Time Crapsule

I found something hiding in my Facebook "Notes" section just now ... something that I didn't remember writing, something that I never finished and never published. It appears to have poured out of my head less than a week post-breakup in 2009 in the wee small hours of the morning. Interestingly, I call it a "time capsule" because, wow, it is just that. Who is this girl who thought that relationships were "real work" and who beat herself up for making bad choices instead of honoring and celebrating what had gone right?

It's these kinds of things that make me cringe when I go back and read old blog entries here. And yet, I'm posting this previously unpublished one anyway, even though it's unfinished ... or especially because it's unfinished. I think some part of me deep inside told me to "stop" right there. Just leave it. It speaks to me on a new level because of that, which makes me smile. I was tuning into something better, even if I didn't yet know it :)

Head Over Heels (Hurts More When You Land)
Friday, July 10, 2009 at 4:17am

I know what you're thinking... you're thinking, "Oh, great. Not another weepy, whiny blog about feeling jilted and alone?" And if that's the case, you're right... that's all it will be for you. But for myself, I see this as a time capsule moment, full of insight that I'll put out of my mind later, that might actually help keep me from making the same mistakes again, should I not force them from my noggin. I know that a few months down the road, I'll be able to look back at things from a clearer perspective and feel just fine... or mostly fine... so why not just pretend like things are already fine and skip the tiresome woe-is-me yarn?

If you've gotten this far and are feeling that you're wasting your time here, please surf away to somewhere else. If any of you have a morbid curiosity about broken hearts or are experiencing one yourself and thus can relate right now, please continue to read further.

Sometimes it feels like my life has been one long, never-ending country song... especially my romantic life. And my whole life of late is the worst, bluesiest, moaniest country song there ever was. "My man treats me so bad. My dog done died. My man's dog treats my other dog so bad. My man done gone, but at least he took his stupid dog. My baby daddy don't pay." Okay, maybe that last one is from a hip hop song. Hmm... they're really not that different in terms of genre content, now that I think about it...

Anyway, in affairs of the heart, I've got no one to blame but myself, I know that. Tonight, I actually went back and re-read some old instant messages from December 2007 just to see if all the signs were there... to see if my subconscious was throwing up red flags about my then new suitor and if that suitor was throwing out his own red flags. Guess what? They were all there... all the things that we ended up fighting about for the last year. Well, most of them anyway. I even brought up my masochistic penchant for man-children!

What's not there is how or why he came into my life at that time. He failed to tell me in any of our night after night of long messaging that his previous girlfriend had only just moved out of his apartment not two weeks before he first contacted me. When I asked "how long had it been," he responded with "It was official several months back, but it was really DOA." Of course, I was asking when they broke up, not when they started dating... but his reply was only answering when it started. I think we were about a month or so into dating before his statements about things with her made me say, "Let me get this straight... you were still living together two weeks before contacting me?" He swore that it had been longer, but when I showed him on a calendar, he had to admit it really was that short of time.

Why would that matter? Well, for starters, I have this thing against anyone jumping from one relationship to another. I've learned from my own experience and from plenty of others that you need to come to a full stop before exiting the vehicle. It's also a good idea to stretch your legs and get a sense of your bearings before you jump into the next ride.

Maybe "ride" is the wrong word.

What I do know are there are serial monogamists out there who go from one relationship to another to another without looking around them, without living with their own self for a while... alone. People who find that concept frightening, perhaps because they rely on other people to keep them distracted from their own sad state or to keep from really working on their own issues. These people are also doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, always blaming their partners.

I'm not one of those people, but I do blame myself for picking the wrong match. This was such a case. I failed to do my research and allowed myself to get caught up in the full distraction of it all... and it was a great distraction for a while. Bounding through full-tilt, pure pleasure living -- food, alcohol, sex, fun -- is addictive. You find yourself wanting more, more, more. But when the dust settles (along with those hormones) and the real work of the relationship sets in, sometimes you realized that you have far more than you bargained.

My extra bargain came in the form of a possible personality disorder called "Borderline Personality Disorder" or BPD. I had looked into the similar face of mood swings once before, in the form of a fast-talking, over-achieving, bouncy Puerto Rican man from the Bronx. It was a dizzying ride in which I just found myself trying to hang on due to all of the emotional 180s that he kept pulling. This time the emotional roller coaster took the form of a bearded satyr with a an alarming temper from Staten Island. (Not sure if there's something in the water there, New Yorkers, but you folks might want to consider drinking the bottled stuff!)

Next time on The She-Creature Speaks: My vagina monologue.