I have no motivation to write today. None. Yesterday I said I wasn’t feelin’ it, but that’s nothing compared to my lackadaisical attitude right now. Generating content for a blog is part of my life, because pages that are static do not get traffic. But at the same time, I tell the truth about what I think in terms of my life’s goals and issues. I can’t just make shit up out of thin air. And right now, all I’m doing is working my ass off, which makes my coworkers happy, but doesn’t generate a lot creatively… I’m too tired to care about my personal problems, and I know for damn sure that’s a good thing.
Tomorrow is my former anniversary with Dana, and Facebook presented me yesterday with my status update from Valentine’s Day last year. I don’t know why. It’s not even close to Valentine’s Day. But here it is. I was a mess:
I see a lot of bitching on Facebook about Valentine’s Day and how it’s so commercialized and all. Valentine’s Day is as meaningless as you make it. For instance, Dana and I did the grocery shopping we were going to do, anyway, and did some wine/liquor tasting at Spec’s. It was so simple, and so memorable. Later that day, she handed me two pages of handwritten notes describing her love for me on plain white notebook paper, saying that she had worked on it for two days and she hoped it was just right and that it had made people at her work cry so she was pretty sure it was good……… Crying just thinking at the memory of her words before she handed them to me, because it was just the most amazing, bare moment. A girl laying her heart in my hands and hoping it was enough.
I allowed myself to be a mess for ten minutes or so, and then I turned on an episode of History Detectives, in which they tried to find out exactly how Glenn Miller (bandleader) died. I’ve learned how to redirect when I’m focusing on the past, but I don’t let those moments slide, either. I allow myself to feel, and then I put whatever I’m feeling back in its box and lock it. I have come to the final decision that getting out of this relationship is the best thing that has ever happened to me, because my life is going in a completely different direction than hers, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Now I realize that I do not want contact any more than she does, because there are personal issues that we’ll never fix and they’re not worth trying. The way Dana deals with her problems is completely different than the way I do, and they’re just not compatible. Realizing incompatibility allows me to take back my power and not feel so small.
I’ve also realized that a lot of marriage is having a good business partner, and we were never comfortable talking about any of that stuff, but it’s amazing how good I thought we were at the time. It’s amazing how good I thought we were together, period, when in reality there was a lot roiling under the surface. There are things I didn’t know that I should’ve. There are things she didn’t know that she should’ve…. but neither of us were willing to tap into those feelings until I started writing and uncovering the layers upon layers of shit I’d been thrown in my life and how it wired my behavior into everything else.
We became strangers in our own household, because we still did all that surface-y best friend stuff, but the opening up was a one-way street. The way she painted me to my face was narcissist bully, and I can see why she thought that. I need someone who can stand up to me and call me on my bullshit. I don’t need to be in relationship with someone who is scared to do so.
Or at least, that’s my take on it. One of these days I’ll meet that woman and she’ll kick my ass into next week and I’ll love every second of it because I’ll know for sure that I’ve found someone who can see right through the mask I present to the world and call it like she sees it. It reminds me of the day Argo called me a “judgmental dickhead” and I laughed so hard my desk chair sagged because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is totally, totally right.
But that’s not all of who I am. That’s just a piece. I am not any one thing, and I am learning to love all of who I am, even the parts I’d rather not talk about, because they’ve all brought me to this place, this journey in which I didn’t even feel like writing today.
Stories That Are All True 