the guy i wrote about in my last post dropped off the face of the earth for a week, so i decided to call him. when i called him, i was pretty sure it was already a lost cause but i try to give people the benefit of the doubt. and maybe someone who was really good for me wouldn’t mind me making the call.
what happened is he called me back on whatsapp and then blocked me. i sent him some text messages asking what happened but telling him i’m not going to chase him.
no response.
it’s so bizarre. earlier this week i was supposed to meet someone who has the same first name, and who didn’t show. this is the same name as the guy that i fell in love with the idea of, spilled much digital ink over, and who cut things off with me rather abruptly. i haven’t spoken to him in about two years, and i think this is what made me lose all hope and faith in fairytale endings.
not a bad thing, i guess. i guess these things have to happen not because you will them to and persist in wishful thinking, but because they do. you can’t beleive in the goodness of someone and will it into existence.
i guess this latest and greatest case just shows once again that maybe there really isn’t anything wrong with me for the fact i have not yet attracted being in a relationship. at a subconscious level, i thought it came down to the Rules, and how i wasn’t following what my mother would do. but what i really think it comes down to is self respect and to finally really believe that it is really not me, it’s them.
I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t deserve to be treated that way.
With the original C, I enabled and pushed and prodded his behavior and strung it out literally for years, holding on to the hope of a Disney ending. I was in love iwth the idea of him more han the actual him, and he knew it and fled.
I have to believe that these guys know themselves better than I do, and they are doing me a favor by getting out of my life. I do earnestly believe that.
I think what’s holding me back the most from love is my inability to receive it from myself, and a persistent feeling that I don’t have it all, that’s something’s missng unless I get the final brass/diamond ring. That if someone doesn’t want to own me, I must be defective, and if I attract/am attracted to shitty guys then the problem really is me.
I do believe that I am the common denominator of all my problems. I also acknowledge I’ve eben depressed for at least 3 of the last years, and that’s not the ideal time to meet someone since no one, absolutely nothing and no one, could lift you up out of your own mire. Someone can throw you a rope, but you have to clutch it. I have to believe life threw me many ropes over the course of that time, and while I didn’t get out of it, at least i controlled my descent somewhat.
Love is not a cure for depression. In fact, I’d say it was probably an accelerator of it.
I’m not really sure how or where I got the idea that I was unlovable, but it was probably from the fact that I couldn’t rearrange the universe to make someone who both loved me and had to let me go, because he could see we were heading in different directions, and was also a dick enough to keep stringing me along to some extent. it was probably before that, when i left my first love and saw him colllapse, or in his long slow decline before I finally left him. He was depressed too.
things got more poisonous with the rebound guy, nearly three years of toxicity and believing I deserved it because I didn’t play by the rules, and hen I finally realized that my friends fed into the system too and it was no wonder I bounced between both, one form of toxic more obvious than the other.
and then there was C, the knight in shining armor who wasn’t. The man who could have been my husband, I told myself. The one who got away because I didn’t stay at home, I dind’t follow plan A, I didn’t save the world, I didn’t go to Washington, I wen tto France. The guy who pushed me there and supported me sometimes, the one who helped me be sure I was on the right path when I doubted it the most. The guy who left me completely rather than see me run after him. The guy who couldn’t cross town for me when I crossed a country and would ahve crossed an ocean for him, and all the Captain America righteousness he represented. Like the comic Captain America, he was working for the other side all along.
Or something like that. Because even comics aren’t morally black and white these days.
And then the past two years of empy, broken, healing heart. Just nothing, no feeling, just a tad bit of crush from time to time, and disappointment. My heart has stayed pretty broken, but not in a way that would let someone new in. And no one seems to love em either. I rallied at the sight of this new guy’s name, another one sharing a name with the patron saint of travellers, another one who seemed to share so much with me. I didn’ have particuarly high hopes.
The truth that I’ve known all along is that I don’t need a man, I need a super hero. But I need to be a super hero first. I cannot attract the love of my life when I’m in the depths of depression and spiralling out of control, much as I want to beleive I am lovable then.
But I’m not going to attract the best partner if I’m not working towards being the best partner.
The flawed belief that’s been hiding inside me is that I think I deserve what I’ve gotten from these guys, because I should be in control, should know better, should always have the right thing to say, should be a better manipulator, should be better, thinner, richer, more put together.
And also that I don’t deserve it because who am I to be both a strong, independent woman who follows her dreams, and a loved, feminine, romantic girlfriend who is treated like a princess? Why can’t I be a princess and a person at the same time?
Maybe I can or cannot combine, work, travel, and family- I actually think I can- but I know I deserve love. I deserve the happy ending. Not because I put in the work of dealing with a bitch ass guy and manipulated him into it, not because I waited a million years until my dream of having a family was no longer possible, not because I decided to pick someone whose flaws don’t fit mine just to have someone.
Being in a couple is important to me, as much as it scares me. I am mostly scared about making sacrifices for someone and not having it work out. I am scared about not following my path and all the things I would have missed had I stayed with my first boyfriend.
But I guess I have to trust life a little bit. Life intervened. And admit that love and partnership are not my highest values. They are really not.
It’s not so much that even travel is, or career. It’s beign the best person I can be and living my life ot the fullest. And I do believe there’s many possible partners out there who could help me do that.
Maybe the most important step though, is to have the courage to decide what it is I want, at the moment at least. Which is becoming a French citizen, for me. This is the battle I’m in, that I want to win, so help me God. This is my major life goal for the next approximiately three years, while travelling and working.
After that, I don’t think I want to necessarily travel for 6 months at a time, or radically change careers. I want to make my life in Paris as rich as it can possibly be. I don’t need to become a long term traveller, and I don’t think that lifestyle would fulfill me. I need to write, take photos, live healthfully in mind, body and spirit. I don’t think a radical lifestyle change is the answer is this time. I just need to win the battle I”m in.
And as for the kids question, I have to surrender it to a higher power. If it’s meant to be, it will come.
This is the faith that has been lacking in my life during these years of depression, the feeling I had made some kind of choice that was fundamentally wrong and because of this my world had fallen, the world was fallen, and I would never get back to a state of grace.
instead I’ve found the basic goodness of things, and that I’ve been good, and even great, all along.
Instead of wondering how I’ll achieve greatness or map my ideal life plan, I need to plan my days. Instead of trying to change careers or countries, I need to flourish where I have planed myself, with good reason. The lack of self trust has been the biggest torture.
When I find a relationship, it won’t be the be-all end-all sign that I’m on the right track. It will be another pillar of a flourishing life, another flower in a garden that is green because I watered it.
I know, when I am in Paris, I am in the right place. That I shouldn’t move to the suburbs, or change countries, or think it will be any better anywhere else. It won’ be. This is my place, and it wasn’t an illusion or selfishness that I made it my mission to come here. However strange and vain and unglorious it sounds, this is my fight. To stay, to thrive, to make the place itself flourish. To be happy here, to let myself finally be happy.
And it has nothing to do with getting away from my family, or the US. I just fell here, a seed carried by the wind, because this is where I am meant to flower. This is, it is good.
And just like I had faith that I would come here and things will work out all right, I have faith I am going to find hat special person. That life will put him on my path the way I landed in Paris, and I will have the grace to receive that love when it comes to me, and to give it uback.
I don’t want to be depresed anymore. i am not depressed anymore. My depression was based on the idea that I had made mistakes in my life and I was not where I was supposed to be, and everything in my life was suboptimal and I couldn’t be trusted.
But yes, I can, I can be trusted, I am wise, and my happiness, my joy, is the singing of the stars.
Namaste
MJ
