I was talking to my therapist yesterday about need and want and how I am incapable of doing either.
I will routinely deny myself things if my need or want involves another person.
I can barely ask for what I need, much less what I want.
There is some disconnect inside of me wherein if it involves the effort of someone else, I simply can’t ask for the things that make me happy.
We could chalk it up to not fitting in with my family when I was little. I could have happily spent hours wandering the beach and picking up rocks. I always wanted to meander on family trips and just watch the sunrise, or go swimming in whatever water we were near, and I was always told no. I remember standing on the beach in Florida at 7 years old and all I wanted to do was put my feet in the ocean.
I had never been anywhere near the ocean before. I have a vague recollection of my grandpa saying it was fine ‘just let her’, but the answer was still No.
The fam always had a schedule, somewhere to be, or I might get my clothes dirty or or or. Just no.
I didn’t get to go in the ocean until I was 25 years old and it remains one of my favorite things to do. I keep a bathing suit and towel in the trunk of my car at all times now.
We talked about how I can ask for an eyedropper of a favor if I have filled a giant bucket of good karma up with a close friend. But even that is Herculean and I always have to have a back up plan of how I can do it myself and I will probably just do it that way.
Intellectually I know there is a vast difference between a reasonable request and an ultimatum. I do. And asking for something is not manipulation, but I have this weird synapse misfire and I get true satisfaction watching what people do when left to their own devices, without the influence of me saying anything. Or maybe I am just prettying up my paralyzing fear of being rejected.
Ya, that is probably a big part of it.
I also know that people are not mind readers. And that if I don’t ask, the answer is always no.
I still won’t ask 90% of the time.
I also have the ability to understand why literally everyone does literally everything they do. I know rejection isn’t always about something personal pertaining to me, it might (and probably is) more to do with what they are currently going through or went through in the past.
Therapist and I moved past childhood reasoning for my inability to ask for anything and talked about the first 2 Mike’s after I was single. You know them as Young Un the First and the Hulk.
I was learning how to be more myself.
I see it as my second childhood technically, and oh look, second verse the same as the first.
You can look at the water, but you can’t go in.
Young Un was young, obviously. And we were in, for all intents and purposes, what constituted as a relationship. But I wanted more, I wanted a label. I asked; and was denied. It was over after that.
About 2 whole minutes after I asked for the thing I wanted.
I have turned that over in my head enough that it is a shiny pebble called, ‘be happy with what is.’
That’s the lesson right?
But, I wasn’t happy with what was, or I wouldn’t have said anything, now would I have? I remember him pulling out of the driveway after he said ‘no’ and the sinking feeling in my gut. I knew I broke it and I couldn’t take it back.
In retrospect it was okay for me to ask in a safe, experimental learning kinda way, because he was not capable of giving that to me and it was bound to end anyways. I have written the handbook on dating younglings, everyone knows this.
We can also chalk that up to a tainted experiment. He was 24 I think at the time. I was the adultier adult.
Cut to 3
months later. That wound licked and fairly healed. Same barber friend of mine
sets me up with the second Mike. Big and beautiful. Sweet and strong. Age appropriate
and a Libra, I like those, I know how to Libra. He was nowhere near over the
ending of his last relationship.
But that’s okay right? I can wait. I wasn’t in a rush at the time. 2 Libras in
my 20’s shared the secrets of their people and you just don’t rush Libras.
So…
I waited.
And I waited.
Started around Labor Day, made it to Thanksgiving. He half ghosted just before Remembrance Day. And I still waited till St. Paddy’s day. There was that thing with the owl almost flying into my car on my drive home, and I decided to just tell him how I felt. And he left without eating the steak and Guinness pie I had agonized over all day.
Once again, I went to the land of say it say it say it; and was unceremoniously rejected.
So I just stopped asking.
Not like it helped.
Zero ultimatums and…
Giant
picked the traveling waitress over me. Wolfling picked his cross-fit
instructor. Cruz picked booze, although we did date for a minute in there and
technically it was I who left him, but I had to. Lumberjack picked the tiny, bitchy
photographer that he had been cheating on for 4 years. Thai Fighter picked baby
mama, which is totally fine, although I heard through the grapevine she is bitchy
too.
(Maybe men really do love bitches and I should read that book again.)
Then the Last One ghosted in the worst way I have ever been ghosted and had a new girlfriend within a month of leaving me. And the Boy, well that was a whole weird thing, but the gist of that was he was getting back with his ex as I was putting the last of my stuff in the car to drive east. After him, Mister wandered off after saying he wanted to keep me, and I was the magical good witch and blah blah blah and finally Final Boss. I waited for him too.
I literally know all of the why behind why none of that worked out.
“Why they left” in triplicate, stamped, notarized, signed and sealed. Because, I have spoken to most of them since and they reiterated what I had already figured out on my own.
I pretend to be all Zen master Buddha on the mountaintop of enlightenment, be content with what is. Everything is as it should be, and ya, it fucking is. Sadness is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future, true contentment is living in the moment.
But in case you hadn’t noticed, this moment fucking sucks.
I chose now to exhume all of my past and my ghosts and dig up the graveyard of my childhood and rearrange my psyche. What else I gotta do?
I had to call up a song from way back when. My marriage theme song.
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, by Postal Service.
I am finally seeing, why I was the one worth leaving.
Catchy huh? It has definitely been a pattern in my life. The revolving door of Thunderdome that was the farm, two women entered, then she left then I left then he kicked her out, then me and I am getting dizzy even typing this…and eventually I finally left, but not after being left a million times. Even high school sweetheart dated literally everyone but me all through my teenage years. Waited for him too.
My ideas on life and love have evolved substantially over the last 33 years since high school, even more in the last 8 or 9 years since the marriage ended.
Even more more more in the last 6 years that have passed since the tale of 2 Mikes.
I have found my relationships are substantially more satisfying with zero expectations and I’d probably choke on an ultimatum if the words ever tried to pass my lips. Love is the one thing you can’t take by force, and why would you want to. That’s not love, that is ownership and not the fun kind. I don’t feel like that is the answer either.
Alone doesn’t scare me, and that makes me powerful beyond measure and I have a pretty nifty set of life skills from doing all of this shit on my own.
I have been left, a lot, like a lot a lot, and I lived. Here I am rambling on to you fine folks about it.
Maybe I have done enough learning for now and should just start living.
I am sure with a bit more therapy I will be better at asking for things and accepting the answers given without taking it personally.
Besides, I am grown and technically I can always go in the water if I want to.
There is a school of thought wherein, we ask the universe for what we want, and the universe starts putting things in motion. The want is a seed that gets planted in the dirt. We are looking at the dirt completely unaware of what is happening beneath, just waiting around staring at dirt. Every time we wish for the same thing or make choices that are in alignment with that want, we water the dirt. But at some point, people get frustrated and say fuck it, and the sprout never has a chance to break through and grow into the light.
There is a happy medium in between asking for nothing, spitting out venomous ultimatums, waiting too long and saying fuck it too soon.
If anyone can find the fulcrum, it’s me.
