After the ridiculously stressful week I’ve had, I decided that today would be a mental health day. So after I finished an interview and started piecing together a huge story I’m working on (that’s admittedly overdue), I listened to the headache that was forming and took to my couch, where I gleefully watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles, a couple episodes of Scrubs, took a nap, and watched a special on Walt Disney World (I need to bone up on my Dworld info for an upcoming trip.) And now I’m watching Lord of the Rings, and I’m not the least bit upset about the fact that I’m in on a Friday night.
I suspect it’s exactly this attitude that’s making my friends get into that mode where they want to set me up.
read more ↓Though I’ve been single for a year and two months, it’s only really since February that I feel like I’ve really started to settle into going it solo. Actually, I’d go so far as saying it I didn’t really start to get into it until around May this year. I spent the first seven months post break-up running away from the despair I felt about the whole situation, went through my looking-for-attention phase, even dated someone for roughly a month (and it ended spectacularly – eventually I’ll tell the story.) But by February, I started to tune into the fact that if I was ever going to have a successful relationship, I had to start making myself a whole before I looked to team up with a man. And by May, I’d really moved into making that belief a reality. Because really, that’s part of what kind of relationship I want to have – one where we support each other, encourage each other and help each other out, no matter who’s up or down. But before I can get to that part, I really have to become rooted in who I am and what I want. And that’s something I’ve never really done before.
Sure, I’ve thought I’ve done that before – more times than I can count. But then I fall into that trap where I take the cake out of the oven – to steal a term from Elizabeth Gilbert – before it’s been fully baked, and then everything just turns into a soppy, crumbly mess and I wind up having to clean up my own catastrophe. It gets exhausting after a while, and I just can’t bear to go through that anymore. I’ve looked to someone else to complete me more times than I can count. It has to stop.
Strangely enough, I got into a conversation about this with the massage therapist who worked on me last weekend in Pebble Beach. We got on the subject of my ex and I explained to him how I felt like there was such a huge wall there, but I didn’t know what to do about it, so I walked away. And though I’ve come to terms with this probably a million and one times in the past 14 months, I still cried about it.
“Did you ever show him this side of you?” he asked me.
“Not really,” I said, sniffling. “I mean, he saw it sometimes, but I tried to hide it as much as possible.”
“I guarantee if you’d have shown him this lovely, beautiful side of yourself, it probably would’ve been different,” he said softly.
I laughed a little. I don’t cry beautifully. I don’t cry like Demi Moore in Ghost. I cry like kids in the supermarket whose mothers don’t buy them the cookies they want – red, screwed-up face, inability to catch my breath, snot bubbles. It’s very glamorous.
“And I suspect because you’ve had to fight and struggle your whole entire life to get to where you are and to get people to listen to you, you fought and struggled with him to make him break down those walls,” he continued. “But what you didn’t realize was that using your masculine power doesn’t get that done. Using your feminine power does.”
I nodded, still crying (though more like Demi Moore than the supermarket kid at this point.)
“And you probably didn’t realize that the more you used your masculine power, the more he felt like nothing he ever did was good enough for you – he felt like he couldn’t win.”
I laughed a little again, because that’s what I’d felt like. A million times I felt like I did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing… but the problem was, I was in a completely different mindset where I did everything for someone else’s approval instead of my own, which makes a big difference. I don’t know that me today would behave that way, now that I know the difference. But because I devalued myself so much in that relationship, it never occurred to me that I could ever make him feel devalued, under appreciated, or not cared for. I never wanted him to feel that way, and though there were things about him that made me nuts, I didn’t want to change him so much as I wanted him to let me in. Those things that made me nuts were part of what made me love him. I guess I never told him that.
Anyway. I’ve so not been in that dating headspace at all. Admittedly it’s been a little hard watching some of my friends fall in love and wishing I could feel that to, but in a way I do – I enjoy it when they tell me what they’re going through and how they feel, and it’s kind of giving me some insight into how I’ll approach it when it comes my way again. I’ve been doing a ton of reading on male/female communication patterns and how they differ, Osho’s books on love and relationships… all of this has been very illuminating and has really shown me where I’ve gone wrong in past relationships.
But for now, I’m quite enjoying my own company for the first time ever, I think, and it’s nice. Not that I’m being a total hermit – I have my social moments, but I’m also no longer feeling panicked if I don’t have something to do. I’m serious when I say this is a completely different sensation for me. And this isn’t to say that I haven’t noticed guys here and there – I have, but more in a “hey, that’s a nice piece of artwork” way than a “I need to have that hanging on my wall” way. I’ve been so oblivious to most of it that yesterday, when the cashier at Trader Joe’s asked me out, all I did was laugh a little and tell him to have a nice day as I grabbed my purchase and left the store. It took me two blocks to figure out he’d invited me to do something on the weekend.
I know my friends are torn between letting me have my space and becoming semi-concerned that this will turn into a very lengthy celibacy (people, a year and a half without sex is not a long time), which is probably why I’ve had three people give me some variant of “you should be with so and so” over the last week, and one telling me, “the best way to learn about relationships is to be in one.” And I know that. But I also know when it’s time, and it’s not time yet. I’m still off duty. I’m still in Operation Shutdown. I still need to get comfortable with this new me – the me that understands her worth in a relationship and feels comfortable being feminine in it, the me that’s learning a new way to express herself. The me who doesn’t want to search for a man to make her whole so much as she wants to be whole and happen upon him in some perfectly cosmic way.
So for now, this me is going back to the couch to watch the end of Lord of the Rings. And this me feels quite content with that. There’s plenty of time for a relationship. I have other things I need to do first. Like watch TV.
↑ close
