October 25, 2024
When you have as confusing a connection to someone as this is was, it is of course tempting to consult the occult for answers … since you aren’t getting any from the person.
As long as you don’t take any of it to be gospel, you certainly do get some interesting perspectives.
One I’ve gotten lately is that this person took off because I am annoying, and too needy.
And I can see that perspective, because years ago, that certainly was me.
Eleven years ago, I was newly widowed. And before that, I had been a person from an abusive home, raised by a mentally ill mother, a person who didn’t have friends at school and mostly wore the Kick Me sign. And felt alienated from pretty much everyone else ever since. Struggling in my career while everyone else I knew did well in theirs didn’t help. Never having enough money, afraid of ending up homeless … bleah.
Then I made a friend or two, and married my husband. The place I met my husband was the first place I was in an “in group” instead of cut dead and picked on. It was the first sense of real family I had ever had.
And, after not even seven years of marriage, it was all over. My husband died, and there I was, all alone again.
I really wasn’t ready at all. It was like being four years old and losing your parents in a department store. And knowing they would hit you for it when you found them.
And I know I acted like it, panic attacks and all. (Of course, we finally did uncover a medical reason for the panic attacks, too, but it wasn’t the only reason by a long shot.)
It was no wonder this poor person might think I expected him to do for me and make me happy, and didn’t want the responsibility. He’s already got at least seven other people like that as it is.
But, here’s the thing …
When we were speaking, I saw a very, very sad, lonely man.
I mean, this is what I was seeing:
For a long time I've had this fantasy. It's very simple, but it's all I want. But I'm not sure I can share it with you. I've had it for a long time.
I want to wake up in the morning next to someone who makes me think "Thank God I'm alive so I can spend another day with this woman."
There it is.
I took note of the fact that this poor person didn’t really seem to know how to joke and flirt. I’d make the sort of jokes I used to share with my husband. At first there was nothing, and then he started to do it back to me. As if no one had ever joked or flirted with him like that before and he sort of had to learn how to do it.
And then he chooses to stay with a person who blames him for everything that went wrong in the marriage, doesn’t want to apply herself in therapy, and eggs everyone on to cut him off if he leaves, and this is what I see:
(Well, it won’t let me post an image on here. Let it just suffice to say that I have notes going back almost four years of every time I saw someone who was probably him on this blog reading, most notably when I would post him something and the same visitor came on and read it over and over. Or when I asked him what he was doing here and said, You might as well leave, nothing will ever come of this anyway, and SOMEone stayed up all night reading blogs. And then came on for a VERY long time after just checking headlines. This doesn’t count all the visits I saw years before that that were from his neighborhood, but I didn’t figure out were, in fact, actually him.)
When you see that sort of thing, it looks like a lot more than friendly concern and a wish for me to move on and find somebody else. Even though that was the (briefly) stated intent the last time I actually heard anything from this person.
What I’m trying to say here is that, even though ten years have passed since we first got together, it’s very, very easy to see one another as we appeared ten years ago. Because there has been no reliable source of any other information and no two-way communication.
In the intervening ten years, I’ve endured all kinds of sicknesses and doctor visits by myself, total home disasters, financial fears, contract negotiations, and found myself in a much better position financially. I’ve learned how to live the rest of my life alone. (Because, really, when you’re nearly sixty years old and a fat woman, you had better. You’re not a beau-catcher anymore. And, men die sooner.)
But, how would he know that? He wouldn’t, really, I guess.
Meanwhile, he’s decided he doesn’t love me anymore, he’s accepted his distant, roommate marriage, and he lives to take care of his family, and he’s okay with that.
Looking at the available evidence, how would I know that? I wouldn’t.
So, I’ve spent the last ten years seeing him as this sad, lonely person who’s missed out on love in his life, and he’s seen me as this sad, lonely person who never grew up and still needs a parent, because that’s who we were ten years ago.
But I’ve spent the last ten years looking back and seeing this forlorn, low-self-worth person who’s missed out on having a close marriage (and sex, for the most part), and I just felt so, so SAD for that person. I felt so TIED to his sadness and aloneness. I was like, I would be here if you would be here, but you won’t be here, so I can do nothing.
But this person evolved past that. He’s not sad anymore, he doesn’t need me anymore. He doesn’t want me anymore. So, I’m absolved from feeling bad that he’s sad and alone and resonating with how sad life is for this person.
I always felt responsible for my mother, too. Hooked into her problems and her sadness. As if I could fix anything.
But I can’t.
This person doesn’t even want me anymore, so I don’t have to WORRY about how sad and lonely he is.
That was really the thing, wasn’t it?? Always being worried over someone else’s feelings of sadness, loneliness, impotence over things not working out. As long as the person was miserable, I felt chained to them somehow. I’m not sure why.
As if, they want me to do something, and I COULD do something, only they won’t let me do anything. And that’s very sad.
I just feel very, very bad for people who are just existentially sad, anyway. Drawn like a moth to a flame, can’t stop thinking about them, obsessed over how much better things could be.
Which is silly. This is life on planet Earth, right? There are always problems. And what you don’t solve in the first marriage you bring right the fuck on out with you.
I think what kept me hooked in is, it LOOKED like he still wanted me there. And I felt so much sympathy for that that I wanted to be there if he wanted me to be. But he didn’t want me to be! Because he was married! But he did want me to be! Because he was lonely! But he didn’t want me to be! Because his family would never speak to him again!
Such drama.
That’s the thing, though. As long as I think the person wants me there, I think I COULD help, and then my heart breaks because I CAN’T.
But this person doesn’t WANT me there anymore, so I’m free. If he doesn’t want me, I don’t want him. I don’t want to be anywhere I’m not wanted. I don’t want to force myself on anyone. I’m not going to cling to someone who would see me as a burden, something unwanted, an annoyance clinging to them. I was only there because it honestly looked like he WANTED me there.
I mean, put together that history and that view pattern, and what else are you gonna think???
There was nothing and no one to tell me different.
In any case, why get so hooked into other people’s problems and other people’s unhappiness?? Yes, me and this guy got along very well, and I think we would have had a ball together, and I don’t anticipate finding anyone else like that, and I felt it as very sad that we won’t be spending that time in this lifetime.
But there’s no reason to feel hooked into someone else’s sadness like that. And that’s been a big problem for me my whole life, feeling hooked into other people’s sadness.
Even if he is that sad, if he chooses to do nothing about it, that’s not my problem. I CAN’T FIX IT.
So why moon about it as if I am responsible for it?
I am not. This person threw me out. This person griped at me for perceiving distress on his end and took off and never spoke to me again.
A person who does not want me here, even if he remains unhappy, is a person who does not want me here. I am not responsible for that. We missed out on good times that could have been had, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
Does it really make sense to grieve lost opportunities forever?
It sure doesn’t bring them back, and I can definitely attest to that, for anyone who’s wondering.
I am free of being consumed with someone else’s upset. I don’t need to do that. I never needed to do that. I have needed to STOP doing that for a long, long time.
Like, since I was BORN.
So, I’m going to stop now. This person states that he is fine, doesn’t want me anymore, and that he is okay. Good for him! If you’re going to stay where you are, you had best be able to be happy with it.
And if he’s not, what can I do? Nothing. I don’t need to stay hooked into someone else’s pain anymore and try to take care of it. Because that’s what I did with him and with my mother … stay hooked into someone else’s pain, all identified with it, and try to take care of it.
There’s nothing I can do.