I’m crazy unpredictable like that.
Sure, I should be reading more about Montana’s tax system, but I’ll get to it. For now there’s something sappy on my mind, and I’m not willing to make public declarations in realms where people would either make fun of me or get mad at me.
I had an ex once tell me, in the throes of a horrid breakup, while he stood outside my door without permission to enter and I paced wildly through my apartment, phone glued to my ear, pausing only to type out quick reports to my two closest friends and allies, that it wasn’t his fault. He had given this relationship everything, while threatening to walk out the door on such a regular basis I learned to expect it and had begun to learn preventative maneuvers. I told him that this, among a long laundry list of things, told me everything I needed to know about the nature of his love for me. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t unconditional, it wasn’t against all odds, it was levied against them only within reason. At one point he had told me he loved me for my potential. It wasn’t enough. He had to love me for me.
He told me no one ever could. He told me people did not have the capacity to love someone at their own expense. He told me that there was no one who would ever love me the way I wanted to be loved, and I was just unreasonable.
Eight days later, completely unsure if it would even be a date, I began dating my best friend, and one of the people who I had been talking to that night, who had guided me with generally sane advice throughout my entire disastrous dating career since its inception six years ago.
Five months since, and I have all the faith in the world that not only can someone love me exactly the way I need, but even more than that. No matter how sick or moody or distraught or stressed or angry or frustrated or drunk or tired or goofy or stupid or bitchy or picky or indecisive I can get, I am loved for everything I already am. I am no longer afraid and concentrated on self-improvement, trying everything in the desperate hope that I can make myself into something else that I must need to be, urged on by boys who wanted someone I could never be.
Now, there’s nothing I have to do to make myself better but allow me to be me. I am fixed already. I have been loved, and I will be loved, and I have to do nothing but love back, for everything he has been and still is. And I have plenty of that to give. To him, to my family, to myself.
I feel whole. I feel like I was already.
He generally read this back when I actually kept up with it, but I don’t know if he remembers about it anymore, nor what he’d think of my putting it out there, but I just wanted to.
If he does, well, thank you. I only hope I can do even half of what you’ve done for me for you. You deserve that and a million things more. I love you.
Lucky!
You have no idea. I’d tried pretty hard to screw this thing up over the last six years, including telling him under no circumstances would we ever date. Eight months later I ate my words. They were bitter and unpleasantly crunchy. Luck has a lot to do with the fact that he even still talks to me, at least so it seems to me. He doesn’t have quite the same perspective, and God bless him for that.
I can’t believe you’re still around! It’s fantastic. I need to be better at keeping up with you.