2000-11-03 - 21:26:24
A rather violent beginning

Well, I'm starting this diary thing off with a bit of a bang ... and I probably won't post much about myself, or anything else having to do with this site, until later. I just feel an extreme need to vent right now, and this seems like a good place to do it.

Where to start? ... I think I'm starting to come apart at the seams.

What is this, learn-a-lesson time? Does God really have to tear my world apart before I'll blink, take a good look around me, and realize what I've been doing wrong? Probably not. I mean, nothing really horrible is directly happening to me. But this week has certainly had that effect anyway.

I have several close friends, a little knot of people I value more than anything else in this world, behind only God and family. Last week I said some things to or about two of them that I wish I could erase right now. It hurts when people throw my words back in my face, but I think it hurts worse when it's me doing the throwing ... because I knew better, to start with, and I just didn't think.

Her ... I told someone else she was walking wounded. That she had no business trying to catch any guy's attention right now, because nothing good could come of it. (HELLO! ALL my friends, including me, are walking wounded! What right had I to shake my head at her attempts at happiness? And what happened last week just makes it worse ... I should have helped her more ... )

Him ... I told him I didn't need him, that I didn't find him attractive. That there would NEVER be any chance of something more than friendship between us. (ARGH! The world is not painted in black-and-white. A couple days ago I tripped over a shade of grey and realized there was more to him than I had remembered. So why didn't I? What was I thinking?)

Actually, I know exactly what I was thinking. The logical half of my brain (the "J" in INFJ) has had control of the intuitive-feeling, bleeding-heart ("NF") part of my personality for nearly three years now ... since I ended up on Xoloft after I broke up with my fiance. I ditched the Xoloft after two months, grew a thick skin, screwed my head on straight, held the world at arms' length and watched it go by at a distance. Poked my head out and vented once every month or so -- a good long phone conversation with someone who cared, or maybe a screaming fit at one of the two ex-good-friends who had learnt where all my buttons were and took every chance to push them. Something like that. Closed up again every time, shut the doors on my emotions again. Tried to keep them bound up in a box, to stop them from overflowing. Took a deep breath, kept going. The funny thing was, most people thought I was more outgoing, more in touch with life, simply because there wasn't much room for shyness left in me.

It wasn't that I stopped feeling. No, I care about people far too much for that. It's that I reacted only about others and their problems, never what touched myself more deeply; where feelings did run deep, I rationalized them, and often completely failed to deal with them.

I kept going and going, never realizing it was fear that fueled the machine. Not until this last Saturday did a glimmer come to mind ... has it only been six days? Damn, damn, damn. Three years is a long time to lock yourself in a little emotional corner, and six days is not nearly enough to learn to live outside it again.

Saturday ... Saturday is when she called me, told me she'd been ... attacked ... on Thursday, but she hadn't called then because she was afraid I would reject her. Me! Her best friend! I know she's got low self-esteem, but, damn! I've known her for four long years, and we're as close as sisters, or would be if she didn't live 300 miles away. Sure, I only talk to her once or twice a month, and I shake my head over all her problems. But we're a team, her and me, and sometimes we've been the only ones that could keep each other sane. I didn't think we had any blind spots about each other. And now this ... Damn.

There isn't much else to say after the initial oh-SHIT oh-SHIT, just the instinct to comfort and help her rebuild ... and curse my own past attitudes. It'll be months before she's anywhere close to fine again, months while she stays stuck in that little town, caught in a quicksand of guilt, obligation, and fear. Thank God she came out here for a few days' vacation this week, maybe we shored her up enough, fed her enough unconditional love, told her enough how valuable she is, that she can last until she moves.

I don't usually don't curse this much. But then, I'm usually having an OK day -- a little lonely, but OK. There's nothing about OK that inspires verbal venom. Easy, then, to retreat into cookie-cutter-Christian-ism and look down on those who do use such words.

Kind of like how it's easy to look at him and think, you know, he's really cool and all. But does the idea of getting involved romantically with him sound interesting?

... BLAM! Caught by fear, between the eyeballs.

//Just forget what dating him was like, four years ago. Forget the high points. Forget that you made your parents buy you a little gold ring with hearts in it to replace his class ring, so you'd stop rubbing your empty index finger and staring into the distance. Remember only the pain of the aftermath, what it felt like to be lonely once again, when you'd only just started to learn what being together with someone was all about.

Forget the times you wondered about him over the years, wondered what life would be like if he hadn't broken up with you. Shake your head, and see only what an incongrous couple you would make, what your family would say. Reject the possibilities and grasp only the idea that if you stay single, if you wait for that mythical perfect guy, you won't ever get hurt again.//

I'm not saying I should have told him, "Yes, let's start dating again." I'm just saying that I had absolutely no business completely rejecting someone I care about so deeply as a friend, that I once loved, without giving the idea a little more thorough consideration.

God. I'm not going to have any answers anytime soon. And maybe this pained look at life is skewed too, maybe I'm just unbalanced into depression again. I don't know. But I think something's wrong about a life lived in the fringes, spacing out my contact with other human beings for fear they might cause me to feel emotions strong enough to escape my control.

Maybe I'll learn to handle all this better again ... There's a reason why THAT school year, the year I dated him and my ex-fiance, the year I met her and half my other close friends, stands out as both the Best and Worst year of my life. I grabbed hold of life two-fisted, and I did not let go, no matter how it burnt me; I fought it through. Of course, it also drained me dry; now that I look at the idea, maybe these three years have been spent well after all, rebuilding resources and learning how to protect myself when necessary.

Hmnh. I think I feel better already.

Well, I know he's probably reading this, because I sent him the link to this new diary site. And so maybe I'll send him a diary message of my own. (In retrospect, I can't believe I overreacted to the fact that he posted comments to me in a page open to all the web. I guess I'd forgotten how therapeutic diaring can be ... I hadn't taken ink to diary-page in nearly a year, until now. And I guess there's something mildly reassuring, in a strange way, in knowing that someone, somewhere out there, can read what I write, and know exactly how I feel ... and that "tomorrow I will change, and today won't mean a thing" ... or might mean something different, anyway).

Here goes:

Can you forgive me? Can you overlook the messages I wrote, pretend they don't exist? Give me some time to sort out my confusion, with no pressure? I can't promise I'll ever say "Yes", or that I'll forget all about the guy in Antarctica. I'll understand if you move on without me. But I can't just let this thing lie where I left it. Do you understand?