Ok it’s official: I need help. I must seem to think that my life is a bit of a sitcom with all the interesting scenarios I get myself into. Maybe I just need to hear from someone that I’m not Lucille Ball, or Carrie Bradshaw, or even a woman for that matter! No actually don’t tell me the last one… I’d hate to give up my shoes. And as you know, Kelly LOVES shoes. But sometimes I wish I could have an out of body experience, so that I can look myself straight in the eye, and just give myself the hardest slap across the face. And then as soon as I come to I can then look up at myself and ask “What was that for?” and then I’d respond “Because you’re being a pussy” and well I won’t go much further but let’s just say a couple of innocent hugs lead to some light petting and things just get awkward from there. So now that I’ve made THIS post awkward I think we can go into the real subject. I’ve always said that music is a huge part of my life, in the sense that I can always find the right song to say the things I sometimes have a hard time saying. No artist does this better than Kelly Clarkson. I can relate to so many of her songs and feel that we are soul sisters. So WTF am I talking about you ask? Sorry I’ll try to get to the point before I slap myself again (or before YOU do). I feel like I don’t trust myself as well as I should. Recently I’ve been learning how much my gut instinct has been correct. But there is always that bit of doubt that keeps me from going through and then I end up ignoring the voice in my head. Don’t worry I still listen to the other voices in my head so I’m not going completely crazy. Why are you looking at me strangely? Ok I see your slapping hand coming up so I’ll just get right to it.
So for my regular readers you will remember my post about my dating successes (if you laughed, then you have read it). Well that was really a small percentage of all the experiences/guys I’ve been through. And by small I mean 5%. Trust me, eventually there’ll be a part 2 (and let’s face it, 3) seeing as how I cannot seem to get it. I always tell myself I should be single and just not try to date. It doesn’t work for me, and frankly there really are much more important things going on in my life that I should be putting my focus on. For the past two and a half months I had been seeing this guy. Actually before I get into the details of it all, let’s play a drinking game. How about every time you see a “red flag” you take a shot? Trust me, you’ll be drunk within the first 10 minutes. I would join you but I’m sitting at a computer right now, where my Facebook is easily accessible. And if you had the pleasure of seeing my posts from last night, you’d know that wouldn’t end well. So I met this guy off Grindr (shot) and didn’t really have any expectations… well that’s probably not true. I will admit I have a thing for older guys and this onem who is 40 btw, tickled my fancy (and no “fancy” is not a nickname for anything). But we talked for a while before actually deciding to go out for a date. So when we met, I had a fantastic time. We had a wonderful dinner, wonderful conversation, then went back to his place to watch a movie (and NO that is not code for anything). We did just watch a movie then he drove me back to my place and things went from there. I’ll admit, I am a sensitive person. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve and seeing as how I’m still single you know it’s OBVIOUSLY working in my favor (shot). So this guy and I started going out more, about twice a week or so. I was starting to really like him, but seeing how I hadn’t dated in a while I wanted to ease myself into it. I did talk to one or two guys right in the beginning but after a few weeks I felt as though I was in “like” with him. After a month or so I already knew I wanted to focus my attention on only him (shot). Well, maybe it’s cause I haven’t driven in a while but apparently I was on a one-way street. He said he just wasn’t ready for that, and I happily accepted that (shot). So as time went on I struggled with this thought: is this something worth spending my time on? Well since it is ME, of course the answer to that was YES. Why? It all has to do with my self-esteem, or lack thereof (shot). I’ll get into that a bit later but it has been a huge problem for me in many ways. I have become much more accustomed to being alone and doing things on my own; hell, I moved out here SD all by myself and learned to make new friends. So I think I convinced myself that single or not I would be fine. This was obviously NOT the case. I think I attach myself to strongly to guys for two reasons: (a) I don’t like the idea of really being alone, and (b) I sometimes get my nails stuck on them so it’s hard to pull away without breaking them. Did I see the warning signs? Of course (shot). Whenever we’d go out I always noticed him looking at other guys. Now I won’t lie, I check out guys as well, but this was usually a particular type (white, young, and good-looking) AND it was blatantly obvious… I mean he would LINGER on a guy like he was fixated. And naturally I ignored it or pretended not to make a big deal out of it trying to justify it in some way in my head. I kept making excuses for the things I would see, and kept the argument that “well if he IS spending time with ME, then clearly he must ONLY be into me right?” (shot). Right….fully wrong. At this point I felt trapped. I knew I was already investing a lot of time and emotion with this guy, and letting go would be hard at this point. And yes before you say anything (which is probably slurred after all the shots you’ve consumed) I do realize we hadn’t been dating THAT long, which is kind of the point of all this. I found out what his real “type” was, which is basically anything BUT me… and yet I still hung on. We had so many conversations about where things were going, and my advice to myself is this: if you have to keep questioning where things are, the answer is probably NOWHERE. A relationship, to me, should be very clear with its intentions and both parties involved (unless you’re into polygamy) should be on the same page. As I usually do with reading, I was already skipping ahead to the upcoming chapters to sneak a peek at what was going to happen, so yeah I wouldn’t exactly say we were on the same page (double shot). So if you already know where this is going, go ahead and drink a glass of your chaser - you’ve earned your reward. I FINALLY got to meet some of his friends after dating 2.5 months (shot) and I honestly had a really great time. I would definitely like to hang with them again, but who knows with all this. And naturally that same evening I decided to bring up another conversation about where things were (if your bottle is empty you can go ahead and just chuck it at me). And that’s when it all came out… the truth. The truth being that he didn’t want to commit right now, or anytime soon, and just preferred to be friends. Okay I think I need a shot now. Did I know all this already? Oh yeah, boy did I. But as I said, I ignored the signs. I became upset at both parties involved; I was mad at HIM for letting it go so far without saying anything sooner (because in MY mind, if that is how he felt and if I hadn’t brought up the conversation then this would have gone on much longer), and I was definitely more upset with myself for knowing better than to let it go on as long as it did. My gut instinct told me way long ago that this probably wasn’t going to work. And now here I am writing about this, as a way of getting myself to see it from a different angle. Sure, this would have been timed better if I had done it yesterday BEFORE drinking. Note to self: if you’re ever feeling emotional, drinking is NOT the way to go (someone really should have hit the “report” button on Facebook).
So that brings me now to the point: what to do? After this experience I realized that I am not ready for a relationship, because the one relationship I do need to work on is the one with myself. I’ve had several conversations with my best friend about this, and how I need to work on my confidence. I am definitely a work in progress, and right now I feel like I need to get back from my lunch break. I’m not writing this to gather a pity party. I don’t need that. As I said, I need to “emotionally” slap myself. I need to stop ignoring that there is a problem within myself. I keep this idea in my head that I am building my self esteem back up. Part of me thinks that dating is somehow going to fix that, but instead it only worsens the situation. All I can think about is “does he like me?”, “is he talking to someone else?”, and so on. I am so quick to be pessimistic because in my head I don’t feel I deserve good things. I feel that I am a loser, because somehow I trained myself to think that way (or maybe it was something engrained in my head from when I was a child… which is something involving my father). There’s a Kelly Clarkson song “Because of You” that has the lyrics “because of you I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me, because of you I am afraid”. I used to dedicate this song to my dad because I felt the words expressed all the anger I had towards him. But now I am realizing that maybe it’s not HIM that I should be angry at. He’s not in my life at the moment, and it is just myself. I am literally my own worst enemy, and I think I need to start becoming fast friends. Trust me, I know I deserve happiness just like everyone else. And I know I deserve a partner who will love me, and cherish me, and bring out the best of me. And I KNOW that the partner is myself. This has been building up for too long now and if I continue to ignore it then I don’t know what else could happen. I need to find a way to work on myself, to build my confidence back up and start believing in myself again. I feel like I somehow lost myself over the years and I don’t know where I am. I will find myself again, I know I will. Every day is a new opportunity to learn more about myself and “start over”. Well on that note I think I am going to get ready for bed and hit the “reset” button from the weekend. Well I think I’m also talking to myself since, chances are, you are probably passed out in your own drool. It’s a tough battle, the one with yourself. But I want this war to be over because I want to see through the smoke again. One day. I’ll find the Chris that has been missing all these years. Boy, the stories we have to share with each other.
On a side note, I think I should have made an extra drinking game for every time I hit the CAPS LOCK button.
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