When my last boyfriend of 4 years, Adam, walked out, he did just that. He announced that he would be leaving, and less than a week later, the movers came to take all of his stuff. The next day I woke up and went to work, as usual, and that evening, came home to an empty house for the first time. All of the living room furniture was gone, lots of the kitchen stuff; our apartment, MY apartment was changed. The apartment was as empty as my heart felt.
A dear friend of mine called, and excitedly announced that he and some of his friends were going to see The Avengers in 3D and that I should come! I asked when, and he said, “Now! Come on!” Usually I would have to make sure that Adam was okay being by himself, that he could stay entertained (he struggled with drug addiction and when I left him home alone, he was guaranteed to get high while I was gone-idle hands you know) and that he was okay if I left for a few hours to see friends.
That night, after a moment of deliberation, I accepted his invitation. I picked up my purse, grabbed my keys and walked out the door. It was one of those moments that was so much bigger than it’s self. I could do what I wanted and not have to answer to anyone. I didn’t have to ask for permission or schedule this a day in advance. I wanted to go, so I too, walked out.
I went out and saw the movie and afterwards, my gut instinct was pulling me to hurry home. I had to tell it to be quiet because no one was waiting for me. I could go anywhere I wanted with anyone I wanted. It was an odd feeling. I can only compare it to being underwater for a long time. You eventually (metaphorically) learn to breathe underwater, even if it means growing gills. You think it will get easier, but water is thicker than air to breathe. One day you poke your head above the surface and grasp for air. It is a shock to your system, and for a little while, you’re not used to the thinness of the air, and the larger amount of O2 but quickly you realize it’s so much easier to breathe air than it is to breathe water. You had forgotten how nice and easy it was, but this fresh rush of clean, easy oxygen into your lungs feels great.
It’s not always that any person you are with puts you underwater, or even drags you underwater like a kelpie, its that sometimes you start wading in the water, and soon its over your head. It’s such a slow and gradual process, you don’t even notice that the air has turned to water and your SELF, your personality has been stunted, trying to fit into someone else’s life, someone else’s mold.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Breathing Underwater
When my last boyfriend of 4 years, Adam, walked out, he did just that. He announced that he would be leaving, and less than a week later, the movers came to take all of his stuff. The next day I woke up and went to work, as usual, and that evening, came home to an empty house for the first time. All of the living room furniture was gone, lots of the kitchen stuff; our apartment, MY apartment was changed. The apartment was as empty as my heart felt.
A dear friend of mine called, and excitedly announced that he and some of his friends were going to see The Avengers in 3D and that I should come! I asked when, and he said, “Now! Come on!” Usually I would have to make sure that Adam was okay being by himself, that he could stay entertained (he struggled with drug addiction and when I left him home alone, he was guaranteed to get high while I was gone-idle hands you know) and that he was okay if I left for a few hours to see friends.
That night, after a moment of deliberation, I accepted his invitation. I picked up my purse, grabbed my keys and walked out the door. It was one of those moments that was so much bigger than it’s self. I could do what I wanted and not have to answer to anyone. I didn’t have to ask for permission or schedule this a day in advance. I wanted to go, so I too, walked out.
I went out and saw the movie and afterwards, my gut instinct was pulling me to hurry home. I had to tell it to be quiet because no one was waiting for me. I could go anywhere I wanted with anyone I wanted. It was an odd feeling. I can only compare it to being underwater for a long time. You eventually (metaphorically) learn to breathe underwater, even if it means growing gills. You think it will get easier, but water is thicker than air to breathe. One day you poke your head above the surface and grasp for air. It is a shock to your system, and for a little while, you’re not used to the thinness of the air, and the larger amount of O2 but quickly you realize it’s so much easier to breathe air than it is to breathe water. You had forgotten how nice and easy it was, but this fresh rush of clean, easy oxygen into your lungs feels great.
It’s not always that any person you are with puts you underwater, or even drags you underwater like a kelpie, its that sometimes you start wading in the water, and soon its over your head. It’s such a slow and gradual process, you don’t even notice that the air has turned to water and your SELF, your personality has been stunted, trying to fit into someone else’s life, someone else’s mold.
A dear friend of mine called, and excitedly announced that he and some of his friends were going to see The Avengers in 3D and that I should come! I asked when, and he said, “Now! Come on!” Usually I would have to make sure that Adam was okay being by himself, that he could stay entertained (he struggled with drug addiction and when I left him home alone, he was guaranteed to get high while I was gone-idle hands you know) and that he was okay if I left for a few hours to see friends.
That night, after a moment of deliberation, I accepted his invitation. I picked up my purse, grabbed my keys and walked out the door. It was one of those moments that was so much bigger than it’s self. I could do what I wanted and not have to answer to anyone. I didn’t have to ask for permission or schedule this a day in advance. I wanted to go, so I too, walked out.
I went out and saw the movie and afterwards, my gut instinct was pulling me to hurry home. I had to tell it to be quiet because no one was waiting for me. I could go anywhere I wanted with anyone I wanted. It was an odd feeling. I can only compare it to being underwater for a long time. You eventually (metaphorically) learn to breathe underwater, even if it means growing gills. You think it will get easier, but water is thicker than air to breathe. One day you poke your head above the surface and grasp for air. It is a shock to your system, and for a little while, you’re not used to the thinness of the air, and the larger amount of O2 but quickly you realize it’s so much easier to breathe air than it is to breathe water. You had forgotten how nice and easy it was, but this fresh rush of clean, easy oxygen into your lungs feels great.
It’s not always that any person you are with puts you underwater, or even drags you underwater like a kelpie, its that sometimes you start wading in the water, and soon its over your head. It’s such a slow and gradual process, you don’t even notice that the air has turned to water and your SELF, your personality has been stunted, trying to fit into someone else’s life, someone else’s mold.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The Comfort Factor
When I became single again, my best girlfriend Jennifer was also single. I thought it would be great because I’d have someone to rule the city with, someone to understand me and relate to my heart ache. We did go out, and have fun, we talked about boys excitedly, and we man-bashed, until one evening while we were sitting in her apartment and she sighs and says “I miss Allen.”
Now, I had met Allen a few months prior and instantly I didn’t like him. He looked and acted like he was 12 years old. Allen was Jennifer’s ex fiancé and was not kind to her-he mentally abused her-probably not intentionally, but after hearing intimate details of their relationship, I couldn’t believe she had hung around that loser so long; and even more astonishingly, that she was willing to spend the rest of her life tied to someone who made her any less than blissful.
Jennifer is a beautiful girl, but she is self conscious about her weight, and has low self esteem. I know that women with low self esteem can guilt themselves into staying in an abusive relationship or one in which they are not truly happy because they think that he is the best they can do. They start to tell themselves lies about how no other man could love them because they aren’t pretty, they’re fat, weird or a burden, and that this man must be a saint to “put up with me” and soon they are stuck. Luckily for the happiness and well-being of my friend, she found out he was cheating on her, and they split up. I say lucky because otherwise she would have married that idiot and been miserable the rest of her life. I believe everything happens for a reason.
She says she misses Allen and she wants to call him. I sternly but lovingly tell her NO, she is not allowed to call him, she’s better than that, he cheated on her, and he didn’t want to be with her anyway, why would she want to go back to that? Of course, she sighed dejectedly and said “I don’t know!” I thought long and hard about it. I too had once considered returning to an ex boyfriend whom I broke up with because he was an alcoholic and I didn’t see his ways changing. A year or two after we split up, we started talking again, and it seemed he had out grown his phase of getting plastered 4 or 5 times a week. He seemed to be the man I had wanted in the beginning, so we were thinking about trying again. What made me want to go back to him? What made Jennifer want to even call Allen?
It took me a while, but I realized it’s “the comfort factor”. The alcoholic ex of mine, we shall call Darren, and I had been together about 3 years, Jennifer and Allen had been together about 3 years. When you spend so much time in close proximity to someone, and tie your life with someone else’s the way you do when you are in a relationship (or even a friendship) for several years, you have reached a level of comfort where you feel safe enough to let your guard down and be yourself around that person. The urge to run back to that person, “the ex” arises in conjunction with feelings of loneliness, a desire to be accepted as you are, and the desire to be around someone who knows all the basic information about you. Around that person, you don’t need to …put on a show, impress him/her, hide your imperfections and oddities, play up what you have in common with the other person so they will like you, use pronouns like “my cousin”/”my step dad”/”my daughter”(you can just use their names and the other person understands that “Suzan” is your step-mom, for instance) or pretend in any way to be anything or anyone you’re not at your core.
Everyone wants to be comfortable-we spend our lives trying to get comfortable; so when we find someone who gives us the security of acceptance, love, security and comfort, we want to run as fast as we can back to whomever gave us those feelings in the first place.
Those genuinely expressed sentiments of love and acceptance are usually gone by the time the relationship ends, but in our low points, we want them, real or “lab created” with the appearance of being real- but if only for one more night.
Now, I had met Allen a few months prior and instantly I didn’t like him. He looked and acted like he was 12 years old. Allen was Jennifer’s ex fiancé and was not kind to her-he mentally abused her-probably not intentionally, but after hearing intimate details of their relationship, I couldn’t believe she had hung around that loser so long; and even more astonishingly, that she was willing to spend the rest of her life tied to someone who made her any less than blissful.
Jennifer is a beautiful girl, but she is self conscious about her weight, and has low self esteem. I know that women with low self esteem can guilt themselves into staying in an abusive relationship or one in which they are not truly happy because they think that he is the best they can do. They start to tell themselves lies about how no other man could love them because they aren’t pretty, they’re fat, weird or a burden, and that this man must be a saint to “put up with me” and soon they are stuck. Luckily for the happiness and well-being of my friend, she found out he was cheating on her, and they split up. I say lucky because otherwise she would have married that idiot and been miserable the rest of her life. I believe everything happens for a reason.
She says she misses Allen and she wants to call him. I sternly but lovingly tell her NO, she is not allowed to call him, she’s better than that, he cheated on her, and he didn’t want to be with her anyway, why would she want to go back to that? Of course, she sighed dejectedly and said “I don’t know!” I thought long and hard about it. I too had once considered returning to an ex boyfriend whom I broke up with because he was an alcoholic and I didn’t see his ways changing. A year or two after we split up, we started talking again, and it seemed he had out grown his phase of getting plastered 4 or 5 times a week. He seemed to be the man I had wanted in the beginning, so we were thinking about trying again. What made me want to go back to him? What made Jennifer want to even call Allen?
It took me a while, but I realized it’s “the comfort factor”. The alcoholic ex of mine, we shall call Darren, and I had been together about 3 years, Jennifer and Allen had been together about 3 years. When you spend so much time in close proximity to someone, and tie your life with someone else’s the way you do when you are in a relationship (or even a friendship) for several years, you have reached a level of comfort where you feel safe enough to let your guard down and be yourself around that person. The urge to run back to that person, “the ex” arises in conjunction with feelings of loneliness, a desire to be accepted as you are, and the desire to be around someone who knows all the basic information about you. Around that person, you don’t need to …put on a show, impress him/her, hide your imperfections and oddities, play up what you have in common with the other person so they will like you, use pronouns like “my cousin”/”my step dad”/”my daughter”(you can just use their names and the other person understands that “Suzan” is your step-mom, for instance) or pretend in any way to be anything or anyone you’re not at your core.
Everyone wants to be comfortable-we spend our lives trying to get comfortable; so when we find someone who gives us the security of acceptance, love, security and comfort, we want to run as fast as we can back to whomever gave us those feelings in the first place.
Those genuinely expressed sentiments of love and acceptance are usually gone by the time the relationship ends, but in our low points, we want them, real or “lab created” with the appearance of being real- but if only for one more night.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Welcome to The Single Life Chronicles! My name is Lilly and I thought I would take a little corner of the internet to post my adventures in being single. I'm 26 and since I was 17, Ive moved from one relationship to another without much break in between. My last relationship ended in April 2012, and I am out there looking for Mr. Right, not, as the saying goes, "Mr. Right Now".
I've already learned a lot of things I would not have otherwise by being on my own again after 4 years, and maybe, dear reader, you too can benefit from my experience, find a relate able situation or maybe laugh at my stupidity/social awkwardness as I try and unravel the human and male mind. I fancy myself an amateur psychologist (it's not what they pay me to do, its what I do for fun) so there will be a little science behind this blog from time to time.
The names of all those involved have been changed to protect the identities of all involved. The world is a small place, and ignorance is bliss.
I've already learned a lot of things I would not have otherwise by being on my own again after 4 years, and maybe, dear reader, you too can benefit from my experience, find a relate able situation or maybe laugh at my stupidity/social awkwardness as I try and unravel the human and male mind. I fancy myself an amateur psychologist (it's not what they pay me to do, its what I do for fun) so there will be a little science behind this blog from time to time.
The names of all those involved have been changed to protect the identities of all involved. The world is a small place, and ignorance is bliss.
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