More Getting It Out in Open Diary 2001-2018 (Pre-Prosebox)

[I’ve decided to make this entry friends-only. I rarely write friends-only because I kinda like the idea of sending my thoughts out to anyone and everyone very randomly and anonymously, but as some of you have mentioned in your entires, in this day and age of facebook, twitter, etc, nothing is really anonymous anymore. Bottom line, I trust you guys with this. Please don’t abuse this trust or use it against me]

Not that it’s hard to get this stuff out (the stuff I wrote yesterday), I don’t really know if it’s right to do. I mean, maybe they should be private entries? Maybe I should get it out, but then keep it to myself…kinda like writing a letter never sent? But I value the various opinions so much. I realize that I’m airing hideous laundry, probably making your opinion of me change quite a bit, but I’m hoping that writing it all out will be a lot like actually saying it out loud and it will reinforce the need for change and self-adjustment.

And I KNOW that change will never happen unless a person is ready and willing to work for it (ie: weight loss, smoking, booze), but if there’s ever been a time to do some major internal work, it is now. I have the perfect opportunity. Just sucks that I have to do it and I wonder from moment to moment: how did I end up like this? And by “this” I don’t mean that I think I’m totally f’d up, I just mean that I feel like I worked soooooo hard for the life I had in my hands: fantastic job, a pending wedding, an instant family and possibly a baby of our own. It still shocks me that ALL of that is gone. Poof.

So of course, I have to wonder what the hell happened. Of course, that I’m here in this place by my own actions. So I’m asking myself why I made the choices that I made. And why I reacted to things the way I did.

I look back on the last few years of my life like it was a movie. And I could see certain situations almost as if I was out of my own body, watching. And the sick thing about it all is that I was kind of watching myself on the edge of my seat. Do you know what I mean? It was exciting and surprising and full of action and suspense! There were struggles and push-pulls and I was watching myself put ALLLLL of my energy into my life. I was finally LIVING! Not that I wasn’t before, because I liked all of that moving to new places and single stuff and new jobs and all of that, but I was finally living in a place that I saw as being exactly where I wanted to be, so I was incredibly excited.

And I was anxiously awaiting the next part of the movie. Well, I guess the end of the movie. Remember the movie Speed? Or any other action/suspense where the movie ends with the couple cheating death and they can’t believe that they’re still alive and kissing like fools. What happens to Keanu and Sandra after the end of that movie (don’t tell me Speed 2 because I haven’t seen that one…humor me, please)?? Did they really live happily ever after? That’s what the movie makes you think, right? You never think that they’d end up fighting or cheating or abusing each other and breaking up.

Regardless, here I am and there’s no changing the past. There’s nothing…NOTHING I can do about it except learn from it.

I wrote that stuff about drinking yesterday because yes, I do want to learn from that. I still have a glass of wine every now and then. I drink probably once a week. I’m VERY conscious of how I act when I drink now because EXMS let me know that it was a part of why we broke up (though if you asked him directly he would give you a million and one reasons, all different…and if you asked him the next day, he’d have more, different from the day before). But alcohol is something that I know can get out of control for me if I don’t watch it. Our big fights happened when we were drinking. EXMS doesn’t realize this, but he turns into a gigantic ass when he gets drunk. But he’d rather blame all of those issues on me. I think he did it because he knew I would take it. I would bear the brunt because we both knew that I would.

[Disclaimer: If you haven’t felt this way about me before, you’re REALLY going to want to yell at me and shake me when you read what’s next. Don’t bother. Writing this out is all the shaking I need. If you get really disgusted by people who’ve lost their backbone/dignity, then move along to the next diary. I’m not trying to show you what a victim I’ve let myself become, I’m just trying to figure out why I did what I did.]

Get this: the day after EXMS knocked me to the concrete floor, I went to pick up my wedding dress!! I went alone because I was so humiliated. My hands were all cut up because I had a glass in my hand when EXMS pushed me down and the glass broke and cut me up (not badly, but there were little cuts allllll over my hands). It was a surreal experience because I wasn’t even sure if I should pick the damn thing up. It should have been one of the happiest moments of my life, and I should have had my mom and my friends with me, but no. There I was, trying on the dress, standing in front of the mirror, holding back tears and smiling with the salesperson. What in bloody hell was I thinking?

And EXMS kept texting me, telling me to please, please call him…that we needed to talk things through and that he was sooooo sorry. I refused to answer and that scared him.

BUT! The moment I finally made it home and hung the dress in the closet and said I was ready to talk about it, the tables quickly turned. Somehow and for some reason, I guess I showed remorse, and it all became MY fault. And that was a bizarre feeling, because suddenly he made me very aware of the fact that I was about to lose him and the whole dream. It was MY responsibility to change MY ways.

So I told him I was going to quit drinking. And you know what he said? He didn’t want me to! Because having a glass of wine or two together in the evening was a ritual that we both really enjoyed together. He told me to simply control myself.

So I did. And I tried. But to what degree do you consider controlling yourself? The hard thing about that was, I never knew what was going to set him off and to what degree. Sometimes if I looked at him sideways, he’d clam up and pout. Sometimes if I made him the brunt of a HUGE joke, he’d laugh his ass off at himself. WTF? How could I ever know?? Impossible.

I guess the reason I’m writing all of this out is that while getting drunk and being STUPID can certainly be an issue for me/anyone, that’s not really what the problem was.

The problem was, I was PETRIFIED of screwing up! And the more I tried, the more messed up the situation became. I’d worked soooooo hard to get to this point, and I just wanted harmony. And I know he wanted that too, it’s just that we were both trying to control the situation and neither one of us could. Yes, [Parliament], severe codependency and the “perfect storm of emotional stuntedness”.

Yuck.

I need to go for now. I don’t know if I feel better writing that out. It certainly makes me take a good, hard look at myself. And a lot of it comes down to respect and taking care of myself. If I don’t respect myself (completely!), how should I expect anyone else to?

Thing is, I do have a TON of respect for myself when I’m single and doing things solo. I love to do nice thingsfor myself, etc. I’m really, really good to myself most of the time (of course, there are moments….but really, for the most part I love me!). What is it about bringing someone into my world that makes me give all that up? How could I possibly just surrender all of my self-respect so easily?