Urgh

September 29, 2006 at 10:48 pm (The Engineer)

As much as we all want to “live and learn”, if anyone comes up to you and tells you to not get in a long-distance relationship, LISTEN TO THEM.

Today, I´m going to be one of those people. Because I am in one of such relationships and well, I´m sufferin’. The thing is, no matter the good intentions, the love, etc, it´s a very difficult thing to have, a long distance relationships. You have to have great communication and a commitment to be together at one point down the road. “Let’s figure it out” does not work.

My man and I have been together (together??) for about two years and a half. Yeah, roll your eyes. I can’t believe it either. It started good, with me going, “no, no, no, this is a bad idea, you live in X place and I in Y, this will never work, long distance from the get-go”. Of course, he did the “let me prove it will work” and went on to sweep me off my feet and make me me fall in love with him. For about a year it was wonderful. We spent the summer together (love gradschool! 3 months off!) and then I was off to school again. In early 2005 we celebrated our anniversary. It was good, but a little rocky in that around those days one of his two exes (yeah!) who show up every once in a while, did such a thing an called, all the way from Europe. Ürgh. But we managed to sail through that. Then a month later, when I returned to visit for Spring Break… I swear the aliens had abducted my man and replaced him with a double who looked like him but acted like I didn´t exist. After much pushing, he confessed he was confused and needed…”a break”. Also, there were other issues in his personal life that had him “distracted”. I returned home heartbroken. Then it downed on me that in one of his honest moments he had told me his ex (the European blonde) had asked to come visit in the Spring. My mind raced.. Phone call, then sudden change. Had this bitch sneaked into his life again? My stress was such that I began crying non-stop, losing 9 pounds because I could not eat for 4 days.
Confronted, he said that was not it. I can´t prove yes or no, so I will always live with the doubt.

After this breakup, what followed was a year of push and pull of “I love you but can´t be with you”, “I need time, but please let me call you on the phone”, jealous fits if I went out with anyone, etc, etc. Had I been a stronger, perhaps different woman, I’d have pulled the plug right then and there. But I was a fool in love. Convinced that if I loved him enough he´d wake up, that if I waited for the family issues to resolve themselves, etc, etc, etc. It didn’t happen. But he also didn’t let go and I didn’t try hard enough. Consistent with my fears, I didn’t want to let go for fear he would not come back to me. My friends and family told me in many languages that I needed to let go. I even put another of those 3 summer months in between us by leaving the country and moving for that period of time to another country. What that accomplished was that he got scared, but still nothing. I also tried the “don’t call me unless you know what you want”. Nope. No success. He’d call, I’d cave in, etc, etc, etc. And I never did anything out of the ordinary and was the ever-pleasing girlfriend (or whatever it is that I was), fearing that if I said, “hey, that is not cool” he’d leave.

Fast forward to this summer. Through therapy, trips, and just time, I’ve been healing and… have come to not expect anything from him, when he invites me to visit him. I decide I can do it and will do it, so that when at the end I say, “what now?” and he answers his usual “Uhh I don’t know” I can say -with inner peace and knowledge to myself that I tried- “This is over”.

Well. He doesn’t do that. Not only does he act nice, but he responds well to my newly acquired spine and my not so pleasing attitude when it came to his bad moments. He also decides that coming up to visit me is a good idea. What?! No, the script says you act differently. Anyways. He comes up, visits and when I ask “Now what?” He says: “Maybe we should try again. Trying to be apart hasn’t worked, so we clearly want to be together. Do you want to try again?” To give me time to think -since I wasn’t counting on this- I bounce the question back to him. Is he sure he wants to be back together? He says he is.

So for the last month, we have been officially back together. I say officially, because really we never left each other’s life.

But I’m not happy. I think I said yes because it was like standing in a long line for a plate of food, that, by the time you get to the counter you no longer are sure you want, but you take because heck, you put in the time and effort, so hand it over!

Yes, for the longest time I had been wanting to hear him say those words. But the truth is nothing has changed…. Or rather, I have changed and our situation hasn’t. He’s still far away and with no plans of moving closer to me and when moving plans are discussed they are nowhere near where I am. I, on the other hand, have changed. I am no longer willing to throw away everything I had in my life if he ever said “move here with me”. I’m no longer willing to bend over backwards to make sure he is happy. Now, mind you, this is not me being mean. It’s the inner knowledge that a girl can only be flexible to an extent. And as much as he is a sweet man, he is very confused, immature and lacks the capacity to make up his mind. He can’t make up his mind about me, about buying a house (should I wait? should I not? and has been this way about that for 6 months!). He is very much a comfortable man who will let me cook, clean and do his laundry for him. I wonder if a life together would really work, when I come home from work and school and there’s no food. Will he have cooked for us or will he be waiting for me to do it? I know that I want in my life a man who will share the burden of life together, help me clean, help by cooking a meal when I can’t (hey! spaguetti is fine by me!), etc, etc. I’m not sure if my beloved has that in him.

Which brings me back to the biggest “urgh”. I no longer know we are each other’s beloved. I think time, distance and the year apart did do a number on us. I realized what I could and could not put up with for the sake of love (as Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy puts it well, “love has its limits”) and I think we have grown apart. Last night I arrived for a visit. We went to sleep. It was the first time in all our time together that we didn’t waste time getting into each other’s pants. He claimed he was tired. Perhaps. But that had never stopped us before. We could not get off each other, always touching, always loving. And I don’t mean just sex. I mean the holding hands, the cuddling, the little things that say ‘you’re mine and I’m yours’. I still do them. He doesn’t as much. I think I don’t ask for much and I do put a lot of effort. I just want an emotional commitment and someone who doesn’t make me beg for love and affection.

I can’t imagine my life where -even with all the crap- he’s not in. According to him, he has tried to “get me out of his mind and heart” but can’t. Despite the crap, immaturity, etc, he is a good man and I love him. Despite all my stuff, he loves me. But all the signals are there: There’s nothing else to talk about, no chance of him growing up and giving me the love I know I deserve. And I have gotten tired of waiting.

I’s over. I just have to gather the courage to say it out loud.

Urgh.

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In the beginning, there was a breakdown

September 20, 2006 at 10:51 pm (Life)

Funny how the things you want to talk about the most are the things that are the most difficult to get out. About two (was it three?) weeks ago I created this blog to have an outlet for the things that I felt were cramming my brain and heart and needed to be poured out in order to make sense and move along with them. But I’m scared of facing them, so I didn´t write anything. Knowing that there was a blank canvas waiting for me made the process even scarier. My logical side knows that this is why I started the blog, because I´m scared and know that I need to get things out and that writing is the only way to do it. But the fear has been winning the discussion with the brain. Writing what I need to write means having to actually think about it and while I know it must be done and should be done, I´m scared.

The thing is, it´s not even like I have a major thing to tell. I´ve been blessed enough to never have been abused, never suffered a major accident, etc. What I need to talk about here are things that sometimes I even think are absurd (compared to others): My perpetual insecurity about my possibility to be loved, the eternal police inside me scrutinizing pretty much everything I do and deems it not perfect and the -yes, it´s a constant thing here- fear to let go of things and people I suspect are not good for me.

In the end, however, as a friend of mine once told me, “those are your crosses to carry and while they may not be as heavy or difficult as somebody else´s, they are yours to carry and feel heavy to you”. Very true. Not for one moment do I take for granted the blessings and good things that have fallen upon me, like my two loving parents, a marvelous group of friends, my health, my education, etc. Things that make me who I am and who I love being. Because mind, you, it´s not like I don´t love myself, or think I´m not good looking, a good person or smart. I think -I know- I am those things. But at the end of the day there is a loneliness, a fear I won´t be loved, that despite the good things I have, the bad things will win over and I will never be loved.
When I turned 30 everyone asked “Has it hit you yet? Has it hit you yes?” and I kept joking that it hadn´t, but boy should you be there when it did. Yeah, well, it happened about 3 weeks ago -you got it, it was that which prompted the creation of the blog- when it dawned on me I was nowhere where I thought and planned I would be by the time I hit be big three-o. I wasn´t married, with a career and a baby or two. Things that I thought would mean hapiness and completeness. But it hasn´t happened that way. I´m still in gradschool, live with roommates, my “child” is a dog and the love prospects are… strange and not necessarily promising. How did I get here? As usual, I blame myself and think somewhere along the road I took a wrong turn (and trust me, if I try, I can point you where it was, that’s how obsessive I am).

However, after crying and having the emotional fit, I realized I was all wrong about this. Yes, one plans and traces onself a path of where wants to be. I obviously didn´t get to where I wanted to be by doing what I´d been doing, which was go about it looking for it on the outside. There were no wrong turns in the past, because they brought me here, they made me who I am and deep down I know that, insecurities and all, I love who I am. So I switched the plan to doing the journey inside, embraced the great, wonderful things that come with being 30 and turned the whole thing into an adventure. To be where I want to be, I need to be well from the inside, search for that completeness, that “wholeness” inside me. Hence the title of the blog and the name I sign my posts with. At 30, I am not so little a woman anymore, and I am going about it searching for a peaceful, whole inner self.

To me, this blog is a place to be completely me, it talk about my demons, rant about single or gradschool life or just plain talk about a anything I want to talk about. In the end, I hope it will help me in my journey.

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