Connection
This may be the most vulnerable entry I will ever write, and I find myself hesitant to put these words to page because of it. There's safety in remaining enigmatic, and being a difficult person to understand has been my best line of defense for most of my life now. Instilling fear in other was #2. At the same time, both of those things have sabotaged relationships with people constantly as well. Anyone reading this would say these are flawed defenses if they cause the thing they're supposed to protect me from...and yet I have never and do not believe this to be true. The dangers that prompted these defenses existed before the defenses caused problems.
As a teenager I was at the forefront of anime being imported to the US. There was a bootleg place Derek introduced me to in Chinatown where I got access to cheap fansubs of stuff currently airing at a time when everyone else was limited to a handful of shows in the mainstream. One of the first shows I ot exposed to there that had a big influence on me was Evangelion. While I could talk more about that, I'll keep it to what's relevant. Later in the series there's a flashback to Gendou's earlier life and his first meeting with a professor. He'd been arrested for getting into a brawl and sort of asked to explain his actions, he says he's used to being disliked, so he's adapted. Gendou is an otherwise non-physical character, a nerd, yet this brief scene says a lot about how he isn't limited by that, his comfort with pain both taking and inflicting it, and the way he so callously adapts. Thinking about this scene, I would've said that crystalized a leap in logic I made, but as I write this, it may've been more influential then that, something which actually helped make that leap.
I'll never forget the first day of 5th grade, meeting my classmates outside of school before we were called to go inside. It was the first day I was uncool. I owned knee-high socks and I wore them that way...with shorts. It wasn't an odd thing, but then suddenly it was. There was a memo everyone got about fashion and I didn't. The idea that socks had to be rolled down around the ankles... There were a few other things that happened that year. I remember joking around in the schoolyard and being chased making a joke at the wrong people, and the sense of newfound fear I felt running away and suddenly I understood what cliques were and what jocks were.
My parents switched me to another school the following year, a school where my mother taught. I was one of the least popular kids that year because I was the son of a teacher. I say one of because there's always this invisible wall between even the most disliked and the kids considered too weird for anyone to relate to or even see as people at that age. Barring them, yeah, I was the lowest. A little overa year later and problems were starting to emerge behaviorally after being in this school and the social situation. They were probably little things and in hingsight I think my parents were super quick to respond to warning signs, or maybe I just don't remember more...but I was able to talk them into letting me return to my old school. I had friends there and things would be better.
They didn't. I'd been gone for a year and a half and I was suddenly a new kid. Being new meant being at the bottom of the ladder again. It was arguably worse, whereas in the other school I was more ignored, here I was actively picked on by people I thought would be friends. I didn't complain though because I asked for this. Yet I harbored resentment towards my parents for years for this all hapening. To this day they refuse to accept blame for any of it, and resent 12 year old me for secretly resenting them and sabotaging our relationship. And there's also a recurring theme here that often times when I dream of something better, or plan a solution to a problem, I end up worse off and then short-circuit on what to do.
The leap of logic though...people were going to dislike me for all sorts of stupid and trivial non-reasons that bore no reflection on who I was as a person anyway, so why not give them a reason? Even that's code for saying, I might as well get something out of it, some sort of satisfaction. People are going to dislike me anyway, so if I remain elusive and don't let people see me for who I am, they can't dislike me for me or for anything vital or sensitive. And when people become more afraid of me, they don't try to hurt me, mock me, bully me. I can't fault myself for any backlash people have to my attitude or mourn missed connections for being evasive because people are going to dislike me anyway.
I lived probably over 10 years of my life according to this logic.
I used that logic as a cover, a mask to hide me. Wear a mask long enough, it's as real as you are though. Nowadays, I refer to this as something that's both me and not me, it's as much a mask as it's really me. When all people know of you is how you act and how you act is according to the mask, to them, the mask is you. At some point your actions define you, regardless of what lies underneath.
All of that isn't the vulnerability I was referring to though, but it's actually related under this theme of connection.
In 5th grade I volunteer to be an altar boy (server nowadays I think as they started letting girls do it too). It was a spur of the moment decision. I couldn't even tell you why I thought it was a good idea. But when I decided to do this I also decided to try and take religion more seriously. That was short-lived though. As I've written about before, my split from religion was tied to being bullied in school. 6th grade was spent in that other school. I went to Catholic school, and the idea that my bullies were part of the same faith, protected by the same sacrament of confession and thus would go to heaven...I couldn't accept it. I didn't want to be part of a religion which condoned their torment of me, and so I turned off from it pretty fast.
In hindsight, I can remember during that period though what it felt like to try and be part of the faith. I remember a sense of pride at the outfit I wore as an altar boy. I remember trying to take prayers more seriously - I even managed to have the patience to say a full rosary a few times...albeit I was doing it as fast as I could whisper and I think I clocked myself at 30 minutes...so probably was missing the point, but what does an 11 year old know about reflection and the meaning of these things?
Funny thing though, I can look back and remember feeling the same way when I signed up for JROTC in high school. Had my military uniform that with its exactly measured button placements, spit-shined shoes. There was weekly marching drills, which I was really good at apparently. There was pride in the uniform, and I remember taking the drills seriously, trying to do things well.
In both cases there was this sense of belonging to something bigger then myself. What turned me off to JROTC, it felt empty. I looked ahead to 3 more years of that and I didn't see a point. 3 more years of weekly marching drills and classes that weren't required with no clear idea of what I was supposed to be learning or of what use it would be. And that was the last time I ever felt like I belonged to something bigger then me. I never sought out that feeling, and it was certainly nice to be able to understand it since others seem to thrive off it and crave it. Nothing drove me away from it, I just stopped connecting to the feeling and have had no desire to return. But I can understand how it makes a person feel, and how it can drive them to act in certain ways - it's a bit intoxicating really, maybe that's why I don't trust it.
I think I'm avoiding the point now though. I brought up religion and the idea of me trying to take it seriously to highlight the seriousness with which I approached these 2 things at that time.
The first is something I've been avoiding mentioning for probably several months now since I remembered it. I remember scratching crosses into my thighs as some form of prayer and trying to offer my suffering to god - not just the pain I was feeling, but all the pain I'd ever feel. (Contrast this with Daniel's first wish to be Superman so he'd never feel pain again - and we're very different people) I'd scratch them using my nails. I can't say as I was scratching that hard, but maybe my skin was soft or dry, but I was definitely taking off the top layer of skin because there'd be these white lines left behind that I could easily wipe away and the faintest redline afterwards. They'd be maybe 6-10 inches in size. What pain was I offering, the physical discomfort of the scratching obviously, even though I know it wasn't hurting me much, but emotional suffering as well. That strikes me as a bit more hazy because I can't place the timeline of this precisely enough to know that this lined up with school issues already, or maybe was referring to home problems or problems at my old school I've never been fully honest with myself about. I have no memory of where I could've gotten the idea to do this from, or what I was thinking when I did it, so there's no deeper thought I can give this memory, but I know it's significant.
The part of me that believes in the mystical thinks that this was effectively me casting a spell and inviting painful things into my life to continue feeding some deific being. It's certainly one way for me to rationalize the painful life I've had and I know it's superstitous rationalizing, but there's a part of me that's scared there's truth in the idea. And on the topic of rationalizing that, my own belief about reincarnation offers its own ideas, that I'm living this life as punishment for terrible behavior in past lives, working off karmic debt as it were. Jessie and that little coven were fond of that idea, seeeing as they could use it to villify me in the present and thus use that as social leverage/control, and would concoct past lives and sins for me. And part of me even thinks between lifetimes we have a say in what our next life would be like, journey of the soul and all, and that for some reason I chose this. The reincarnation superstitions remain more intact because in those, the goal of such a lifetime is to overcome the pain, not give in to it by despair or to let the bitterness warp me, because that's a lot of the mentality I bring into therapy. I've said before of therapy that the legacy handed down to me by my parents is to stop the cycle of abuse and not pass it on and not be crushed by it.
But, to the real point of all of this because I'll lose my focus for writing soon...
The second thing I prayed for at the time was love, a soul mate, romantic love. That may not sound like much, but another thing I hide is that I was quite enthralled by romantic ideals of love for most of my life. The more I've peeled away at that over the years, the more I've come to see what drew me to it, which is that desire for perfect connection. That idea of love where you're loved for who you are, the person who won't leave, the person who understands. I could cynically refer to it as a longing for the safety of the womb. Certainly that makes sense when I think of my mother, very little about her says she offered the sort of motherly love a child needed, so I have a strong, if not desperate, psychological need for that and i latched on to the idea of romantic love as the solution. And the extent to which that is true is the extent to which I'm completely screwed, because that's an unhealthy level of expectations to place upon a person and will doom me to to being disappointed and devastated in the search for that, finding that no one can provide what I'm missing.
I've done my best over the years to try and lessen that burden, to detach from those expectations, and I have had some success...but I find that's only made more aloof as I replaced it with the things I could give myself, reducing the need for the person and emphasizing my loner instincts. And certainly the last decade or so of friendship complications has muddied the waters quite a bit as well as I begin to look for more stability in those relationships, stability playing off that same drive that cries out for safety only a parent can provide.
I'm not sure when I was able to put it into words, but I chased Jessie for so long because she was the first person to fit that romantic ideal. We never dated, though we came close once early on. Jessie had some knack for slipping past all of my walls and touch the most vulnerable part of me. I've never met anyone else capable of doing that. But she was the first to ever connect with that and it felt so good it just hurt instead which left me confused at the time. Once I gained some clarity on that I never waivered in my pursuit, convinced that the ease with which she could connect with me on such a primal level was proof of some soulmate romantic ideal. And when I was able to explain that to her, it turned out that it had no significance to her at all. That was something she was able to do to people in general and could do so by choice, she attached no meaning to it. I had no trouble accepting that as truth, but digesting it was a lot harder, and it probably went a long way towards detaching from her and letting her go, finally escaping that on/off cycle we'd been in for 12 years.
Writing this, trying to use short-hand to describe this connection...I always feel like my reader isn't going to understand the depth and gravity of emotion I want to convey. I could spend a lot of time trying to wax about it poetically, but I think I'd be belaboring the point. There are no words to express the depth of emotion I feel regarding it. I can say that for a significant portion of my life, it's been the reason to live. I have to trust that I've used strong enough words, without going overboard, to convey what this feels like and means to me.
I was able to let go of Jessie because in the end, it was a one-sided thing. She'd held some interest in me at times, and I'll never how much or for how long, but I suspect it was always lurking there in the background, she was convinced that was not meant to be for us. She had some belief she needed to keep me around, but never in a romantic sense. Anyway, one-sided...I pursued her with only scant encouragement, so there was nothing promised and feelings were never openly reciprocated. Since love has to be reciprocated to be real, what I felt for her was something else, something I don't have a word for, though infatuation certainly is applicable even if I don't think it conveys everything.
Andrea gets more difficult though and this is where the wheels come off the bus. I've said many times it took like 10 months for me to fully drop my walls around Andrea, though I can say there was a few months before when I could feel them coming down. Once I did, there was that flood of emotion I'd always sought. The second time it happened was when I decided to trust it and say i loved her for the first time. I've long maintained it bothered me it took me so long to be able to say that and get to that point, but I've also come to accept that my distrust of others is such that this is just how it works for me. I still remember her saying i love you too, and there was this momentary pause before she said it. It's stuck with me and over the years I've tried to think of explanations to insert in that brief moment. When we dated and for some time after I was content to say it was surprise because what I said came out of nowhere. Nowadays, I entertain other possibilities, each tried out like fiddling with a puzzle. What haunts me most these days is that she lied in that moment because it'd've been too awkward not to say I love you back. I haven't found the proper fitting piece yet, not sure I will.
As I said, with Jessie, it was easier to let go because I could rationalize that it was all on my end. Yeah, i knew Jessie felt the same connection, but there was nothing to indicate along the way that connection meant the same thing to her. And later on that was made clear. I could admit and accept my foolishness for chasing after something that meant something to me and not to her. With Andrea though, because there were explicitly stated reciprocal feelings, I can't come to the same conclusion. If she did love me and felt that connection, then given her own words and actions, that connection is a meaingless thing. At which point I have to accept that I may never find what I'm chasing. If she loved me and didn't feel that connection, then I've married two concepts that don't belong and I have no idea what either really means or what to do with them. If she didn't love me and didn't feel the connection, then I was deceived and I have even less reason to trust again.
I need to take an aside here, that connection and love to me are pretty much intertwined in my head. That connection is inviolable, meaning it will always be there and can be tapped into regardless of what happens. I hesitate to use the religious here, but sacred is probably applicable.
Mariah is murky when it comes to this. It was a bumpy relationship and everytime we got close and my walls began to drop, a bump would happen and my walls would go back up. And there were a myriad of reasons for those bumps such that assigning blame is kinda pointless. There were some points when my walls were dropped, but the physical distance was an obstacle preventing us from being as close as we could've. And then I find myself thinking about how my depression got in the way at times, and how during that period Warren was often a significant contributor to that, but then again so was Hitmouse and anyone responsible for those setbacks, or even the guild etc...and then I need to defer back to my earlier statement about bumps in the road from a myriad of sources. But I can't harp on one or two of those things and feel like we were both cheated out some of the most satisfying moments of our relationship. I didn't realize that until the last time I saw her. We had the afternoon to kill while waiting for the next apartment appointment, and the sense of relief I felt at getting away from Warren, the sense of hope I had for my future again, I was able to drop my walls fully for the first time when we were together in person and it felt amazing.
Due to those difficulties with Mariah though, she gets exempt from this logic trap. Jessie followed by Andrea are sort of the 1-2 punch. I could accept being the fool when it came to Jessie because I know it was almost entirely my screw up. I can't when it comes to Andrea though, not in regards to this at least. Any imagined explanation is too devastating to cope with and leaves me feeling hopeless, unprepared to navigate a future situation. I had hoped to untangle that knot in talking to her, but her stance is adamantly that it's my problem and she wants no part of it. There's a bit more related, feelings of guilt etc. but my focus is shot now and I need to stop writing.
As a teenager I was at the forefront of anime being imported to the US. There was a bootleg place Derek introduced me to in Chinatown where I got access to cheap fansubs of stuff currently airing at a time when everyone else was limited to a handful of shows in the mainstream. One of the first shows I ot exposed to there that had a big influence on me was Evangelion. While I could talk more about that, I'll keep it to what's relevant. Later in the series there's a flashback to Gendou's earlier life and his first meeting with a professor. He'd been arrested for getting into a brawl and sort of asked to explain his actions, he says he's used to being disliked, so he's adapted. Gendou is an otherwise non-physical character, a nerd, yet this brief scene says a lot about how he isn't limited by that, his comfort with pain both taking and inflicting it, and the way he so callously adapts. Thinking about this scene, I would've said that crystalized a leap in logic I made, but as I write this, it may've been more influential then that, something which actually helped make that leap.
I'll never forget the first day of 5th grade, meeting my classmates outside of school before we were called to go inside. It was the first day I was uncool. I owned knee-high socks and I wore them that way...with shorts. It wasn't an odd thing, but then suddenly it was. There was a memo everyone got about fashion and I didn't. The idea that socks had to be rolled down around the ankles... There were a few other things that happened that year. I remember joking around in the schoolyard and being chased making a joke at the wrong people, and the sense of newfound fear I felt running away and suddenly I understood what cliques were and what jocks were.
My parents switched me to another school the following year, a school where my mother taught. I was one of the least popular kids that year because I was the son of a teacher. I say one of because there's always this invisible wall between even the most disliked and the kids considered too weird for anyone to relate to or even see as people at that age. Barring them, yeah, I was the lowest. A little overa year later and problems were starting to emerge behaviorally after being in this school and the social situation. They were probably little things and in hingsight I think my parents were super quick to respond to warning signs, or maybe I just don't remember more...but I was able to talk them into letting me return to my old school. I had friends there and things would be better.
They didn't. I'd been gone for a year and a half and I was suddenly a new kid. Being new meant being at the bottom of the ladder again. It was arguably worse, whereas in the other school I was more ignored, here I was actively picked on by people I thought would be friends. I didn't complain though because I asked for this. Yet I harbored resentment towards my parents for years for this all hapening. To this day they refuse to accept blame for any of it, and resent 12 year old me for secretly resenting them and sabotaging our relationship. And there's also a recurring theme here that often times when I dream of something better, or plan a solution to a problem, I end up worse off and then short-circuit on what to do.
The leap of logic though...people were going to dislike me for all sorts of stupid and trivial non-reasons that bore no reflection on who I was as a person anyway, so why not give them a reason? Even that's code for saying, I might as well get something out of it, some sort of satisfaction. People are going to dislike me anyway, so if I remain elusive and don't let people see me for who I am, they can't dislike me for me or for anything vital or sensitive. And when people become more afraid of me, they don't try to hurt me, mock me, bully me. I can't fault myself for any backlash people have to my attitude or mourn missed connections for being evasive because people are going to dislike me anyway.
I lived probably over 10 years of my life according to this logic.
I used that logic as a cover, a mask to hide me. Wear a mask long enough, it's as real as you are though. Nowadays, I refer to this as something that's both me and not me, it's as much a mask as it's really me. When all people know of you is how you act and how you act is according to the mask, to them, the mask is you. At some point your actions define you, regardless of what lies underneath.
All of that isn't the vulnerability I was referring to though, but it's actually related under this theme of connection.
In 5th grade I volunteer to be an altar boy (server nowadays I think as they started letting girls do it too). It was a spur of the moment decision. I couldn't even tell you why I thought it was a good idea. But when I decided to do this I also decided to try and take religion more seriously. That was short-lived though. As I've written about before, my split from religion was tied to being bullied in school. 6th grade was spent in that other school. I went to Catholic school, and the idea that my bullies were part of the same faith, protected by the same sacrament of confession and thus would go to heaven...I couldn't accept it. I didn't want to be part of a religion which condoned their torment of me, and so I turned off from it pretty fast.
In hindsight, I can remember during that period though what it felt like to try and be part of the faith. I remember a sense of pride at the outfit I wore as an altar boy. I remember trying to take prayers more seriously - I even managed to have the patience to say a full rosary a few times...albeit I was doing it as fast as I could whisper and I think I clocked myself at 30 minutes...so probably was missing the point, but what does an 11 year old know about reflection and the meaning of these things?
Funny thing though, I can look back and remember feeling the same way when I signed up for JROTC in high school. Had my military uniform that with its exactly measured button placements, spit-shined shoes. There was weekly marching drills, which I was really good at apparently. There was pride in the uniform, and I remember taking the drills seriously, trying to do things well.
In both cases there was this sense of belonging to something bigger then myself. What turned me off to JROTC, it felt empty. I looked ahead to 3 more years of that and I didn't see a point. 3 more years of weekly marching drills and classes that weren't required with no clear idea of what I was supposed to be learning or of what use it would be. And that was the last time I ever felt like I belonged to something bigger then me. I never sought out that feeling, and it was certainly nice to be able to understand it since others seem to thrive off it and crave it. Nothing drove me away from it, I just stopped connecting to the feeling and have had no desire to return. But I can understand how it makes a person feel, and how it can drive them to act in certain ways - it's a bit intoxicating really, maybe that's why I don't trust it.
I think I'm avoiding the point now though. I brought up religion and the idea of me trying to take it seriously to highlight the seriousness with which I approached these 2 things at that time.
The first is something I've been avoiding mentioning for probably several months now since I remembered it. I remember scratching crosses into my thighs as some form of prayer and trying to offer my suffering to god - not just the pain I was feeling, but all the pain I'd ever feel. (Contrast this with Daniel's first wish to be Superman so he'd never feel pain again - and we're very different people) I'd scratch them using my nails. I can't say as I was scratching that hard, but maybe my skin was soft or dry, but I was definitely taking off the top layer of skin because there'd be these white lines left behind that I could easily wipe away and the faintest redline afterwards. They'd be maybe 6-10 inches in size. What pain was I offering, the physical discomfort of the scratching obviously, even though I know it wasn't hurting me much, but emotional suffering as well. That strikes me as a bit more hazy because I can't place the timeline of this precisely enough to know that this lined up with school issues already, or maybe was referring to home problems or problems at my old school I've never been fully honest with myself about. I have no memory of where I could've gotten the idea to do this from, or what I was thinking when I did it, so there's no deeper thought I can give this memory, but I know it's significant.
The part of me that believes in the mystical thinks that this was effectively me casting a spell and inviting painful things into my life to continue feeding some deific being. It's certainly one way for me to rationalize the painful life I've had and I know it's superstitous rationalizing, but there's a part of me that's scared there's truth in the idea. And on the topic of rationalizing that, my own belief about reincarnation offers its own ideas, that I'm living this life as punishment for terrible behavior in past lives, working off karmic debt as it were. Jessie and that little coven were fond of that idea, seeeing as they could use it to villify me in the present and thus use that as social leverage/control, and would concoct past lives and sins for me. And part of me even thinks between lifetimes we have a say in what our next life would be like, journey of the soul and all, and that for some reason I chose this. The reincarnation superstitions remain more intact because in those, the goal of such a lifetime is to overcome the pain, not give in to it by despair or to let the bitterness warp me, because that's a lot of the mentality I bring into therapy. I've said before of therapy that the legacy handed down to me by my parents is to stop the cycle of abuse and not pass it on and not be crushed by it.
But, to the real point of all of this because I'll lose my focus for writing soon...
The second thing I prayed for at the time was love, a soul mate, romantic love. That may not sound like much, but another thing I hide is that I was quite enthralled by romantic ideals of love for most of my life. The more I've peeled away at that over the years, the more I've come to see what drew me to it, which is that desire for perfect connection. That idea of love where you're loved for who you are, the person who won't leave, the person who understands. I could cynically refer to it as a longing for the safety of the womb. Certainly that makes sense when I think of my mother, very little about her says she offered the sort of motherly love a child needed, so I have a strong, if not desperate, psychological need for that and i latched on to the idea of romantic love as the solution. And the extent to which that is true is the extent to which I'm completely screwed, because that's an unhealthy level of expectations to place upon a person and will doom me to to being disappointed and devastated in the search for that, finding that no one can provide what I'm missing.
I've done my best over the years to try and lessen that burden, to detach from those expectations, and I have had some success...but I find that's only made more aloof as I replaced it with the things I could give myself, reducing the need for the person and emphasizing my loner instincts. And certainly the last decade or so of friendship complications has muddied the waters quite a bit as well as I begin to look for more stability in those relationships, stability playing off that same drive that cries out for safety only a parent can provide.
I'm not sure when I was able to put it into words, but I chased Jessie for so long because she was the first person to fit that romantic ideal. We never dated, though we came close once early on. Jessie had some knack for slipping past all of my walls and touch the most vulnerable part of me. I've never met anyone else capable of doing that. But she was the first to ever connect with that and it felt so good it just hurt instead which left me confused at the time. Once I gained some clarity on that I never waivered in my pursuit, convinced that the ease with which she could connect with me on such a primal level was proof of some soulmate romantic ideal. And when I was able to explain that to her, it turned out that it had no significance to her at all. That was something she was able to do to people in general and could do so by choice, she attached no meaning to it. I had no trouble accepting that as truth, but digesting it was a lot harder, and it probably went a long way towards detaching from her and letting her go, finally escaping that on/off cycle we'd been in for 12 years.
Writing this, trying to use short-hand to describe this connection...I always feel like my reader isn't going to understand the depth and gravity of emotion I want to convey. I could spend a lot of time trying to wax about it poetically, but I think I'd be belaboring the point. There are no words to express the depth of emotion I feel regarding it. I can say that for a significant portion of my life, it's been the reason to live. I have to trust that I've used strong enough words, without going overboard, to convey what this feels like and means to me.
I was able to let go of Jessie because in the end, it was a one-sided thing. She'd held some interest in me at times, and I'll never how much or for how long, but I suspect it was always lurking there in the background, she was convinced that was not meant to be for us. She had some belief she needed to keep me around, but never in a romantic sense. Anyway, one-sided...I pursued her with only scant encouragement, so there was nothing promised and feelings were never openly reciprocated. Since love has to be reciprocated to be real, what I felt for her was something else, something I don't have a word for, though infatuation certainly is applicable even if I don't think it conveys everything.
Andrea gets more difficult though and this is where the wheels come off the bus. I've said many times it took like 10 months for me to fully drop my walls around Andrea, though I can say there was a few months before when I could feel them coming down. Once I did, there was that flood of emotion I'd always sought. The second time it happened was when I decided to trust it and say i loved her for the first time. I've long maintained it bothered me it took me so long to be able to say that and get to that point, but I've also come to accept that my distrust of others is such that this is just how it works for me. I still remember her saying i love you too, and there was this momentary pause before she said it. It's stuck with me and over the years I've tried to think of explanations to insert in that brief moment. When we dated and for some time after I was content to say it was surprise because what I said came out of nowhere. Nowadays, I entertain other possibilities, each tried out like fiddling with a puzzle. What haunts me most these days is that she lied in that moment because it'd've been too awkward not to say I love you back. I haven't found the proper fitting piece yet, not sure I will.
As I said, with Jessie, it was easier to let go because I could rationalize that it was all on my end. Yeah, i knew Jessie felt the same connection, but there was nothing to indicate along the way that connection meant the same thing to her. And later on that was made clear. I could admit and accept my foolishness for chasing after something that meant something to me and not to her. With Andrea though, because there were explicitly stated reciprocal feelings, I can't come to the same conclusion. If she did love me and felt that connection, then given her own words and actions, that connection is a meaingless thing. At which point I have to accept that I may never find what I'm chasing. If she loved me and didn't feel that connection, then I've married two concepts that don't belong and I have no idea what either really means or what to do with them. If she didn't love me and didn't feel the connection, then I was deceived and I have even less reason to trust again.
I need to take an aside here, that connection and love to me are pretty much intertwined in my head. That connection is inviolable, meaning it will always be there and can be tapped into regardless of what happens. I hesitate to use the religious here, but sacred is probably applicable.
Mariah is murky when it comes to this. It was a bumpy relationship and everytime we got close and my walls began to drop, a bump would happen and my walls would go back up. And there were a myriad of reasons for those bumps such that assigning blame is kinda pointless. There were some points when my walls were dropped, but the physical distance was an obstacle preventing us from being as close as we could've. And then I find myself thinking about how my depression got in the way at times, and how during that period Warren was often a significant contributor to that, but then again so was Hitmouse and anyone responsible for those setbacks, or even the guild etc...and then I need to defer back to my earlier statement about bumps in the road from a myriad of sources. But I can't harp on one or two of those things and feel like we were both cheated out some of the most satisfying moments of our relationship. I didn't realize that until the last time I saw her. We had the afternoon to kill while waiting for the next apartment appointment, and the sense of relief I felt at getting away from Warren, the sense of hope I had for my future again, I was able to drop my walls fully for the first time when we were together in person and it felt amazing.
Due to those difficulties with Mariah though, she gets exempt from this logic trap. Jessie followed by Andrea are sort of the 1-2 punch. I could accept being the fool when it came to Jessie because I know it was almost entirely my screw up. I can't when it comes to Andrea though, not in regards to this at least. Any imagined explanation is too devastating to cope with and leaves me feeling hopeless, unprepared to navigate a future situation. I had hoped to untangle that knot in talking to her, but her stance is adamantly that it's my problem and she wants no part of it. There's a bit more related, feelings of guilt etc. but my focus is shot now and I need to stop writing.