not so romantic

Once my friend AN and I found each other in high school, we quickly became close. She and I understood life in a different way than the rest of our friends. We didn't have idyllic childhoods, and so we had a more realistic outlook on life. Our friends wanted to stay in our hometown forever, but she and I couldn't wait to escape it. She was the only friend I could ever be truly honest with -- and I hers. We believed it was unrealistic to be abstinent until marriage, though we were in no hurry to have sex. We loved the same moody music sung by men with eyes we could drown in.

AN and I went to dinner and a concert last night together. My favorite thing about AN is that we have similar experiences when it comes to relationships. We have both made mistakes. We have both been heartbroken.

AN has recently ended a four year relationship. She had not heard anything -- not a text, not an email, not a phone call -- from her boyfriend at all since he moved to Pittsburgh for grad school. She had no choice but to email him that she was moving on, because she had no other way of communicating with him. The relationship was in such a state that she hasn't seen this man for a year, and she only broke up with him six months ago. She found out through a mutual friend a couple months ago that immediately after moving to Pittsburgh, her boyfriend started dating somebody else; instead of calling her to break up, he just never responded to any of her attempts to contact him.

She's devastated. She's humiliated. Four years wasted with this jerk! She hates that so much of her development into an adult involved him, and then he just left it without so much as a goodbye.

Because AN and I are kindred souls, speaking with her often stirs my own heart. Talking to her about this over dinner and trying to console her took me back to all my heartbreaks.

I have been thinking lately about the relationships with men that I have had throughout my life. I have scars left by men, and by my own behavior against the men I have loved. I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I am trying to work through the confusing events of my life, and trying to decide whether I should write about it here.

Reader, my hesitancy comes from fear of telling you these imperfections in my life and my own character. I keep thinking, "they won't like reading this," but that's unfair to both of us, isn't it? It assumes that you, Reader, are as judgmental of me as the person in my head (who happens to be my narcissistic mother). And it defeats the purpose of this space: trying to accept the events that make up my life thus far and finally process them. These are parts of me, and if I can't even bring myself to write about it, no way in hell will I ever be okay with it being a part of my history.

As I told AN last night, we can't always seperate the bad from the good. Sometimes, things are a mixed bag, plain and simple. The best we can do is learn from the bad, and revel in the good. That's what I plan on doing. I will be writing series of posts about the important romantic relationships in my life as a way to process what they were and what they did or didn't mean. I hope that in the process, I'll gain a deeper understanding of myself and continue on my Gauntlet of Healing.