(no subject)
and a further update...
i have been uploading photos of old holidays, just to clear my camera memory. rather than making me nostalgic and wistful, attached to each of them is a memory of how he was annoyed at me for something or how he was impatient or didn't understand a joke i'd made, or was just.. distant. even in paris, which was our first big romantic holiday together, 7 months in. i mean don't get me wrong there are some good memories but there is definitely an element there of me projecting, to the world and to myself, an image of how i wanted us to be, not how we were.
in so many ways he was wrong for me and i knew it at the time as well, just glossed over it for all(?) the good stuff. i'd read these memes which say that people stay in bad relationships when they could be finding the rest of their lives and i would think, 'that doesn't apply to me. i know what i'm doing. i can make this better' - but that is something i never quite managed.
and that is the one thing that i will take forward with me from this. not to settle for less than i deserve. not to compromise. not to squash my concerns but to fucking listen to them. because i have been compromising myself for as long as i can remember; before him it was with uni friends etc. and i guess i thought that he had saved me from all that but really it was just a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. i have been compromising everything about myself, with friends, with work and with him, for 4 and a half years, so much so that i became half a person, and i deserve so much more than that from life. my good friends deserve so much more than that from me.
i deserve to be with someone who understands that for a relationship to work, the two of you will need to grow together, and that this or growing apart is a choice that you make, not just something that happens. someone who is willing to let me into their life and share their thoughts and feelings with me, and is eager for me to share mine. someone who inspires me and allows me to inspire them. until i find that i will be single and happy. i'm going to make my life what it should be. i'm going to make it happen.
a couple of days ago (on his birthday) we fell out. we are not on speaking terms. perhaps i was unreasonable, i don't even know (i got angry that, after a lot of changing the subject to 'avoid confrontation' (story of my fucking life), he admitted that he was not only still friends with The Bitch but has even extended the house contract, just the two of them, and is refusing to give her up... he said that he would rather move forward without me 'dictating his life for him'. which is not something that he has brought up before but i am glad he has finally fucking learnt to communicate.) but what i do know is that i don't actually give a shit.
i realised it a little late - i hadn't examined my feelings properly for a little while so went into default mode (how i felt i should be feeling) and shouted - it was pretty ugly - but what that does show is that i'm not thinking about it all the time (or much of the time at all, really). i realised that when he hung up on me and i wasn't remotely upset, more just a bit beleaguered, that maybe something has changed. i realised the following:
i don't care if he is friends with her. i don't care if he is friends with me. he can do whatever the fuck he likes. i will not chase (i don't even have the urge to), i will not expend any energy on having emotions for him. i'm not even angry.
i just... don't care!
and realising that is pretty fucking liberating! :D
i have been uploading photos of old holidays, just to clear my camera memory. rather than making me nostalgic and wistful, attached to each of them is a memory of how he was annoyed at me for something or how he was impatient or didn't understand a joke i'd made, or was just.. distant. even in paris, which was our first big romantic holiday together, 7 months in. i mean don't get me wrong there are some good memories but there is definitely an element there of me projecting, to the world and to myself, an image of how i wanted us to be, not how we were.
in so many ways he was wrong for me and i knew it at the time as well, just glossed over it for all(?) the good stuff. i'd read these memes which say that people stay in bad relationships when they could be finding the rest of their lives and i would think, 'that doesn't apply to me. i know what i'm doing. i can make this better' - but that is something i never quite managed.
and that is the one thing that i will take forward with me from this. not to settle for less than i deserve. not to compromise. not to squash my concerns but to fucking listen to them. because i have been compromising myself for as long as i can remember; before him it was with uni friends etc. and i guess i thought that he had saved me from all that but really it was just a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. i have been compromising everything about myself, with friends, with work and with him, for 4 and a half years, so much so that i became half a person, and i deserve so much more than that from life. my good friends deserve so much more than that from me.
i deserve to be with someone who understands that for a relationship to work, the two of you will need to grow together, and that this or growing apart is a choice that you make, not just something that happens. someone who is willing to let me into their life and share their thoughts and feelings with me, and is eager for me to share mine. someone who inspires me and allows me to inspire them. until i find that i will be single and happy. i'm going to make my life what it should be. i'm going to make it happen.
a couple of days ago (on his birthday) we fell out. we are not on speaking terms. perhaps i was unreasonable, i don't even know (i got angry that, after a lot of changing the subject to 'avoid confrontation' (story of my fucking life), he admitted that he was not only still friends with The Bitch but has even extended the house contract, just the two of them, and is refusing to give her up... he said that he would rather move forward without me 'dictating his life for him'. which is not something that he has brought up before but i am glad he has finally fucking learnt to communicate.) but what i do know is that i don't actually give a shit.
i realised it a little late - i hadn't examined my feelings properly for a little while so went into default mode (how i felt i should be feeling) and shouted - it was pretty ugly - but what that does show is that i'm not thinking about it all the time (or much of the time at all, really). i realised that when he hung up on me and i wasn't remotely upset, more just a bit beleaguered, that maybe something has changed. i realised the following:
i don't care if he is friends with her. i don't care if he is friends with me. he can do whatever the fuck he likes. i will not chase (i don't even have the urge to), i will not expend any energy on having emotions for him. i'm not even angry.
i just... don't care!
and realising that is pretty fucking liberating! :D