Two years ago today--though I did what I could to avoid the damage--I took the first big step in deliberately breaking a person's heart. As it turns out, he may be better healed than I would have anticipated (or than I could have hoped): he is married, has moved across the country, has a new job, and seems, as well as one can tell these things, to be 'his old self again', only better. He never did hate me, or maybe I should say he never behaved as if he hated me, which may mean the same thing. We haven't spoken since July. I miss him.
Two years ago today--though I couldn't have known it at the time--I asked a friend for a favor. I was pretty emotionally fragile (an understatement of great intensity!) and concerned for my ability to get along for those first few days; I set out to create and reinforce what support I believed that I had (and deserved). The friend was someone I hadn't known for long, but with whom I felt connected. He got me, in a way that I didn't believe that anyone else really did. He felt flawed, see, and I knew that I was more flawed than anyone knew. As it turns out, the favor that I asked was not the sort that he was in the habit of granting; it would have been completely in his character to have refused it, whether gently, or abruptly and without explanation. Yet he did it, and that favor was instrumental in building what has become one of the great friendships of my life, and perhaps the most important relationship in my life. I wish that I still believed in concepts like "the love of my life", because if I did, I think he could be a contender.
Two years ago today--though I had no reason to have even been so presumptuous as to ask--I moved into a relatively small dwelling with a friend and her husband. I would stay with them for three months and four days. I slept in their guest room, which they called my room. I ate meals with them. I had a chair at the dining room table that they called my chair. I stored beads and tools in a drawer in the end table, and a stack of books on the floor next to the couch. I kept my things in the hallway bathroom that they called my bathroom. I took phone calls [albeit on my mobile] at all hours. I came and went at odd times of day and night. I drove their teenage son bonkers. I often talked them to sleep and back out, yapping them into their second wind and keeping them up half the night. I was very, very needy, and I took what they gave greedily, but incredibly gratefully, too. From them I learned the value of dear friends, who are indeed 'chosen family'. I learned the difference between "talking things out" and "the urge to confess". I learned invaluable, vital concepts for marriage, like humor, and give-and-take, and support, and "in sickness and in health". I learned how to shut up and listen, which was key for me. And as it turns out, we got to the end of those three months and four days and all felt a sense of pride and happiness, that I had finally found an apartment that was "worthy" of me, and that I was "ready" (ha!) to be on my own (fly, little bird)...and we all felt wretched, too, because I felt like I was losing a lot more than I was gaining. They are more than friends. More than just the D's. They are Mom & Dad when I need a hand. They are goofy kids who lock themselves out of the damned house every now and then (but we've solved that issue, at least!). They are Activity Directors when I clearly need to Get Out Of Dodge; they've taken me to Rowing Regattas and shopping all over creation (though we rarely buy much, we do seem to make a production out of it), and out for dinner a million times. And out for my meaningless drives to nowhere, which of course are really very meaningful and do more for clearing my head than anything else. They are my sister & my brother (-in-law, to make this analogy non-creepy!), my wise counselors who advise against my hotheaded idiotic nature (and who almost always counsel for what I really, really do want but am too damned stubborn to wait for or handle properly without help). Most of all, they are my friends. I cannot imagine the last two years without them. They made it happen.
Two years.
I am not the me that I used to be. 50-some pounds lighter. A hell of a lot more blond. Sharper, maybe, thanks to not drinking? But quieter, too, thanks to remembering that other people are worth listening to. Smarter, not that it matters. More interested in figuring out what matters. Healthier. Happier, too--simplify, simplify. Less apologetic. More introspective. Less self-conscious. More conscious. Or maybe just 'conscious', in the first place. Able to say 'no'--quite willing, in fact, to say 'no'--when something's just not happening.
Less dependent.
More solitary.
Do you know what that means--"more solitary"? I've always been an introvert. Always an INFP, strong or more. I cannot (and would not) deny that I derive some energy from some sorts of social interaction, and that I am...adrift without it. I envy more solitary people their undependence. I have often wished, in fact, to be less - -
I don't know. Less "me", maybe? Is that what I'm getting at? That's the real frustration, after all. What I am, who I am, is this person who likes to be alone, and then wants--or needs--to have someone, and at that point a specific someone there, and when that specific someone is unavailable, life seems unworkable. It isn't always the same someone, and the 'requirement' isn't always long or onerous or particularly uncomfortable. And if that someone is unavailable, life does indeed go on and it all works itself out somehow, despite my discomfort. But it is inconvenient. And messy. And irritating. I have often wished to be someone who didn't need anything, much less anyone.
Not bloody likely, I suppose.
In two years, I have come to accept it more readily. I can acknowledge it without wincing. Why not? Others can see it, so there is no point in avoiding it.
Two years. Where will I be in two more?
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