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2003-11-07 - 1:34 p.m.
Here's this thing that started as just thinking and ended with just ranting
Why is loving someone so important?
It is to me. It may be the only thing that is really important. To me.
But why?
I know a lot of people who would have me feel bad about this. Correction, I know a lot of people who DO make me feel bad about it.
And I take it. I feel bad. I feel weak and pathetic and stupid and silly. And its not entirely fair because this is what I know how to do: I know how to care about people and give them parts of me that will help them grow. I know how to appreciate them through their flaws and not judge them. I know how to put other people before myself, to excess. I know how to do these things because I learned by example, I was well taken care of and sacrifices were made for my benefit. Now I am afforded the opportunity to give that to other people.
But is this a good thing? Giving?
I once had a long relationship with someone who gave me a mental beating almost every day. When it was finally over between us he told me that he had been the "giver" in the relationship.
I wondered what he had given.
It seemed to me that he had given a lot of supportive remarks that still managed to belittle my capabilities and re-affirm his strengths. It seemed that he had given me hundreds of tiny ultamatims that built up to equate an overall picture of me as sufficient, but lacking, at best. I didn't want to be given these things. I want to give them back. But its a little late now.
I learned that I am mostly difficult, problematic even. A lot of work had to be done for me to be good enough. My mere existence was taxing and frustrating, always.
So I worked. Hard. To be good enough. And I still wasn't.
Hmm, I thought, why does this "loving" thing feel so bad? Maybe its because I am bad at it.
He grew some wings and he flew off to make his mark in the world. I stayed behind to continue making my mark in the world too.
While he was gone he gave me lots of advice about growing my own wings and flying too.
I wondered why he didn't see that I WAS flying and I WAS working to make a mark. Somehow our conversations always ended with the implication that I was just buying time until he made his mark so that I could make another, complimentary, mark next to his.
He told me not to wait for him to grow my wings. I flapped and flapped and wondered if he could hear the air rushing between my feathers over the miles of telephone wire.
Hmmm, I thought. Curious. Here I am flying and no one seems to see me. Maybe I am invisible. Maybe I always have been.
I listened to the the trials, tribulations and mistakes he made while working on making his mark. I listened because I was interested and because I loved him. It was important to me to love him.
He didn't ask much about me. My mark was a little less important, a little too theoretical, a little too small. It wasn't a REAL mark, just a small, undergraduate sort of mark.
Plus, to give him some credit, it's tough to get me to talk about my mark, you have to pay attention and you have to ask the right questions and you have to keep at it. You have to care. Every day. You have to do this because I care about you. Every day.
I am difficult and problematic in that way.
So he didn't ask and I didn't tell. And suddenly, maybe he noticed that I was doing this thing that sort of looked like flying and he wasn't really around to see it. And suddenly it was scary. And he started to send flowers. Bouquets and love notes and things that had never been known in our relationship in the previous four years.
It was a little too late because I was already getting flowers and love notes from someone else. Someone who was not necessarily better but who was definitely someone ELSE.
I didn't stop loving him. But I did start loving someone else. Really, I started loving that someone else thought I was interesting enough to stay wide awake all night long just to hear what I had to say. When was the last time this had happened? Had it EVER happened?
Really it was all about me.
When we let go, we held on tighter. We bit into each other and ripped and tore until we were both too tired and bloodied to prove anything anymore.
One day I said please, please, please make it stop and we stopped.
Correction: I bailed. Completely. I said "I'll call you in a week, please don't call me until I call you." And then I let 52 weeks slip by without picking up the phone.
I feel bad because I know it hurt. I feel like I owe him something, some consolation prize for lost time. I feel like it is still important to give him love because
Loving people is important. (Why?)
But the truth is that I'm still angry. Whether its right or not there's this thing in the pit of my stomach that is lead-heavy and bitter as sin. And in telling myself that I am working to love him I work myself into more and more anger.
Neither of us is right and that's what makes it so complicated. I'm terrible at being wrong. I work hard to do things right and I didn't do this right.
So now I'm a bit reactionary. Irrational.
When I get told to grow my own wings and "fly." All I want to say is
Fuck you.
You would shoot me down if I did. You still are.
And that's not fair to anyone.