What walls are made of ...

I had a moment of clarity this morning while I was talking to the recent ex. 

We were talking about our points of view as far as the how he and when he chose to dump me  - which were somewhat clouded by past experience (mostly his) and fueled by misrepresentation (also his).

I had a hard time putting my feelings into words. We pointed out things we never talked about, accusations of comparisons, and how impulsive I can be … for cutting everything off so abruptly after he dumped me.

In trying to explain why I did that, and in doing something I never do – opening up about the only issue I've ever had with people in general – I figured out why I stayed with my ex of four years when he didn’t deserve me. 

Aside from the fact that I'm just stupid. You know you're mature when you can admit you do stuff simply because you're stupid. Anyway ... 

It’s because no matter what happened between us, he never really left me. Although he douchebagged me, he kept coming back. He said it was because he loved me and I interpreted his many returns as saying I’m worth working on the relationship when it was probably more that he was using me because I was available. 

Eventually, I think I was just exhausted with going back and forth and couldn't find a reason to stay. So, I left him to get my life back, because in the process of trying to make him happy enough to stay, I lost the person I use to be. #lostgirl

It was liberating, to be the one to walk away and not look back. I only wondered why it took me so long to give up.

And it dawned on me when I was talking to the recent ex, as I was contemplating giving it another go. Hearing myself talk to him and saying the same things to him I'd say to my ex - I recognized the cycle. Then something clicked and I knew what I was doing and why.  

When I was six, my birth mom packed me and my brother up and dropped us off at a relative’s house. I think I knew something was up, I begged her not to go because even though she said she’d be back Saturday, I knew she wasn’t coming back.

It’s weird how, as a kid, you have an intuition about these things. I cried everyday waiting for her. On a side note, why is it I can’t remember little things from a few days ago, yet I can remember this event like it was just yesterday? #oldpeopleproblems?

But I was right. She never came back and I never heard from her again – my own mom. I heard she wrote letters to me, but I didn’t get them. As a kid, I thought it was my fault. What could I have done to show her that me and my brother were worth staying in our lives? What was better than us? What could I have done to make her want to stay?

If I could just be someone different ... 

Don’t get me wrong, I have a great dad and a wonderful stepmom and I love them both so much. When the going got tough – because, trust me, I was no angel - they didn’t give me away.

I’m sure that’s mostly because there was no one who would take me. Or unconditional love. Probably a little of both? I love my parents for that, but for whatever reason, I held onto that one negative experience and that’s shaped how I handle friendships and relationships.

"Say what you mean, mean what you say, and do what you say you're going to do."  It's a motto I live by and expect others to as well. But not everyone else believes in it. So, I have very few friends and even few that I'm close to, because I'd rather be douchebagged by an asshole than be disappointed by someone I call a friend. 

In relationships, I try too hard and for the wrong reasons. Of course, when you're the only one trying, it isn't going to work out no matter what, so when someone chooses to leave, I let go. I cut off all communication. They’ve basically just said I’m not good enough to be friends with or that me and our relationship isn’t worth trying to make it over that bump (literally on this last one).

My ex of four hated that about me, that I could just let go and seem so calm. If he could only have heard the loud bass of the pity party I’d throw for myself after each time he left, he might feel better. But by the time I left him, I was over him. Because I realized no matter what I did, he would never be with only me. 

And I’m forever a monogamous girl, which seems to be so hard to come by these days you'd think I'd be a hot commodity! But I digress ...

I know I’ve blogged about that particular ex a lot, and some (including the recent guy) might argue that I still have feelings for him, maybe I’m not over him or that I’m reaching out via my writing to urge him to try harder to get back to me.

Which is funny, because he’s never read a single thing I’ve written and for the first two years we were together, he had no idea what I did for a living or that I had been laid off work for a year. Why would he pay attention to what I wrote online? Besides, a blog post about being a douchebag isn’t the way to endear someone to you. Especially if it's true.

No one likes to be called on their shit.

I don’t want him back. What I feel for him is indifference. And although I’m over him, it’s hard to get over what he did to me, the person I had become for him and the guilt I feel over how I moved for him, leaving my kid with her dad – I pretty much became my mom.

That came full circle, didn’t it?

And maybe that is what my fairy godmother is trying to tell me. No one worth being with will ever want to change who you are because you’re worth being with as you are 

There are no happy endings except the ones you make for yourself and they don’t come easy - regardless of what anyone says. But nothing worth having is ever really easy, is it?