Our days were numbered by nights...

Bring on the doubt

I desperately need to be single for a little while.  I have been relationships, with very little downtime, since I came to college.  I need to be able to be selfish and make myself happy without worrying about how that decision will affect my significant other.  And that’s fine.  It’s fun.  I can go on dates or let people buy me drinks without feeling guilty.  The present is perfect.  It’s the future that bothers me.

What if I’m incapable of ever forming a lifelong, lasting relationship?  It’s possible for people to spend their entire lives together.  Sometimes, they even do it out of genuine love for one another and not just some sense of obligation or obstinacy.  But what if I can’t do that?  I know this isn’t a novel concern, but it is for me.  I thought I’d found the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with.  That’s why in the last few months, I ignored the nagging feeling in my stomach that told me I wasn’t happy with him anymore, that I wasn’t forcing myself to pretend I was still attracted to someone with no goals.  I’d convinced myself that this was a rough patch and I could talk myself out of it.  I couldn’t, and that’s why by the time he left, it was a relief.  I never even thought to ask him to reconsider.

Does that mean this doesn’t hurt?  Of course not.  It hurts like hell sometimes, but not because it’s over.  It hurts because I spent the last two and a half years in a relationship with someone I never even knew.  It hurts because, as in love with him as I was, I have to hesitate to even say that because the person I was in love with never existed.  I will have enough trust issues from this mess to keep me in therapy for life.

Which brings me to my current problem: What if I’m just not supposed to have that kind of relationship with someone?  And there are so many reasons that this could be a reality.  I’m suspicious of things my dates tell me.  Not in a crazy, possessive kind of way.  I have no real attachment to these people.  If they lie to me, it’s not a real issue.  But what if I actually form a connection with one of these people and the entire relationship becomes based on these lies again?  I know how ridiculous this sounds, especially when it’s typed out to be read.  But it’s something I worry about, with good reason, now.

Or what if I can’t be attracted to someone who isn’t a trainwreck?  What if my caregivers’ syndrome has caused me to feel nothing for someone who is successful and not emotionally crippled by health issues or family troubles or substance abuse?  I’ve always been aware that these issues kill a relationship, but I’ve always thought I would be able to fix the person before the clock ran out.  That never happens and it never will.  I even think, at times, I’m getting better about staying away from toxic relationships.  But that’s easy to say when I’ve just gotten out of one.

Or, and this is the most difficult one of all, what if I’m the problem?  What if I am so completely unbearable to live with and so demanding that it simply can’t be done?  He’d tell me regularly that I was the problem, that I could never admit I was wrong or that I set too many time limits on how long it took him to do things.  Looking back, it’s very easy for me to see why he was so defensive about these things.  But still, there’s a nagging voice in my brain saying that maybe he’s right.  Even if he wasn’t right at the time, maybe he conditioned me until I actually became those things.  Maybe, in some fucked up twist of fate, by the time he realized he didn’t actually want me, he’d ruined me for anyone else that ever could.

Most days, I’m very good at seeing the past two and a half years for what they were: a learning experience.  They were some of the happiest, most disappointing, hopeful and desolate times of my life.  I wouldn’t trade them for anything.  It just worries me that my heart will never race again when someone tells me they love me for the first time.  Even worse, I know that I won’t believe them.

I Was Supposed to be Prolific

That nagging voice in the back of mind

Oh not now, but once upon a time

Was the biggest obstacle I could find

And any hero I cared to name

Did it for the scars and stories

But never just for the fame

But life and time, oh they caught up

To all of my heroes and also to us

Gone are the days where I couldn’t sleep

Alone in my bed with secrets to keep

I would share my misery over the wire

To my fallen idol, the most honest liar

But with happiness, art finds its rest

If nothing else, to that I can attest

The paper is blank, my pen has run dry

And every year that passes 

Makes me more ashamed to cry

For the childish things that I left behind

I washed my face, dyed my hair

Ignored the nagging and fell in line

Because life and time, oh they caught up

To all of my heroes and also to us

Gone are the days where I couldn’t sleep

Alone in my bed with secrets to keep

I would share my misery over the wire

To my fallen idol, the most honest liar

But with happiness, art finds its rest

If nothing else, to that I can attest

Maybe absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Maybe absence fills your time with people with qualities you wish someone else had. Maybe it gives you more time to think about all the past wrongs and disappointments. Maybe it strengthens your conviction that you weren’t wrong. Maybe it makes it easier when he leaves instead of works it out.

I’m sure I’m just being overdramatic. But it is something to consider.

Glutton for Punishment

Last night, I tried to add my sister-in-law on Facebook.  It’s ridiculous to even call her my sister-in-law, because although I’ve always held a fondness for her, I very rarely ever call her husband, Bill, my half-brother, let alone my brother.  In fact, last Thanksgiving, Rob’s family asked if I had any siblings.  My answer was, “No.”  Not, “Just a half-brother, but we don’t talk.”  Not, “Kind of, but we’re not close.”  Not any of my usual rhetoric that lets people know it’s a long story but I’m still holding onto hope.  And these people are my new family!  These are people that are going to be around for the foreseeable future and the relationships it brings into my life.  And my simple answer was, “No.  I’m an only child.”

So why on earth did I send a friend request to Carla, my sister-in-law?

Because I have a niece.  She was born shortly after our dad’s funeral (or the poor excuse for one Bill provided) and since that day, the one thing I’ve wanted was to be her aunt.  I wanted to show her all the incredible things I’d encountered as I grew up.  I wanted to give her all the words of reassurance that the adults I knew had long forgotten how to speak.  I wanted to tell her that her grandpa would have loved her.  And I wanted to tell her that I’d waited years for Bill to have a child so that I could be in its life.  Yes, at twelve years old I had waited and prayed and begged for my half-brother, whom to my recollection had never cared for me, to have a child so that I could be an aunt.  And by the time it happened, it was too late.  The one thing that binded us had died and been burned to ashes to collect dust on someone’s mantle, but never mine.

About four years ago I’d tried to contact Bill, at an ex-boyfriend’s urging.  I e-mailed him at an address I found on a website concerning the public office he was currently holding (ever our father’s son).  I told him how happy I was for him and that even though I knew in my heart he wanted nothing to do with me, I was so glad to hear he had a daughter that I knew was beautiful.  Not only did I never receive a response, but Bill had the webpage taken down.  

So I added Carla last night.  And I had a few scenarios in my mind concerning how it would go.  None of them turned out in my favor.  So imagine my surprise when, a few hours later, Carla had sent me two messages.  The first one explained that, although she was hesitant to add me as a friend because Bill was not ready to have me in his life, she was so happy to hear from me.  She’d thought of me often and wanted to know how I was doing.  The last sentence was, “I will send you pictures of your niece, Amelia.”

When I opened the pictures, it broke my heart.  She looks so much like our dad it hurt.  She’s beautiful.  She looks happy and just… fantastic. Carla and I e-mailed each other back and forth, during which she explained that Bill resented our dad for his affairs and, out of loyalty to his mother (who amazingly still manages to outlivemour father, despite her two decade-long battle with bone cancer) was reticent to talk to me, although she insisted that he didn’t blame me.  However, she had explained to him that, since he has little family left, it’s important that he establish a bond with what he does have, i.e. me.  She wants me to be in Amelia’s life, but now is not the time and she hopes I can wait.

I have mixed emotions over the whole thing.  I’ve come to a few realizations in the past twenty-four hours.  One of them is that Bill didn’t have Dad cremated out of spite for me.  I always thought he did it (and did it before the funeral service) so that I wouldn’t have a chance to see him or to have a grave to visit.  And maybe that’s still true.  Or maybe Bill held so much resentment in his immature, mama’s boy little body that he couldn’t bear to be bothered anymore.  And it kills me to say that about my own father, but I’ve always said that I had the luxury of not knowing my dad on an adult level.  My dad had a very short amount of time with which to disappoint me.  Bill had triple that time.  Maybe he had to get the whole thing over with in order to try and move on with his life and get over the resentment.

I’ve felt many different ways about Bill.  When I was younger, I was convinced he would one day be the big brother I wanted so desperately.  After Dad died, I hated him.  Not only would I have crossed the street to get away from him, I would have walked into the street, carjacked someone and run him over.  I was (and still am) convinced that he’d hit our dad on more than one occasion when he was in the hospital and I was helpless to stop it.  I was twelve and angry and abandoned and I hated him more than anyone I’d ever known.  Now, he’s a means to an end.  Carla wants us to be a family, and maybe one day, after several long talks, arguments and probably a significant amount of therapy, we can be.  To be honest, it stung a little that Amelia doesn’t know who I am and Bill doesn’t acknowledge me, even though I’ve grown to do the same.  But as it stands, I don’t have a brother.  I do, however, have a niece.  And one day, she’ll know about her aunt.

Unlikely advice…

“I’m not picking sides, because I like both of you guys.  But I want to say, and I know I haven’t known you that long, but I think that you’re an incredibly strong woman and I hate to see you get kicked around like this.  It’s like seeing your dad get his ass kicked, you hate watching it.”

I hate it too.  And I’m beginning to think that all of the times I get picked up aren’t worth the times that I get kicked in the teeth.