Thursday, June 23, 2011

The effects of a year on tomorrow...

Last year, oh last year. Last year I learned a lot. A lot. I can't help but wonder if the things I learned last year will ever let me just go back to being me.

I have always wished that there would be one person out there, that would just understand me. Let me be ME. I wouldn't have to change for them, I wouldn't have to cover up my idiosyncrasies. I could just be myself and knowing me, they would understand how to nurture me and love me. My entire life, that is all I have ever wanted.

Last year, I thought I knew that person. I thought there was a man that understood me and would let me be just be the silly little thing I am. He always called me on my crap and saw through the facade that I put up. I thought he knew me.

Turns out...he did and instead of nurturing it, he exploited me.

My desperate need to please people tends to lead me to love the people that don't love me. I just can't accept that they don't adore me....so I go out of my way to be everything they want me to be...only to, of course, be met with further rejection. Its so obvious, you can't MAKE anyone love you or treat you how you deserve...because that's just not how people operate. This one knew that the more he belittled me, the harder I would try. The less he thought of me, the harder I would work for his affection.

He hooked me...and then he systematically broke me down. I fell in love, would have done just anything to make him happy and he knew it. I suppose I should have known when I finally admitted to loving him, he gloated over it., that something was amiss. Potentially I should have seen his eagerness to meet ALL my friends and show off in front of all of them as a warning sign. I should have seen the inconsistencies in his stories (he told repeatedly) as more than just exaggeration for the sake of a story or little white lies and seen it for the pathological curse that it was. I should have seen his lack of past long term or meaningful relationships as the dysfunction it was, not thought it made me special...because I also tend to have a distaste for most people. When he told me about the other girl he'd gotten pregnant and she disappeared...an epic warning flag should have gone off. One of 'Titanic meets the iceberg' proportions. I should not have viewed his jealous paranoia as a passing result of the large doses of pain meds he was on....I should have seen them as something extraordinarily unhealthy and toxic.  I was just so in love...no matter what he did, I put a positive spin on it. I was the master of spin and his PR cheerleader. Turns out love IS blind and by the time I realized I was in trouble, it was too late.

My blind devotion allowed me to be so deeply manipulated and taken advantage of that I don't know that I will ever recover from it. If I left during an argument, he would break up with me as I walked out the door. Praying on my fear of being alone. He knew it would hurt me, I would spiral downwards, then come back apologizing. The reason for the argument...then null and void. When I finally broke it off with him....his mother died or a close friend died, or some other tragedy would occur that I would feel obligated to go check on him or stick by him. The guilt of leaving someone in a lurch would bring me back every time and he knew it.

Now I am constantly suspect of those around me. I so rarely view things at face value and am constantly worried I am being lied to or manipulated. The slightest confrontation or disagreement can cause me to lose all grasp of my temper. The last year has done irreparable damage to the relationships I had with those close to me. Whether I will ever regain those relationships or mend those bridges, I have no idea. It's hard for me to imagine just being me again. I want to be naive like I used to and think that those close to me really did love me and wanted what was best for me. To have one day where I don't panic at the site of a specific make/model of that car or think of him. To go out in public without fear again. The day that I get to move on and stop crying about love lost and the almost fatal ramifications it had for me. To have truly care free laughter and no longer dream about my attack or my life slipping away.

Most of all, to trust and be comfortable in my own skin again. To wake up again without the desire to pack up everything and disappear.

I wonder constantly how to gain closure on something that never seems to go away. I meet people who already think they know me because of the rumors they've heard, I've spent weeks in court trying to protect myself with just no end in sight. How do I move on and gain closure form something that perpetuates itself?

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