had offered me something good in their way but had still not managed to be good enough. Like thinking about what you want in your unborn child, I started to pick and choose from those men.
From DH, I would want the care he could provide. For all of his flaws, he was an exceptionally good, practical caregiver when I needed it. Whether stopping at the grocery store while I was busy with a baby boy or carefully doling out medication and clean bandages after surgery, he took really good care of me. Eventually I learned to care for myself, which was one of the many problems we were never able to resolve, but I would want that active, tangible concern. (Check for both Bounder and Katniss for doing this, as well, in their own ways and times.)
From Absolem, I would want the clarity of vision. He could peek readily through my façade and see me. It was impossible to hide my truths from him, and he never failed to tell me exactly what he saw—even if I didn't like it. Bounder was just as adept, though he often danced around sharing his thoughts. I would also want the fearlessness, the adventure for life, that I have only ever found in Absolem.
From Bounder, there is so much. He set the bar so high in so many ways, though he often let it clatter to the ground—sometimes abrading me with those collapsing expectations. The depth of emotion, both his own and felt with me. The strength and vulnerability that were intricately interdependent. The mischievous, crinkling eyes every time he smiled when I told him I loved him. The ease with which he could cry with me, for me, in front of me, and how he never, ever withheld my emotions even when they were more than he thought he could bear. How he would patiently and without recrimination listen as I unleashed my crazy, circuitous head and heart, but how I never had to actually say what I was thinking because he always just knew. And the kiss that could stop time and turn the seas to dust. That kiss that may never be topped.
From Katniss, the chivalry and the romance. The single red rose the first time we met, and the choice of a perfect book for Christmas. The stories he would weave for me. The way he could calm me with a single word, dropped at the exact, magical moment when I needed it most. The way he would watch me intently while I spoke, and the lullabies he would sing to me over the phone just before I fell asleep.
From Rex, the largess. Not just the physical size—though make no mistake that I loved the way his hugeness felt, wrapping me into a dainty package that didn't feel like it would break. How his hands dwarfed mine. But there was a largeness of character, of dynamic, that was simultaneously gentle and kind. The way he could make me laugh at anything and everything, but also how he could shut down my humming brain and quiet my overthinking with a look. In some ways he did outdo Bounder, and I was thankful to know the bars could be raised even further. And I have never been so immediately comfortable with a man as I was with him.
But my wishlist is missing the one trait that each of these men has in common: their ability to make me feel negligible. The practical, magical one will be there, no matter what. He will call me every day that he can, even if it's just to tell me he loves me and goodnight after a really long day. He will text me random thoughts and pictures and be thrilled that I message him regular love letters, equally romantic and raunchy. He will lie with me in the floor and the firelight, letting me sing whatever song I feel that night, while he strokes my hair gently and whispers to me that I am beautiful.
And he will be there in the middle of the night, when I wake cold and scared, afraid of what comes out of my dreams. He will sleep comfortably, soundly next to me. He will actively, happily love me, and he will fight Heaven and Hell to be with me. He will do what no one has ever been willing to do for me before: he will value me, openly and honestly, and remind me every day that I am worth his fight.
And in return, I will love him like no other. Every fiber of my being, every moment of soul and joy and heartache, every laugh and every tear, every angry word and every whisper of adulation in the dark. To fill in every crack, to give him strength to be vulnerable, safety to be dangerous, acceptance to be who he was meant to be.
Maybe it's foolish to wish these things. Maybe it's childish or naive to hope that I find what I want most, what I seek as doggedly as I have ever done anything.
Two evenings ago, I went to the grocery store, as I so often do during the course of Mom Duty. I stopped to put gas in my car (which I hate to do more than anything in the world). Just as I switched off my ignition, my phone dinged with a message from an ex and another one drove by. Simultaneously.
Oh hell!
Over the last year, I've been out with a couple dozen men. Most did not get a second chance. I currently have a listed of 18 blocked numbers in my phone. (FYI, on an iPhone, texts from blocked numbers are lost in the ether with no response to the sender. Phone calls will go straight to voicemail. Anything recorded stays hidden unless you unblock the number, at which point they show up in a special voicemail directory.)
I didn't shoot them all down immediately. I'm still casual friends with a couple of the guys I met. (At least four of you are Facebook friends.)
But there were a select few who drew my heart into theirs. We moved past the point of casual chat to an actual relationship.
I've talked at length about my super ability to attract Fragile Cats. I swear some days it's like my front door is wide open, and they just saunter across my threshold and demand to be fed and pet, twisting their long tails around my legs and tripping me up before I even realize they're there. Ultimately they are skittish and unavailable, whether emotionally or logistically, though they'll almost always declare that's not the case. One even swore he wasn't a cat at all—that he was, in fact, a coyote.
When I realize they're skittish and about to run, I always offer them time and space. Always. They never take the chance. Inevitably, they freak out and bail and let me down in some ludicrously soul-wrenching way. I toss them out in my anger but always relent a few days later, letting them stew in the sun on my front porch. Where I leave them a saucer of cream. And the key to my back door.
(There are a lot of always in that paragraph. Note the pattern here.)
I am impossibly accommodating with these men. I am equally forgiving and supplicating, because I completely understand how they work; I get why they're so easily spooked, and somehow I continue to hope that they will see something special enough in me to be worth their effort to at least try to correct their behavior. For themselves and for me. I care about them—hell, I even loved two of them—so of course I would do everything possible to make it work, to give them reason to meet me halfway. Or at least a quarter of the way. (I'm a long-legged resourceful girl; I can close the gap myself.)
I'm unable to just cut someone like that out of my life at the slightest provocation. It feels inherently wrong to me, to disregard someone you care about so much. Because of my history and expectations, I have an unusually (annoyingly) high tolerance for douchebaggery. I'm incapable of writing them off right away, though God knows the Castration Committee wishes I would learn how.
But when they fuck it up again, that's when I'm done. Usually. Or I try to be. (Again, my issues with boundaries.)
What pisses me off, though, is the text or email or phone call a few months later, telling me how much they miss me, how they think about me and wish things had gone differently.
You miss me? Fuck you!
Every single one of them had the chance at something extraordinary. They knew it at the time and while they were letting it go. They would profess their care for me while throwing up their hands, apologizing for hurting me while they slapped me across the face. (Figuratively, not literally. The Castration Committee would harm me if I let that shit happen. Again.)
I'm not a toy to be discarded and brought back out months later, when you realize you'd forgotten how much fun it was to play with me. I am a really spectacular woman who cared deeply for you, and you dismissed me with a multitude of reasons and excuses. You told me to my face that I mattered while you crossed your fingers behind your back.
Fuck you.
And with all of them but one I am able to comfortably and happily live in a healthily detached state. It is still a struggle, every goddamn day, to keep that one in perspective, to actively remind myself of the bad that came with him and how it almost sucked the good out of me.
That's the one who appears when I least expect it but when I am least surprised. That's the one who lives the closest, who I sometimes pass on the road... the one who reads my blog regularly because he misses my voice and this is the closest he can bring himself to hearing me. The one who got away but it is never far away at all—even at 3 a.m. when we're both lying in bed missing the other. The one who altered everything, for whom I altered everything, but who can't get his big, beautiful head out of his ass long enough to admit that he fucked it up and shouldn't have given up so goddamn quickly.
He will read this. He'll know it's directed at him. He will likely continue to lurk, waiting for the time he sees that I've moved on with someone else and am in a safe enough space that he can be my friend again.
But he's also the one I can never be friends with, even though I miss him like mad. He's the one I loved so deeply and so passionately that the wounds of losing him are still sensitive and raw. They'll heal eventually, but I'll be left with more scars that leave numb, faded spots on my surface.
Maybe those are the mars I'll finally tattoo with chains, turning something ugly into something beautiful.
The rest of them can go to Hell. He's the only one I'd follow into those depths to bring out or join, whatever it took to keep him safe.
Some of the others will read this, too. They'll start to think it's about them and then feel the pang! when they realize they're mistaken. Again.
But to every single one of you, you had your chance. You can miss me all you want. It doesn't change a thing.
I am smart and able and resourceful and determined. I am exceedingly analytical, especially when it comes to relationships and my own role in them. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my own head, breaking down the minutiae of every conversation, every encounter. What did he mean by that? Was there really a disjoint between his words and his expression? What did I do to encourage or discourage him? Why the hell am I feeling this?
Some days it's incredibly loud inside my head. I will replay every detail over and over. (Add obsessive and dogged to that list of qualities.) Hiding behind every memory there is always a ghost, taunting me with the rattle of its chains and reminding me of every time I have been less than perfect.
Truthfully (and with a bit of well-earned arrogance), I do most things I attempt very well. When I set my sights on a specific path, I will follow it to the point of exhaustion, just to see it through. It's the encounters along the way, the people I stumble across and sometimes joyously or painfully into, who help to shape that journey. Because I remember the details of almost everything in my life, it's very unlikely that I will ever forget those people.
Sometimes it feels like competition, but you don't always know the specifics of what you're fighting, or sometimes even that you are. This is why I try so damn hard to be bigger, better, faster, more. If I can create something new, something unique, it is unforgettable in its own right. If I am at the core of those memories, I only have to compete against my own ghosts. When it comes down to it, there's only me to fuck with my own head, and I relish that hard-fought battle more than any other.
I did have a conversation recently with Bounder about this. I talked with him about a specific drama that had injected itself into my world—yet another fragile cat who went totally off the deep end—and how I didn't know how not to attract these fucked up men. He argued that it's the reciprocity of attraction, that in the same way I always seem to be hunting them, they can smell me on the wind.
"Because you are the alpha female, the lioness of lionesses. It's built in somehow, parallel to how you're a badass mom. Same psycho theory...."
If I care about these men, the souls they are beyond any sort of romantic relationship we have, is it wrong for me to be active in that when they are struggling? It's right to do what you can to help the people who matter to you—that's how interpersonal relationships work. And there are a very few whose souls have touched mine so deeply that they could get my attention and help no matter what. Forever and always and no matter what. I may have every reason to tell them to fuck off, but I care deeply and cannot bear the thought of not honoring that.
"You do honor it, Steph, just by trying. You cannot do it yourself. It will always take two."
"I don't know that I even believe that anymore, that there's another one who can be what everyone else so plainly believes I need. So what's my option? Be miserable alone? If I'm gonna be miserable, I'd rather have it peppered with moments of incredible connection."
Bounder says the key is to not ever be miserable alone, to enjoy and thrive in those moments until the connections are there, intentional or not.
"Trust," he said.
"But that means I have to trust myself," I replied.
While I am sometimes too free and quick with my emotions, there are a very few people in the world who I truly love. I am fortunate that I have a list at all, but it can be very hard for me to let anyone in. The list of people I trust is far, far shorter. I have every historical reason for that, certainly, but the ones who have gained my confidence have been the ones who very strongly encouraged me to see something about myself that I couldn't or wouldn't face, good or bad. That's part of why they matter to me and always will.
If I can find people who trust me enough to let me care for them, then I hope for reciprocity. I hope to see my own worth through their eyes, because I can only see my value, really, when it's shown to me.
This is why I asked Bounder and DH and sometimes Absolem and others why I wasn't worth their fight. Every time I think I am, that I have done enough and earned it from them or for them, I get the response that somehow I just wasn't enough—usually while being told I was just too much.
"Who are you not good enough for?" Bounder asked. "Certainly not the drunken cats or your ex or any of them and definitely not Daddy. So who's left? Who do you pale in comparison to? You."
"I pale in comparison to those who've come before me, to those ghosts who can garner more attention that I can."
"Not true. You believe it, clearly, but it's not true."
"Really? If I never say the words I'm not her again, it will be too soon. And, yeah, sometimes I'm not good enough for the drunken cats. I'm not perfect, or even just right. I get upset when I'm hurt, and I let them down. I let you down. I failed you, and so I failed me. If I'd been a little quieter, a little calmer, more compartmentalized and covert with my heart.., if I'd backed down , been more pliant, less selfish, less open about my needs..., if I'd just seen you coming and been able to plan, then maybe—just maybe—you would've been willing to keep the cracks in the walls that let me and the light in, maybe I would've been good enough for you to accept that love and let yourself love me back."
Then I found myself alone and crying in the dark on my deck, sobbing because I am not perfect.
When you are a true perfectionist, everything takes on a gravity that most people can't understand. They can't empathize with how consuming it is to constantly maintain the level of energy required to be not only your best but better than anything or anyone else, how the slightest of mistakes and imperfections can rock you to the core in such a way that it feels like the goddamn universe is collapsing on your head. When it comes to love, your heart is all too likely to be crushed, sucked into the black hole of itself where not even your own light can escape.
But to expect perfection in the realm of interpersonal relationships is a fool's quest. It is absolutely noble to strive for the best, for better than best, but it's dependent not only on my actions but on the reactions of another flawed human. That give and take is incomparably beautiful. For me, it can feel deadly.
One mistake, one minor misstep, and the person I love responds in kind. The first, tiny ripple of incident creates waves and wake of hurt and ache, and somehow I am sucked down by the undertow, berating myself for having chosen A over B, for not having known ahead of time what would come as a result. For being human.
No one is harder on me than I am, and I am a formidable opponent. I am a force of nature. Nothing wreaks havoc on Glamazon Island quite like Hurricane Sass. Somehow I am constantly surprised when I ignore the storm warnings, ignore the windblown red flags, and dive into the choppy, churning waters. It doesn't matter how I move, how perfectly I execute each stroke of arm and leg or each turn of the head as I gasp for breath; a storm like that will eventually exhaust me.
I'll still be berating myself for not being a better swimmer, for not being able to see through the riptide and stay parallel to the shore. Even as I'm drowning.
