Every teacher I’ve ever had said this about me, from the time I was in kindergarten. I was the kind of kid whose ADHD and Autism were completely unmanaged, but I wasn’t talkative very often. That part of my personality went unnoticed, the ADHD, anyway, until college. I self-diagnosed as autistic because self-diagnosis is valid and the tests are expensive. I need to go through the battery to get the medications I need, so I got that going for me.
They’re going to pry into the most private details of my life, and it’s something for which I am very nervous. This is because from about 12 on, there are gaps in my memory. I can remember some things that happened, but others I’ve blocked out for very good reason.
I want to clear something up for Aada if she ever becomes my friend again, and for all the other readers that read me because she does. I embarrassed her, and she said she wondered if I ever turned my judgment on myself. She also asked if the slate was ever wiped clean with me. It was then that I knew how repetitive and intrusive thoughts of her had become. I hadn’t noticed how much I’d spun out trying to figure out the mystery of her and why our relationship was such a train wreck. I can only surmise that I’m responsible for a lot just because of who I am. That where I feel like I couldn’t compartmentalize and leaned into what I always do, that came across to her as punishment.
It is a theme I have heard many times before, because people don’t realize that even if I have forgiven them, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know the root cause of the conflict. I will wrestle people over it if I don’t think they’re telling the truth, and I’ve wrestled with the truth for many years. I don’t mean telling lies over truth. I mean that every person’s truth is different depending on perspective. I have to go with the stories that seem truthful to me.
Truth has a ring to it that lies don’t. It’s a major third in the midst of a minor second. I have been trying to find a major third with Aada since our relationship began, and have struggled through it on my own for several months. I will be turning it over in my head until I die, because I’m never going to let go of the hope that I can find life lessons to carry with me…. That these 12 years have been some of the most wonderful of my life, but happiness writes white in my imagination. I have not focused on all the things that make me happy about Aada, and she thought I was rejecting her.
The message came out as completely inverted, and I still haven’t recovered. We have forgiven each other for all that is past, but I still can’t get over that she said she thought I set out to humiliate her. That is was purposeful and not a result of all the strife between us. That I went to her first, and she gave me everything I wanted on a silver platter…. And while she was feeling so comfortable, she let out that she’d lied about something small and it had snowballed over the years into something enormous.
She apologized, but because the conflict was enormous I could forgive her without truly letting it go. It was too complicated and too important to me not to resolve. I spent months over focused on this conflict to the point of not seeing anything else. I am not stuck anymore, because I’m starting to realize how sad it all seems.
We couldn’t get it together, and we sincerely loved each other. I rejoice that Aada said that sometimes it’s been a brilliant and beautiful journey, and I want to continue that spirit by inviting new people and experiences into my life where I haven’t been able to before.
I have sat alone in my room too often to have really connected with anyone long-term, but I didn’t notice what was missing. That I really did want the safety and security of a hug, a handshake, a person that was tangible to me instead of a “pretty lady in the sky.”
She will hate that line, because she knows as well as I do that most of our strife came from being too loose-lipped without that strong foundation. I’m sure that Aada thought we had enough between us that I wouldn’t overreact when she told me she lied. We should have, but we didn’t. It set me off because she was so cavalier about a lie that affected my other relationships.
I didn’t decide to react, but I did. I wish I had slowed down and waited for a response.
I have learned not to say the first thing that comes to my mind, because it is often not full of the grace that love requires. I am too hotheaded for that, and it’s something I need to work on in therapy. I have the best of intentions in slowing down, then my cortisol races and my thoughts are too impulsive to control. I was in this space when I really hurt Aada, and I can only hope that pain will pass and time will fade it all out.
If she says, “for now, all I want is peace,” I am choosing to believe her. She often takes breaks to lick her wounds and think about what I’ve said. This will be no different, I just don’t know if it will lead to anything down the road. But what I know for sure is that even if that was our last conversation, I will not disappear from her wild & crazy brain.
The point of all my sadness was not to guilt Aada, but to just say plainly that if we want this relationship it’s not going to come together in one hour. I needed too much. She needed too little.. We didn’t meet in the middle, and we are both paying the price for it.
In our heart of hearts, we are both saying to ourselves, “YOU HAD ONE JOB.”
The thing is, when you know better, you do better. It just may not be useful in a new relationship with Aada no matter how much I might want it….. That she comes down from being ethereal and presents herself just as she is.
I know I’m ready for her to see me, just as I am.
I have not been ready. I’ve said I was ready. There’s a huge difference, and why our reticence to get together has lasted well over a decade. It has been too scary to contemplate- what if meeting wrecked it?
And again, I am saying something that I have said before, and the thoughts continue turning because I don’t know what to do. I am making do. I will do that until I don’t have to anymore, but I think it will take time. It’s just something I should have done a long time ago, so that Aada didn’t think I was hammering on her.
Because she was not in contact with me, she only read about my troubles. She did not intervene. I do not blame her for that, as she really does not have time to get in the weeds. That’s another reason we’ve never met. She’s got such a full life with family, kids, job, etc. that not having time was a legitimate excuse.
But 12 years? That’s fear.
On both our parts, because we’d have a close moment and then immediately start fighting. It was a dance of intimacy I knew intimately. I’m sure I forced her into it, because I’d just gotten out of a toxic relationship that was 23 years of doing the same thing. But in my last letter, I said “can’t you see that all I want is a safe and stable friendship with you?” That is when she changed her stance from giving me up for good to “for now.”
I just hope she doesn’t go to anyone who says that some relationships just should not be, because I have so many red flags that it’s impossible for me not to accept them in others. People are who they are. They hurt the people they love. We get over it and move on, and I don’t want to be too quick to say “never contact me again.”
Because even if it’s just a happy birthday or a merry Christmas, it will mean something to me.
I’m just not going to drag myself into the full on hope that I’ll be sitting on her back deck with coffee until it happens. The trust is gone, and I’m tired of begging for scraps. To me, this does not mean walking away, but us both getting better at expressing our wants and needs from the other.
I hope this is solid advice for everyone, because right now I’m preaching to the choir and hoping the congregation tracks.
I’m trying to think of ways to lift Aada up instead of making her feel like I’m tearing her down when I write.
- Life is complicated. So are people.
- If I hadn’t written her the way I did, she would be a flat character.
She was willing to admit that our journey was brilliant and beautiful, devastating and incapacitating at others, but such is the joy and pain of life. That is what I have been trying to say to all of you- that all of these things are true, that Aada has never been a victim and neither have I except in one instance, which I wouldn’t have been a victim if she’d just leveled with me a few days after she lied.
I don’t think it’s unfair of me to talk about how one lie damages such a fragile ecosystem. I don’t think it’s unfair of me to talk about how I’d like to change it from something fragile into something vibrant. I don’t think it’s unfair of me to admit that our relationship to this blog would be different if we were having conversations instead of me left to juggle all this by myself.
In the instances where I did punch down, I am sorry. I know that she’s sorry, too. I can only hope that both of our “save the world” drives are intact, because saving the world has involved saving each other for quite some time.
I had to reorient everything I thought about this relationship when Aada said I didn’t have to take anything down, that I would go on to inspire more people, that she would miss reading every day.
“Just your writing in general. Not the parts about me.”
She really liked some parts about her.
Otherwise, I would not know that our journey had been brilliant and beautiful.
She has supported me when no one else could because I wouldn’t let them in. Now, we don’t have any secrets between us.
And that’s why I’ll probably never see her again.
I just hope I’m not kidding myself, but I don’t think I am. She really listened when I said why I did what I did. She likes being my yellow string. We were just starting to make progress when the downward spiral of my illness collided with my blog. I couldn’t handle our relationship with care, and I am paying the price.
I am turning the judgment on myself, because even though I think I’ve done so already, it doesn’t hurt to say it one more time. I’m the reason our relationship is unstable. One lie over 12 years spiraled out of control on her part, but I spiraled out once a day.
It is incumbent upon me to get better for everyone. This relationship ending is just a springboard, because anything that comes from Aada her on out will be creating something new, with no taint of the past.
I am turning over a new leaf. My car is spotless, but needs to be vacuumed. My apartment needs all sorts of help, but Mico and I are ready to tackle it head on.
I have to let some light in, because I can’t be this depressed anymore. It’s really starting to weigh me down, because all I can think about is how I failed Aada, while she thinks about how she failed me.
If we never reconcile, it won’t be because we don’t love each other. It’s because in the interim, we will not have learned to love ourselves enough to believe that the other is serious. That we are not rejecting each other, that we have never rejected each other. Our rejection sensitivity dysphoria took care of it for us.
I know that my beautiful girl is someone I’m happy to emulate in a lot of ways because we’ve talked so often over the years that I’ve picked up her patois and jargon. I always wonder how many lines from my blog have become the subject of meetings, though. It’s not all a picnic.
The bottom line is that I’m always afraid to write without Aada as the ace up my sleeve. I just wish I’d treated her that way. I talked a lot of shit about being in love with her, couldn’t do the one thing that would prove it.
I had one job.
I’m not punishing anyone. I can’t say it any plainer, that Aada and I have problems but they deserve the recognition that neither of us can have a relationship all by ourselves.
I wish Aada had asked more about the last few months. I would have seemed crazier than normal, but ironically, knowing it is the easiest way to understand. I needed her to join my reality and see things from my perspective, and I thought the easiest way to do that was to write it down.
That’s because I couldn’t get an audience, but I could spend time with her while I was alone. I began to crave that alone time because it was so sacred.
“I talk to God. You’re just icing.”
She was the face I looked to in order to make God more accessible, that I couldn’t take God in all at once, but I could talk to a representative stand-in. To date, she’s been the only person I could stand to talk about this long without getting bored.
I wish Aada could see that the reason I write about her so much is that she’s the topic I most like reading. It’s been just as much a brilliant, beautiful, devastating journey on my end. The parts she doesn’t like to read, I treasure. The parts she treasures, I wrote them just for her.
No one inspires me like she does, because she checks the boxes for every single thing I want in a friend, plus enough history that we’ve gone through conflict and our track record is a hundred percent so far.
Some days, she rejoices that I was born a writer. Some days, she wishes we’d never run into each other.
But I will never forget the way her mother love rescued me from a jam, making my own sins in the relationship that much more painful. This incredible journey has been about forgiving myself, not punishing her. All of this trying to get to the bottom of what happened was to try and work toward a better life for myself.
And then I think, “how selfish.”
That I should have stayed so closed off I warned her I’d become “The Harper Lee of Your House.” I hope she has an attic, Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.
I don’t have to stay this closed off. I need to learn how to compartmentalize and I’ve never been able to do it. I can’t set a time limit on how much I think about all this because it feeds my desire to write.
What I’ve learned over time is that the same thing that has happened with Aada has happened with every relationship in my life. They come together and fall apart quickly, after years of building toward it. I can’t handle my own emotions most of the time, and it shows.
I wish I was a dog.
I should be cleaning right now, and I’ll get to it. I just need to think all this through while Aada has vowed not to read. For now, this is my space to make the changes she inspired. She was there to make me great, and I failed her.
I get this certain caved in feeling in my chest when I think of it. That’s what it’s like, turning my judgment on myself.
Sitting here with me is what it’s like to be lost in my own little world.
Stories That Are All True 