Back to Reality

I am not fixed yet.  I learned this today, when I began to have the oh-so-familiar feeling of rejection upon realizing that I had not heard from New Guy all day.  I had brief flashes of Christmas of 2006, after I had broken up with Brian and had flown out to meet Aaron 25 days earlier, and had expected to hear from him, and had not.  My dad keeps a journal of exactly what happens on Christmas every year, what was received as presents, how the food was cooked and how it turned out, what mood everyone was in, and he wrote "P3 (my mom's initials) - 'Worst Christmas Ever.'"  I was in a horrible mood, I didn't talk much, I didn't do much, I just waited and waited to hear from Aaron.  He finally called around midnight to tell me that he didn't want to be in a relationship with me. 

I have major - MAJOR - PTSD from my "relationship" with Aaron.  He made me act quite ridiculously, and made me feel absolutely horrible.  I'm not sure whether to blame his time in the military, or something to do with his past relationship (and subsequent divorce) for how he treated me, but having him in my life resulted in my feeling the worst I've ever felt.  I felt out of control, and really ravenous for control, so I did everything I could think of - no matter how absurd - to feel back in control.  He would go days without texting or calling me, causing me to think that I had said or done something to make him not love me anymore, and since I was less than 9 months out from my relationship with Brian, I needed to feel loved.  It went on like that for another three years, with anywhere from one month to six where Aaron and I would go without talking.  I'd get this knot in my stomach, which I can only best describe as an impending sense of doom, when I knew he was taking time out from talking to me to "think about things."  His thinking about things always ended in his telling me that he didn't want to be in a relationship with me, and in my reacting by doing whatever I could to get him to change his mind (he never did).

I learned a lot from having him in my life.  I learned that you can't change people.  You can't control other people's thoughts and actions.  You can't go back in time and change how you acted or reacted.  It's also taken me an extremely long time to not only discover that I actually learned something of substance from my experience, but to apply what I learned.  I'm still struggling with feelings of major inadequacy, not just with my self-esteem, but in how I approach relationships with men.  I never know how much or how little energy to put into communicating with them, or how forward or how mysterious to be.  I hate having to play "the game," where there are unspoken rules about how you act and how long you wait to talk to each other.  I wish you could literally just walk into a relationship as Liz Lemon says, "12 years in, when you don't have to try anymore and you can just sit around together and goof on TV shows and go to bed without anyone trying any funny business."  But that's not possible.


I felt a flicker of that old disgusting knot in my stomach today when I realized that I hadn't heard from New Guy all day today.  To his credit, he went up to Glenwood to go hike Hanging Lake with his family today, so it's very possible that he didn't have time, was driving, didn't have cell service, or any number of other reasons.  I had to take a minute and calm myself down.  I had to remind myself that he texted me late last night, and that he's been texting and calling me every day for at least the last week, so the possibility that he was just suddenly not interested in me was pretty slim.  It makes me really mad that my first instinct is to react in the negative, without entertaining other possibilities for why I hadn't heard from him.  It's not fair that my interactions with one person on this earth have influenced and changed my subconscious so much that it has literally become ingrained in me to react that way.


I texted him to ask him if he had fun on the hike, and then told him that I dreamed about him while I was napping today (which I did - I dreamed that he finally kissed me).  He texted me back two hours later, and waiting those two hours was awful.  I start to question every nuance of every interaction I've had with him to try to figure out what I might have said or done that might change his opinion of me.  It took every ounce of self-control and logic I had to convince myself that everything was actually okay.  I hate having to go through that.  It's operant conditioning at its best.  Encountering a situation and reacting based on the possible outcomes.  


At least I'm aware of what's going on and I know (and have been working on) what I need to in order to change my reactions in the future.  I sat down and finished my 1,443 page book (FINALLY), and I felt better after using my brain to do something that didn't have anything to do with my own psychological and emotional situation.