Talking about things not only clears them out of your mental/emotional cache, but it allows questions to arise which have potential to answer the questions you didn't know were there.
I have recently been talking to friends about Jill.
Talking about her has brought up a question for me about when I began my emotional shut down.
I met her when I was 18 and in Cancun with my grandparents. As fate would have it, I met her on my last night there, but we exchanged addresses and sent each other letters for a while. When I moved to Maryland I found her picture with her email address. I took a shot in the dark and we began to talk again. We met up for a friend's wedding and then another and another. We talked almost every night on the phone or email. The fact that she lived in Michigan was challenging for a number of reasons. The obvious would be that the physical distance was hard when I wanted to see her. Because of this I offered to move to Michigan, or wherever she went, to be with her.
It is important to note that the enormity of this notion has been made all the more apparent by the realization my therapist helped make recently. I have an almost irrational aversion to being defined by a relationship. Moving to be with her was a big deal for me.
I can't pretend that she was a perfect woman or that it would have been a perfect relationship, though I have held on to that little fantasy for a long time. What I do know is that we laughed a lot and were naturally comfortable around each other. Apparently, this is pretty important in a relationship.
Long story short, she ended it over New Years Eve 2000 when she didn't answer my call that night or any night following. It was especially hard to get over her because I never had any closure. My heart had been broken and I didn't know why. It took me a really long time to get over her because of this. I emailed her a year or so later and she said that she felt I had lied
to her about a friendship of mine, which I actually hadn't (believe it
or not), and that she didn't need that in her life. To this day I can't say that I am completely past all of the heart ache. If I were I wouldn't still be affected by what happened or didn't happen.
I feel a little crazy because I still think about it. I should have moved on and forgotten about the whole thing, but I haven't. The little romantic part of me would still like to see her again. The rational part of me knows how stupid that is. She affected me.
Following Jill were two more women that broke my heart in big ways. The only one that didn't was Hannah. She was the one that I hurt. She was the unwitting recipient of my emotional baggage coming out in a big way. She was also the woman who lived with me in spite of the fact that I was as emotionally available as a stone.
I had found comfort in being selfish after Jill. I had women who flirted with me and wanted to be with me, but I was having too much fun not feeling anything for anyone. It didn't really occur to me that I may have been hurting people. I don't know that I would have cared much if I had known. I basked in the ego that followed the one night stands. I held the power. I could sleep with a woman and move on and they couldn't hurt me. It was physical. It was easy. It was simple. I spent a few years building my walls to keep people away.
I feel like shit that the woman who took the brunt of that all crashing down was a woman who really cared for me. What seemed like the perfect set up turned into the perfect storm.
I see myself falling back into some of the old habits again. There is a part of me that likes the idea of being that guy who sleeps
around and doesn't worry about those bothersome emotions. Then there is
the part of me that is no longer 23. I know I can't really do that
anymore. I don't know that I am even capable. I don't have any desire to be in a serious relationship right now, which is good seeing as I am the emotional equivalent to Chernobyl.
It is weird to think how people will affect us. There is no way of knowing what sort of impact that smile or those eyes or a laugh or scent will sit in our memory years after meeting someone. I suppose being mindful of this is important when we first shake hands. We affect each other.
I don't like how much I have allowed the Jill situation to control me. She did a number on me, but that is no excuse to shut down like I did. It is important to take time after a failed relationship to heal, but to allow it to affect every other relationship following is....well, dumb. I wish that after writing this I would be able to just say that I could drop it all and lesson learned. I don't know that that will happen, sad to say. I do feel like writing about it has helped me to see what I need to be working on.
All this being said, I wonder what happened that put me in a place where I would allow the heart break from a few women drastically affect me like it has.
Another question raised.
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