Have I been wrong?

From: 6/14/2007

Have I been wrong? Have I been blind? She says that I am unaware. She says I don’t connect. She says I am not intimate. She says I am a mystery. I am so open and so willing to make it work. To be deep. To be heart centered. To be aware. To be transformed. I listen when asked to do more, say more, be more. I listen and do things differently. She says that’s not enough. She says I have to do it without being asked. She says I have to do it because I want to do it. I say it feels like pressure. Like expectation. She says maybe it won’t happen in this lifetime. Fuck her. She says I accommodate people. She says it in a negative way. She says she doesn’t want me to accommodate her she just wants me to be different than I am. She says I irritate her. She says I’m manic, hyper-focused, driven, jarring, fearful, heavy. She says it in a negative way. Then she says I’m negative. She says she doesn’t like my behavior. She said that she used to be infatuated with me. She used to want to be me. Not anymore. Now she wants her freedom. She wants to spend time with her dog and her husband. She wants to travel and work with other people.

She says she didn’t trust me but today she’s starting to trust me because she finally believes me when I say I am not here in the moments when she feels like I am being rude, unavailable, cold. I’ve checked out. She says I am disassociating, splitting. She loves to give clinical names to things. I’m a person. I go away when I feel uncomfortable, overwhelmed, unsafe. I always come back. And I come back even faster if you just call my name and say, “Hey, where are you? Where did you go? What’s the matter?” And I’m honest. I’ll tell you where I went and why I went there. She doesn’t like it when I tell her. She says it feels like blame. She says she takes it personal. She wants me to be comfortable when I’m uncomfortable. Confident when I am scared. Here when I am there. I don’t know how to please her. She is not the first person to say these things. Other people have said these things. I used to get really upset. Now I just sit with it. I am who I am. I do the best I can. I asked her why she doesn’t approach me in those moments and try to talk to me. She says I’m unapproachable. She corrects herself. She’s says “I don’t want to make the effort. It’s too much effort.” A tear falls from my eye. I say, “I think I am worth the effort.”

I waver on the fence of sanity and stability. I know who I am, right? I am aware, right? I know I have things to work on. We all have limitations. I am working everyday to become more whole. To become more graceful. There are so many things about me that I don’t know what to do with. Like a brown bag of groceries, paper tearing, oranges spilling onto the floor. What do I do with all the parts of me that don’t fit into this relationship? What do I do with the over-analyzing, over-achieving, unaffectionate parts of me? The immature, dramatic, isolating, withdrawing parts of me? How do I accommodate without being accommodating? How do I be myself when someone is saying “I don’t like who you are”? I love to walk away from these relationships. I love to walk away when someone is being apathetic, insecure, passive aggressive, unreasonable but I also like to stay for a long time and see if I can make it work. Maybe there is a magic formula. A magic key. Some door in some hallway in some house that will let me inside the person. Let me understand and relate to the person. Let me figure out what it is they want me to be.

She said she wanted me to be more of myself. She said she wanted to see me drunk, vulnerable, inappropriate, unprofessional. I let down my guard a little. Showed her a few things. She said she didn’t like it. She said it was unbecoming. It wasn’t spiritual. More oranges on the floor. What do I do with my immaturity, my loudness, my affinity for drama? What do I do with the girl who grew up unattended, undisciplined, and unstable? She still wants attention. She still acts out. She doesn’t fit into this relationship either.

This is my depth. This is who I am. This is me without exaggeration, grandiose emotion, self-pity, victimization, performance, or ulterior motives. I am a pretty simple creature. I want people to be happy. I want to make them happy. I want them to be nice to me. Really, that’s all I want -- just be nice to me. Reach out to me. Tell me the truth. I like the truth. I like to know how I can grow and learn and do more and be better than I was yesterday. I like to know if I make you feel sad or happy or comfortable or uncomfortable. She says I’m shallow. She says it’s too clean, too organized, too black and white. She says it’s always on my terms. She says that that only leads to people calling when they need something from me. She says it’s co-dependent. (There is the clinical again.) I ask her what depth is to her. She says it’s really caring about people deeply and wanting to connect. She says that I don’t really want to connect or else I would.

When I swallowed all of those pills on the beach 2 years ago, I swallowed them because I was mad at myself. I was ashamed. I was mad and ashamed because I wasn’t being true to myself and it led to disaster. It led to rejection from a guy that wasn’t worth 10minutes of my time let alone 10 months of my time. People were telling me that I needed to go deeper, I need to be in love, I needed connect and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to but I did it anyway. I forced myself into it. I thought there was something wrong with me for not wanting to be in love. I thought I was weak. I thought that I needed to do it to prove something to everyone. And the only person that I hurt was myself. I betrayed myself. I won’t do it again. I won’t connect because she tells me too, because she tells me I should, because she says that I’m shallow.

I am not shallow. I am not weak. I am not even unhappy. I am going to sit in my heart center, in my confidence, in my integrity and be who I am. Like it or not. Loss or not. Failure or not. I am who I am. I won’t change for somebody else. I will only be as honest, as kind, as open, as diligent as I can and the cards (and oranges) will fall where they will.