Beautiful Mess

"People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime."

I went eight years without allowing myself to fall into any long term relationships. Yes, I did have two experiences that were longish-term relationships, each lasting about seven months a piece. I also had a couple of very brief, but very intense micro-relationships as well. But in eight years time, I really didn't have much in the way of solid relationship experience. I was beginning to wonder whether or not I had it in me anymore. And I really wondered if I could ever bring myself to live with another adult again. In short, I'd become set in my ways and a bit curmudgeonly. Even worse, I let myself get comfortable that way.

But deep down, I was missing something... that connectedness that couples feel. I began to long for someone who just wanted a relationship as much as I did. No more of the games of dating and wondering where you stand, who the other person might be seeing instead of you, constant first dates like endless job interviews. I wanted to meet a man who wanted to bypass the games and go straight to a blissful, monogamous relationship. And be careful what you wish for, as they say... I got exactly that! The first six months were made of pure awesomeness; the twelve months that followed were made of something else, however... something had crept in and reared its ugly head: Mr. Hyde.

After the second six months together, I knew the angry, disrespectful behavior was a solid pattern that wouldn't change. I also knew that I had only two choices: accept it or end it. Unable to make that choice right away, the relationship limped on with me in emotional limbo for another six months. Sometimes it would be exhilarating and wonderful, other times it would be aggravating and hostile. The biggest problem was that it was rarely respectful. And as time wore on, I began to react in kind. When someone attacks me disrespectfully, eventually I will snap back. The problem is, my zingers usually hit even closer to the bone than anyone can get to mine. Call it a gift or call it a curse, but if you get me that angry -- and it takes a lot to get me to this point -- I will withdraw all kindness and you will see the cruelest, most brutally honest person you have ever met. No one wants that, least of all me.

P had pushed me to that point. It only took one time of me "going there," responding tit for tat, for me to hate myself for it. Every month, every week that went by, he would push and push with sniping and griping and criticism to get me to that point... and inevitably I would snap. Over and over again. I was miserable and I could literally feel the resentment and stress killing me inside.

The thing about love is, the depth of one's love is a reflection of how you feel about yourself when you're with the object of your affection. "Is the you that you are when you're together better than the you that you are when you're alone? No? Then why are you with this person?" I asked myself that on a daily basis. But deep down, I also didn't believe he meant to be cruel. It felt like he wanted to love correctly, but he lacked the proper tools to do so. Those caring, sweet moments made me feel like I could take on the world and I kept waiting for him to figure out how he could stay in that moment... or at least stay anywhere near that moment, instead of straying too far into hostile territory.

After living together for six months (the second six-months of our relationship) and his ugly moods getting progressively worse, I had decided upon an unspoken deadline of February 13, 2009. I could have decided upon any date, really, but I was looking for meaning still. If there was no meaning to be had, then at least the ending would be memorable. That date happened to land on a Friday, and Friday the 13th definitely would make it memorable. It was also the day before Valentine's Day, which made it infinitely memorable. I'd decided that if he could not fix his angry persona for good by that date, I was done and he was out.

Like clockwork, by that date he had built his anger into another belligerent state and this time when he threatened to go, I pointed to the door and firmly said, "Then go now." When he wouldn't go, I started packing for him. My seriousness must have scared some rationality back into him, because he immediately switched his tune, apologized and begged me to forgive him. I accepted his apology (again) and told him that he would have to change by the next Friday the 13th, which was a month away, or find another place to live.

As if right on cue, the same monthly pressure cooker built up and boiled over, and the same dance happened all over again.

"I'm leaving."
"Good. Go."
"Wait, I'm sorry."

This time, I made him prove his apology in writing. And not just write it, but publish it for all to see: to his Facebook account. It struck fear in his heart, I could see it. A man who would act the fool in public without a second thought was suddenly struck down by the idea of showing his true dark side to the world. Although not as revealing or as detailed an apology as I would have liked, I accepted what he wrote as a sincere attempt to make amends.

A Very Public Apology To My Girlfriend (or, "The Not So Greatest Love Story Ever Told")

March 13 at 10:44am

"Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I'm either the nicest asshole you will ever meet or I'm Bipolar (or perhaps Bipolar 2, Electric Motherfucking Douchebag Boogaloo). Either way I've been this way my whole life and I've taken it for granted.

My (quite possibly soon to be ex) girlfriend has been kind enough to point out, time after time, that my anger comes on like a switch being flicked. You get mad at something, you blow up, 15 minutes later everything is fine and you go back to watching the dogs chase the cats. Or the kids chasing each other.

Well, apparently this is not normal behavior. Which explains the alarming lack of close friends I have in my life and why I have a track record of relationships that don't stick and jobs I can't stand for very long. It also explains why everything started off on the good foot with She and I over a year ago and is now turning into a swamp of anger riddled sadness. This is my fault. Fixing this will not be easy.

Since I'm out here bearing my soul I'd like to say in my defense that I've felt more stressed out in the last 2 months than I have in the last 10 years. The 1 person I have told the whole story to slowly backed away from me to avoid catching my bad fortune. This was far from the soothing pat on the back I was hoping for (No, I won't tell you the details of what's going on. Yes, it's totally reversible, eventually). I get it, everyone has problems.

So this is my very public apology to the love of my life for making her miserable. For making her cry and causing her to doubt her own sanity by staying with me. The shitty things in my life are absolutely nothing compared to the happiness I feel when we're together. Flipping out just comes easy for me and I gotta get it under control."

I was hoping that the exercise would help him to really think about how his actions and words hurt me, but also I was hoping that maybe some of his friends would give him feedback about their own issues with anger and how they coped. I was right. They did. That's when someone brought Borderline Personality Disorder to our attention.

For a couple of weeks, just knowing his behavior was being described to a tee and had a label made him aware of his actions and able to calm down faster. But because his memory is particularly short (see the mention in his apology about 2 stressful months, which were actually 9 stressful months), as the weeks passed, he slowly slipped right back into the same mood swings that I already described in the previous posts. The return of Mr. Hyde.

Why would I keep him for all of that stress? Because of how I felt during those good moments. I do truly believe that when he was at his best -- when he was Dr. Jekyll -- that he loved me with every ounce of his being: unconditionally and beautifully. What he couldn't or wouldn't change was how when he became Mr. Hyde, he loved me the way that his abusive, adoptive parents had loved him: conditionally and disrespectfully.

If he could have stayed in that Dr. Jekyll persona, I could have looked past all of his flaws and his quirks and his idiosyncrasies and his craziness. For the first time in far too long, there was a man who had all of my heart. And it lasted as long as it did, because, regardless of falling short sometimes, he truly made the effort, like that open apology and many other times that he apologized privately. Because when he realized what he was about to lose, he loved me with all of his heart again to be sure he wouldn't lose me. For that, I will always be grateful. To have someone look at me that deeply, that serenely, that adoringly, AND to feel it in return, was something I was not sure existed.

It was the depth of that love that kept me from moving on, however. I did force myself to go on a couple of dates with one man, whom I already knew before meeting P, but that ultimately went nowhere, which was for the best. I was not ready to move on. Until the time of my last post, I still was not ready to move on. And at the time of this writing (which has actually been taking about 3 weeks, with many deletions), I am still not sure if I'm ready to move on.

At this point, only one thing is certain: I will never go back.

Well, that and I now have a much deeper appreciation for yo-yos.

Something happened on November 4th. That date just so happened to be exactly four months from the break-up, but it was something beyond that. Maybe it was all the writing that I had done? Perhaps it was therapeutic or exorcised the ghost or caused some sort of shift to happen. Whatever it was, I no longer felt ... connected. The string had been cut. Life's next chapter, here I come!

I loved deeply. I grieved deeply.

And for that, I am grateful. Deeply.

The End.