I had an epiphany

Sep. 17th, 2006 at 8:16 AM

a few days ago and due to the activities we've been engaged in for the past week, I didn't have a chance to write it down.

It dawned on me (have I mentioned I can be a little slow?) that I was focusing on the parts of my relationship which didn't work and making them worse by doing so rather than nurturing the parts of the relationship which nurtured me.

I admit that I don't always make the best relationship decisions. However, there were things about J which attracted me to him from the moment we met. I'd shoved those things aside recently and that was a bad idea.

J is a good man with a good heart who can be hurt easily because of that good heart. I stomped on him and then wondered why he backed away. I've been working very hard to remedy what I've done and to make sure he knows how much he means to me.

Hard realities about me

Sep. 10th, 2006 at 8:39 AM

I'm learning that I'm really not a very nice person. Now I say that but I don't want anyone to think that learning this is a bad thing. It is quite the opposite.

Sometimes we go through life with a single-mindedness that blocks everything else out. When someone helps you lift your head (out of your ass most times) the result can be painful but worthwhile.

I've done and said some really horrific things recently which I regret immensely. I realize that my own self-focused depression and resentment and anger have been destructive and damaging not only to me but to the people around me. For that I apologize wholeheartedly and hope that with time those I've hurt will come to forgive me.

I've made changes in my thought processes (which are not yet complete but are at least at the conscious level that I can stop myself from continuing the same destructive behavior and thought patterns). I'm finding peace again and trying very hard to remember to say simple things like "Thank you" to those who are most important in my life.

I'm not "cured" by any stretch of the imagination. I still have to fight to put away the initial surges of resentment that come from certain situations. I have to learn to speak up for what I want and need and face being rejected rather than remaining silent in order to not be told no.

I don't like to make excuses for my behaviors so often I just don't say things that might be construed as excuses. That doesn't mean that the reasoning behind my behavior is not "valid" in the sense that we are creatures of habit. Even bad habits are hard to break because we create pathways of comfort in our minds...even when that comfort is cold and ugly.


Little girls choose their men based on their fathers...at least that is what many of the psychologist and psychobabble nitwits want us to think...I think, to an extent, it is true. I choose men who are, for whatever reason (and this is not an acusation or disparaging remark about these men) emotionally unavailable. I choose men who often accept me and what I give to relationships and then choose to go to others for more. This is a pattern for me that has been this way since my first boyfriend when I was 14. But really it started with my father. He is and has always been distant, passive agressive, and absent. He waited until I was "old enough to handle it" (his words) and then decided he no longer needed to be civil to my mother (they'd been divorced for 5 years at that point) and essentially left me for his new wife (stopped summer visitations, shortened weekend visitations, made no time for just me and him). I see that pattern of behavior in nearly every relationship I've ever had with a man. And I'm finally realizing it is me who has the skewed vision of what relationships should and can be.

I don't speak up because when I asked my father why I couldn't spend more time with him, I was told it would make someone else feel bad.
I don't reach out for physical contact with men because when I did reach for my father's hand, I got the stiff armed, keep me at a distance body language.

And it wasn't just my father who taught me to stay silent, to subjugate my desires in favor of other, to keep my distance. Other relationshps have contributed.


The point now is to stop doing all these things. To trust that J is as I believed he was when I met him...a man of integrity and strength. To remember that dominant or no, owner or no, man or no...he is HUMAN first and the things which happen in his life affect how he feels, and how he reacts to others, including me. And to remember that I'm human too. I make mistakes but I can make changes to avoid making those same mistakes again and again.