Skeletal...

I guess there is this loomy feeling when you get into a new relationship and it goes well and you just wish your skeletons could stay closeted but there's this constant rapping at the closet door. However hard you try to drown it out, it just gets louder and louder and you wish it would just go away but it doesn't. No, instead, this sort of weird destiny thing happens where people all around you start to say things like, "You know, you can't regret any of the bad things that happened because they led you to where you are today," or "But would you be the same person you are now if you hadn't lived through those things?" So then it becomes this thing where you can't pretend it didn't happen because you are this different person, but at the same time, you can't talk about it because that's considered living in the past and even if you're who you are today because of these things, carrying them with you is frowned upon. No, you should just let them go.

So, basically, in a nutshell, you have to let the past go, yet still somehow be the person the past created you to be. And you shouldn't talk about the past, yet let the past be part of who you are... Right?

Except that that's not at all what I want. I don't want the past to have a bearing on who I am today. I mean, undoubtedly it will, and sure, some things happened to shape me for the better- I probably have more empathy and compassion and humility than I would have had if nothing bad had ever occurred in my short little life. Sure. But there are other things I really wish weren't there. Like when I'm cutting my dogs' nails and I'm growing more and more impatient because they're not staying still enough for me to cut their nails smoothly. I'm not growing impatient because they're not sitting still. No, I'm growing impatient because if they are not smooth when I am finished, there will be wrath. Except there won't be. It's just a wrathy skeleton rapping at the door.

I do wonder what would have happened had I met this guy in high school. It's amazing that our paths never crossed except the one time I remember seeing him in the hallway. That time kind of bothers me, in a good way, kind of. I remember him. Just a glimpse of him and I remember wanting him in that glimpse but then it was over and I never saw him again after that. He was exactly my type back then. Exactly.

I wonder whether or not we'd have made it, whether this whole, "who you are today" business is a load of crap. Because if we do it right, we fall in love with the core of a person and back then, even if I was angry and depressed, I still blew exams because instead of studying, I stayed up all night on the phone talking to friends who needed me. I was still me. Did I really need to go through all the horrible junk in between then and now in order for us to work?

I'm not sure.

[pause for conversations in the middle of the night with SIL A]

Anyway.

The other day on the phone with SIL A, she said, smilingly, something like, "It's amazing that you found somebody who is so like you. It's so impossible and you found it." And it's true. I'm a weirdo and I was never supposed to have a soulmate. I was just supposed to have a variety of people who told me they were my soulmate, when inside, I'd just kind of shrug them off and go on with my life. And now I have this guy, and even if it's so hard to cope with things sometimes, he's it. Like, if there was a "one" for me, he would be it. The only thing he's missing is some doubt. :D

And so I'm chatting with SIL A tonight (sometimes it's fun to be the only other person awake at this ungodly hour) and I'm telling her how all this skeleton business is basically rooted in the idea that I'm the only one who knows it happened, so sometimes I feel like it didn't happen. But then there are these scars and these disproportionate reactions that come out of me and I can't deny that these things happened. And it's not the worst thing in the world to be told not to eat ketchup... when it's the only thing you're told not to do.

By the end of my relationship, I'd lost so many friends. Some of them made it feel like I'd been living on some far off continent where I was unreachable for six years. It was weird.

And what kind of person pays your family to take you away? He paid them. The truck was loaded up and he thanked them and paid them. It's so messed up.

And what kind of person punches a girl in the head over a football game anyway? Especially when it's a football game that has nothing to do with anything. It's not like we were playing and had that adrenaliney surge of testosterony aggression.

I do have some good memories in there somewhere. But at the same time, I remember that before I wised up, I thought evil was the sweetest for getting me ice when I was heat stroked. I was too shy to ask the woman again and he went and asked. But then a couple hours later, he criticized me for falling asleep during a movie because of the heat stroke. And then he criticized me for being clingy because I fell asleep with my hand on his chest. You know what I mean?

I remember it all, but it just feels like I'm not supposed to remember the bad things. It feels like I'm supposed to forget they ever happened. But I don't. And I'm still so angry.

I think I didn't give myself enough time between relationships and so I never got to work through the damage the six year relationship caused on me. Instead, I jumped into another horrible relationship, and since it was a different kind (long distance), I didn't have to work through the issues I had acquired from and about living with somebody. And on the other hand, I gained a whole bunch of trust issues relating to words being said without any follow through or meaningful honesty. So rather than working through things, I just piled more on. And then I took a year and a half off and ended up dating crappy douchebags again before landing in this relationship.

How is a girl supposed to cope in this situation?

You spend years of your life (I'm too tired to count them) being trained to believe you're useless, worthless, unlovable, that you do everything wrong, that you don't do anything, that you're not good enough, that you're missing fundamental characteristics that would make a person marriable, that you're not worthy of respect, that you're not worthy of honesty, that you're not worthy of trust or even friendship.... I could go on and on. And then you meet this person who is patient and kind and seems to have this unwavering love for you no matter how hard you try to show him he's wrong... Where are you supposed to file that?

When every person you've ever been with has said, "I want to be with you, just not every day," or some facsimile thereof and "You'll make somebody a great wife one day, just not me," what are you supposed to do when you meet somebody who is all, "I want to be with you every day," and "You'll make me a great wife"? You know what you do? You stand there silently, waiting for the sentence to finish.

"You want to be with me every day but...."
"I'll make you a great wife except...."

And his reply is, "No but. I just want to be with you every day," and "No except. I want to marry you, Princess."

What's a girl supposed to do with that?

Be all, "YEY!" or something?

Well, I'm not all, "YEY!"

I want to be all, "YEY!"

But I'm not. Instead, I'm all, "For how long?" or "But what if [x] happens?" or "Will you still love me if I lose my job/never recover from the graves'/disappear and never come back?" Or I'm all, "How do I know you're telling me everything about you? How do I know you're not going to change when I marry you? How do I know you're really who you say you are?"

It's the skeletons rapping. They rap and they rap and eventually, a girl has to just open the door so she can finally see that there is a big difference between a rotten skeleton and this man, flesh and all, ready to face them with you. There's a big difference between these skeletons of past hurts, betrayals and disrespect, these skeletons of neglect and unlove and this real person with a real heart and real affection. There's a difference between having a closet busting open with current skeletons on a day to day basis and trying, alone, to cram them back into that closet in order to survive and opening that closet yourself to get rid of them all, while having somebody there on your side to help you clean the mess.

There's a difference between being abused and being loved.

That's what it comes down to.

We all hurt each other. We do. It's unavoidable. But I was hurt deliberately over and over and that's over. This one does not hurt me deliberately. Not even- this one doesn't hurt me. In a year and (fucking math in the middle of the night! septemberoctobernovemberdecemberjanuary) nearly four months, there have been misunderstandings and miscommunications, and in spite of me lashing out a million times and hurting him a million times, I can't name one clear time he's hurt me. I can name one time he yelled at me. Two! even.

1. We'd watched Elf, and there's this part where Buddy asks to be tucked in. James Caan proceeds to tuck him in really tight by doing these sort of choppy gestures all around his body, ramming the blanket in as he chopped. And so, when my guy was nestled all snug in his bed, as a joke, I did the choppies and I tucked the shit out of him in (that makes no sense written down, but I don't care). A few hours later, I was lonely and needed a hug, so I climbed up on him and gave him one. He woke up and freaked out and yelled at me to give him space. He maintains he never yelled. I maintain his tone of voice was yelling enough. But still, he only got riled up because he'd been trapped so tightly under that blanket the whole time he'd been asleep. I suppose it would have been akin to waking up in a coffin with somebody sitting on the lid, if you will. So ok, that's not all that terrible a reaction, given the situation.

2. He plays this video game sometimes that is really frustrating. It's one of the only times I ever see him really, really aggravated. So obviously, the thing to do in that situation is to poke him, right? Literally, I mean. I poked him in all the places that bug him the most. And he told me to stop (probably several times), but I just kept going anyway. So I guess that one could be anybody (I wouldn't have even been able to get out the warning shots he'd given me...).

You know what I mean? Those are the best examples I can come up with. Otherwise, it's like, he doesn't like it when I yell at him all the time. Or he doesn't like it when I project things onto him. Those are the things he gets irritated about. You know? Instead of getting yelled at or criticized for eating things with ketchup or not playing softball, I get told things like, "That's not me. Stop projecting."

So yeah, these skeletons kind of have to go out on the big garbage day. (You know, the day the city picks up the big things?)

Yeah.

Ok, too exhausted to think anymore.