-10
It's normal to react badly to being hurt repeatedly and spending months worried FOR SOMEONE'S LIFE, and it's normal to feel guilty over hurting those who you supposedly care for.
I feel completely desolate; I have noone to talk to; I don't want to bother the one person who knows what's going on and actually seems to care that I'm being hurt, as it's not her problem (and really, I don't know why she cares at all or why she bothered to stick up for me; I wasn't exactly nice to her when all the drama went on back then. I'm glad for it, but it feels undeserved.). I've felt lonely so many times over the past few months, and I don't get lonely.
Besides the initial overreactions, which were a lot to do with being somewhat in shock, I don't think I've acted all that badly. I have been under so much stress that it's affecting my physical health, I've been constantly under the threat of losing everyone who I love, I've been lied to and manipulated to serve someone's interests, I've swallowed 10 times as much pain as I've mentioned for the sake of not hurting him, I backed off from the possibility of romance when they got engaged; I congratulated them both when I was crying my heart out and feeling like I was going to die from the pain.
Since I made the phone call and everything blew up, I've been having constant intrusive thoughts of things that were said, and experiencing something that matches very closelty with the symptoms PTSD. It was only recently that I felt safe enough talking about things, and I made it perfectly clear that they were in the past and that I just needed to get them out of my head.
It was nothing to do with having a problem with their relationship- the thing that I have a problem with is that he made 2 SUICIDE ATTEMPTS while with her, due to romance, and she still pushed for romance. If it had been me I would have felt as guilty as all hell and backed off, and the reason I didn't push for romance more was because I knew about the attempts.
Her visit did bring the loss more sharply into focus, but I saw the grief as a good thing, because it meant that I could finally move on and completely accept that there was no possibilty of romance.
I never tried to guilt trip him, I never manipulated him (that's someone else's specialty), what I did was to react to pain by being hurt, and half of my negative posts were because I felt bad for hurting him by not thinking about how my reactions would affect him.
When he disappeared a few months back, before he got his other account, I deliberately made no posts for a few days, because I wanted to be sure that I wouldn't post anything that would make him feel guilty and obliged to come back. And you know what? Four days later, he emailed me of his own accord.
Yes, I did panic and overreact when she showed up over here, and I admit that I did panic when it went well, and my reaction was wrong. However, it was nothing to do with wanting romance- it was because I was really, really scared that I'd lose him as a friend, because I've seen it happen before with romance, and I was worried, despite the reassurance, that meeting her in person would be the catalyst for losing him. I made it clear that the pain I was feeling then was about past events and not about the events of the time, and certainly not about having a problem with their relationship- if I'd had a problem with it, it would have surfaced in the first year that I knew him.
I shut up when I was still physically ill with pain back in May, and still in shock from having everything crash down around me.
I was told that he loved her still, but as a friend, and that it had been over for months but that "she wouldn't let go". If I'd known that that wasn't the case, that he was still in love with her and that they probably would end up getting back together, I would have dealt with it a lot better, as I wouldn't have had my hopes so far up, and I would have known what to expect. So much of my happiness had been built around the possibilty of romance, and if I'd known that that possibility was less than I thought, I would have kept my happiness based around the friendship, which is what I did in the first year. I was so happy then; even happier than during the times when he said he wanted to be romantic with me, and I was so happy in the days leading up to her visit, because it seemed like things were finally going back to how they were in that first year- the lines were clear again, he was talking more than he had in months, there were even hugs again (and then she showed up out of the blue and made him so overwhelmed that I was scared he'd hurt himself, and everything crashed down around me again).
The point of that is that a good deal of my reasons for being happy- the other reasons being his friendship, which was always more important to me, despite me stupidly overreacting to things, and my studies/music- had been pulled away very suddenly, and it felt like I was expected to react in the same way as the people who had reasons to be very happy.
Back in May, I was swinging between feeling near-suicidal with pain and in shock, and terribly guilty for not being able to be unambiguously happy for him. It was only recently that I was able to feel simply sad for the loss, and, as I said, I did see that sadness as a good thing, because it felt cathartic and I knew I'd finally be able to move on properly and not go through the constant cycle of -
Delight about his friendship- heartbreak- feeling guilty about being heartbroken- pulling myself together again
- I could just stick with being happy about his friendship. I made it abundantly clear that the pain was a good sign, and I made it clear that the things I'd spoken of were in the past and that I hadn't felt safe talking about them then, and that there was no reason for him to feel guilty. I did everything I could to make it clear that I knew that my panic was irrational, I told him outright that I didn't want him to feel guilty, I told him that the things I spoke of- having had my hopes so far up, having been sad because of having lost the possibility of spending the night holding him (nothing lustful at all- just holding), and feeling like I was being hurt for NOT pushing and pushing for more than he was capable of (oh, so insisting that you're meant to be together even when the relationship was stressful enough for him to attempt suicide not once, BUT TWICE, is NOT pushing him? It's NOT selfish? She's doing all the things that she is accusing me of.)- were in the past, but still swirling around in my head, and that I needed to get them out of my head, and that I really hadn't felt safe doing so back then, because it seemed as though the slightest thing would
A. Hurt him and make him disappear.
B. Make her angry with me.
and I was terrified to talk. It may have seemed as though I spoke a lot of my pain, but that was just the tip of the iceberg; I only spoke when I felt like my head would explode with pain and bad thoughts. These forums are the only place I have to speak of what bothers me; I don't tell my family as they would just worry ineffectually, and I can't mention it at work because, well, I work with 10-year-olds. I needed somewhere to vent, and I was hurting almost more than I'd ever been hurt in my life (I can think of 2 times when I was in a worse state)- it was either post something about how bad I felt, or hurt myself, and I knew that hurting myself would just make people feel bad.
Besides that, I hadn't fully sorted out the reasons WHY I felt bad- it took these months to do so, because back then everything was tangled up in my head; all my thoughts were crashing into each other, I was in shock, confused, hurting, and feeling guilty- there was no way I could think straight and make sense of my thoughts. It took this long to be able to figure out that the things I'd been speaking of were among the biggest reasons why I reacted so badly.
I don't know if she's just got the wrong end of the stick or whether she's deliberately twisting the meaning of what I said, but here's what it looks like from my perspective:
I am hurt badly, and made to feel guilty for reacting to it. I subsequently go through months of having the constant threat of losing the only human who I love (I don't know how most people would react to constant and realistic worry about losing EVERYONE WHO THEY LOVE). Things finally seem ok again. Something happens which makes me panic and triggers old unresolved pain. I speak of such (if I could do things differently I would have waited a while so it didn't look like I was trying to cast a shadow over his happiness at her visit. I wasn't.), making my reasons for speaking of it clear, and making it clear that he shouldn't feel guilty, and he says he understands, which leads me, funnily enough, to think that he understands. I ask for a hug because I'm feeling down; he gives one, and it helps, and it really was all that was needed- just reassurance that I was important, that my friendship was valued, and that I wasn't going to lose him. I finish getting things out of my head, and my next message, which was unread, says that I'm glad their day went well, and, in response to him saying how much he'd miss her when she was gone, says that he will see her again, and that he now knows that things in person are as good as they were online, which was a really good thing. I had planned to get up on the morning that she left and take photos of the sunrise at the beach to hopefully cheer him up somewhat.
Then I got a nasty open letter from her, had my attempts to clarify things disregarded, and he disappeared.
In light of the fact that he went from "I understand" to disappearing without warning AFTER she got angry- especially since it happened just after things seemed good again- well, thinking that some manipulation on her part had occurred doesn't seem like such an unreasonable leap of logic to make. It seemed far too sudden to be entirely his own thinking.
I also have good reasons for thinking that she pretended to like me to get me on-side to take the other one away from him- manipulation right there. I have good reason for thinking that she lied about at least one thing (it's a pity that someone caught that post and mentioned what you'd said before you deleted it; and what I've been told privately matches up with that).
If it's not manipulation, and she's just constantly and completely innocently misconstruing my intentions, then I am still angry at her for not speaking directly with me to clarify things.
If it is manipulation, then she is a rotten person, and her happiness is undeserved and built on lies, and one day people will see through it, and it will collapse like the house of cards that it is.
This is probably going to make her angrier and make her work harder at convincing him that he did the right thing, and that of COURSE he shouldn't feel guilty for behaving hurtfully, and that heaven forfend that he should actually have to face the fact that his actions have an effect on people, but you know what? I don't care. I'm tired of placating her and shutting up at her say-so. I'm tired of being expected to react as though things had turned out just as well for me as they had for her. I'm tired of feeling guilty for having normal, human reactions to what was A LOT of pain. I'm tired of telling him "no, no, it's fine that you deceived me for months, it's fine that you keep disappearing with little to no warning" when it was affecting my physical health. I'm tired of feeling scared every time I post something negative or complain about anything, because he apparently can't handle the fact that his hurtful actions caused pain.
If I had hurt someone like that, I'd expect them to react in much the same way that I had. I will not be called a bad person and manipulative for that (well, I probably will, but that's just projection. I'm not the one who lies to make themselves look good then says "Oh, no, no, it was just a miscommunication. I'm so nice and innocent. All of your friends are bad people. You need to be alone with me. That way you have no outside perspective when I manipulate YOU- wait, did I say that last part out loud? I didn't mean to say it, you just misunderstood. What I meant was that I love you and we are oh so good together, let's just ignore the suicide attempts and the constant break-ups, (and the fact that he told me "it's been over for months, but she couldn't let go"; "I finally got her to see that it's over and not to plead or beg"), they don't mean anything.")
I might have acted like a bad friend, and I do feel bad for that (I wrote him a long, unread apology), but, if my suspicions are true, she is a bad person, and far worse than me, and I am really worried about him being alone with her.
You know what would have been enough? Just knowing that he'd be around, that my friendship was valued for its own sake and not as some fallback thing, some predictability in when I'd hear from him- I even said that I was ok with not speaking every day just so long as there was some pattern to it-, and the occasional hug, because they worked better than any words at reassuring me that I was still important to him and that the friendship was there.
I don't even think I want romance with him any more- too much pain; the thought of it sets alarm bells screaming in my mind.
I love him still, but I don't feel safe contemplating anything other than friendship.
This will make things worse for me in terms of having any hope of fixing things. However, I am not going to be stopped from explaining my perspective, and I will not bottle things up to the point of making myself sick.
_________________
Music Theory 101: Cadences.
Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I ! !! !
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I
07 Dec 2010, 5:15 am
