So...I was having a pretty positive night. And then
"he" showed up. "Negative Nate" reared his ugly head. See, my ex &
I talked on the phone almost every day for a year & a
half...Mostly late at night (partly because I worked nights and slept
all day, and partly because it always felt safer for me to talk at night
because I could be drunk and/or high). Well tonight after all of this
positive stuff, that negative part of me was like "You haven't heard
from her all day...You should message her". Fortunately I resisted that
urge and decided to safeguard myself by archiving her messages. But in
the process of setting her messages to archive-mode, I spent nearly an
hour re-reading old messages. Some good, some bad (especially the
recent ones), some that made me laugh...And a lot that made me feel like
crying. Well after about an hour of that I had to stop myself and try
to figure out what was really going on. Yes it's ok to miss her...But
it's not ok to try to bury myself in the rubble of our failed
relationship. It makes no sense to wallow in self-pity or become a martyr for something that is
already dead & gone forever. That's what got me into trouble last weekend & I'll
be damned if I'm going to go back to that place. Not now...Not ever
again.
So after realizing what I was doing, I analyzed the
current state of our friendship and I realized that we both have a ways
to go before we can truly be the great life-long friends that I want us
to be. I think she has to get past not being able to hear my voice
because I desperately want to talk to her on the phone again...Or at
least have her listen to what I said on the podcast (I sent it to her,
but I doubt she's listened to it). And for me, I have to get past the
pain of seeing her with another guy. I think she desperately needs for
me to be able to share in her
new-found post-Nate happiness and in the excitement of her new relationship. And
in most of my heart I really want her to be happy and I can accept her
being with another man. But there's still a part of my heart that can't
quite deal with that yet. So yesterday before I did the podcast I
asked her if we could put up some parameters and she was cool with it.
But after the show she was super excited about this new dude passing one
of her "tests" and she was so excited to tell me about it. I wanted to
be there for her, but I just couldn't be. The rational part of me was
like, that's cool Kitten...As long as he makes you happy. But the
Negative Nate, that part of me that is filled with pain and bitterness
and jealousy and feelings of inadequacy was upset that she was giving
this dude so much credit for agreeing to take her to a museum. That's
something that I would have gladly done...And she knows that. I started
to pull away from the conversation because I felt hurt and also because
I felt that she broke our parameters agreement. Then she started to
pull away because I pulled away and we probably both went to bed with
sore feelings. But you know what? Even though I'm not wrong for being
upset that she over-stepped the pre-arranged boundaries of our
conversation, I am wrong for being upset that she heaped praise on this
guy for passing a relatively minor test. The fact is, even though I
would have gladly taken her to the zoo, the museum, the library, the
botanical gardens, or anywhere she wanted to go...That wasn't my test to
take. I had my test 7 weeks ago...And I failed it with flying colors.
I had my shot, and unfortunately I blew it. The Nate that's typing
this would have risen to the occasion and we'd probably still be
together right now...But I was at a different place back then. And
that's a hard fact to face. It sucks that I wasn't equipped to be there
for her or for her kids. It sucks that I let her down. It sucks that I
made her cry. It sucks that the guy who showed her that she was
special and needed to take care of herself more ended up being ordinary
and unable to take care of anything.
But I guess there are
lessons to be learned from tonight. First of all, I now know that there
are people ready and willing to be there for me if I allow myself to be
real with them. Second, I really do have a great family and I've
probably frustrated them to no end with my decision-making over the
years. But at least now they know I'm putting in the work to become a
better man. And finally I realized that getting over my ex is going to be the hardest part of this whole authenticity deal. There's so many
emotions wrapped up in the way I feel about her and trying to pick out
just one (like being happy for her) ends up creating some Jenga-like
tumble of another emotion (like loneliness). The good news is that I'm
on the road to fixing that. The bad news? That I'm not there
tonight.
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