Processing
Thursday I drove to Albany to spend the afternoon and evening with lorres. Friday, I drove on to Niagara on the Lake to take in plays with a Witful Turnip. Then Monday, I drove all the way back (stopping in Albany for dinner again). I found that I spent a lot of my time in the car with the radio and book on CD turned off, just thinking. I miss George. I miss him a lot. But I realize that much of what I miss is the physical relationship I had with him and the potential I saw in him for so much more than he actually gave me emotionally. I thought about our fights (not one of which was actually about anything that mattered) and how they seemed to devolve into power struggles where, if he could not get me to budge, he would gather up his things and storm off (I guess that's one way to "win"). And I thought about the picture he presented to me of myself and how different that picture is from how I see myself or how my friends seem to see me. I've been having a terrible time reconciling what he said to me with what I feel/know to be how I am in the world. And all I could figure is that this is a man with such low self-esteem that my failure to pay him more attention came across as an attack on him. He interpreted my neutral quiet as anger. He accused me of "having a fit every time I interrupt you on the computer." I know that is not true. I'm too used to having been interrupted by DWH and being interrupted at work. I don't have a fit. But perhaps he just felt tentative enough about interrupting me that he anticipated a fit and made it so in his own head? I don't know.
As the Turnip said - it's not about me. It certainly feels as though it is about me, though. Intellectually, I am processed enough to have told a friend that I want what I cannot have - I want him to be emotionally mature enough and secure enough to confront me as I am and be my partner. Part of me thinks that can happen and the rest of me knows it can't. And I can see those of you who know him shaking your heads at my folly. I am getting there, but it is hard. I keep having to remind myself of what my roommate pointed out after our first major fight and the again today when I saw her: he never took my wants and needs (even when I stated them clearly) into consideration. And even though I could not be sweet as he wanted me to be, I was unfailingly kind and he was unable to see or appreciate my kindness because it was not wrapped in the sweetness he craved. Sucks it does.
As the Turnip said - it's not about me. It certainly feels as though it is about me, though. Intellectually, I am processed enough to have told a friend that I want what I cannot have - I want him to be emotionally mature enough and secure enough to confront me as I am and be my partner. Part of me thinks that can happen and the rest of me knows it can't. And I can see those of you who know him shaking your heads at my folly. I am getting there, but it is hard. I keep having to remind myself of what my roommate pointed out after our first major fight and the again today when I saw her: he never took my wants and needs (even when I stated them clearly) into consideration. And even though I could not be sweet as he wanted me to be, I was unfailingly kind and he was unable to see or appreciate my kindness because it was not wrapped in the sweetness he craved. Sucks it does.