Whenever a relationship has ended for me or is on the brink of ending or changing in a material way, I find myself incredibly anxious. I don’t just think about the short-term implications of that situation, but of what all of it is going to feel like in the future.
I know what you might be thinking right now. How unproductive to put myself in a bleak and mostly unpredictable future. I agree with you, but it’s not coming from a place of balanced or rational thought, at all. It’s coming from a place of fear.
For the time being, I worry that it’s going to make me sad. I am concerned that I am going to feel the loss profoundly and those feelings will consume me and ultimately, distract me from all the important things. When I contemplate more long-term effects, I worry that I am going to regret my decision or decisions. I worry that I am not going to recover from the consequences of my actions. I fret that the person will ultimately be able to walk away from our relationship and never look back and that feeling of being entirely forgettable and inconsequential is also incredibly painful. That’s just the start of it, but those are some of the feelings that cycle through my body and some of the thoughts that invade my brain. Those are the notions that push me to not make changes that I need to make, keeping me in a situation that is less than ideal.
So, I can acknowledge that not changing doesn’t feel great but also, that changing is scary. Then it becomes a situation of the lesser of two evils. Then it becomes a scenario where I haplessly self-debate, wondering what is really the best decision for me.
This is why I usually second guess myself. This is why I make decisions in relationships, or at least did historically, and then circle back to where I started. I often don’t acknowledge the return back to the beginning because I don’t want to draw attention to it. Sometimes I even pretend that I’ve ended up somewhere materially different. Like, I know I’m stepping right back into my own footsteps, but I like to imagine they actually belong to someone else.
Let’s go back to the Christine quote that really shook me. What does it mean to be defiant? Well, it means we are being resistant or uncooperative. So how could we possibly believe that being true to ourselves is challenging or aggressive? Easy. When I bump up against someone who doesn’t groove with ME as I am, then in theory, sticking with the real me, will be perceived as all those things, and more.
Not only are most of us conditioned to be ‘good’ and cooperative, but if many of us have share the fears I’ve spoken to, then it is entirely logical that rather than digging in and staying true to us, we would begin to morph to avoid conflict or disappointment (ours and that of others).
But why the fuck does being yourself have to result in a confrontation of some sort? That’s the real question and it’s not an easy one to answer. I mean, the easy answer is that it doesn’t. The real answer is that it often does.
Have you ever tried telling someone that you aren’t capable of being what they need? Have you ever thought to ask someone what they need and then doing some real soul searching to determine whether that human lives within you anywhere? It’s not an easy thing to do. We all want to be what someone is looking for, generally speaking. Right? Like we all want to be the square hole for the square peg. We don’t have to be. Sometimes we are irregularly shaped but we still manage to fit in the ways that matter. Then there are times when we discover that there is no real fit there and all the jamming in the world isn’t going to do the trick. We are either going to have to turn ourselves into a circle and live with the consequences of that decision or we are going to have to find a way to tell the square that we are a circle and it’s not you, or me, it just is what it is.
I think that’s an important point to consider too. I recently had an interaction with someone where they felt compelled to make it clear to me that the whole undoing was not prompted or supported by them. I allowed this notion to just sit in the universe because I understood that they needed that. They needed to feel like ultimately it was all my fault, all my decision, in order to reconcile the whole scenario. I didn’t need that. That comfort level didn’t come overnight, either. I used to struggle mightily with the notion that I was leaving someone on the table or that someone could even make that claim.
What do I mean by that? Well, many times after a break up or a friendship growing stale, I would trouble myself with the idea that the other human and then all the spectators watching the unraveling, would think that I had failed or just given up. They wouldn’t understand the nuances and so, they would think that I was just throwing in the towel. Well, they might. We can’t control others’ perceptions or approach to things. That wasn’t an easy lesson for me to learn, but it was a necessary one. Unfortunately, the more I fought to prove that I tried everything to make something work, the deeper into it I dove. I burrowed myself in, hard, trying to show why separation was necessary. Totally counterproductive and honestly, very harmful. I hurt myself trying to prove something to someone who likely was putting themselves front and center (aka the most important person in the room).
The truth is that it’s not easy to transition from a person who cares deeply about what everyone thinks to a person who cares but cares MORE about what they think about themselves. It isn’t. It is a journey that is laden with feelings of guilt and second-guessing. Like any useful personal journey, sometimes we just have to hold our nose, close our eyes, step to the front of the diving board, and jump. Really. There’s no other option. We can’t tip toe this shit. In we go, you know?
x
L.
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