Art by Kate Dehler
Here I am, sitting in my white cube room, drinking green tea from my pink cup - a mental relief to detox my alcohol-filled body for the past week. My brain is turning switches from how i'm gonna do me from that point, to how i can't do me in certain ways anymore.
I strongly believe life always pays off what you want from it. I strongly believe we get what we wanted from the start and we direct life with what we believe in.
Once, during a birthday raki party with someone I dated, we started talking about our past relationships. He told me this story about this girl that he once fell for, the one that lasted for years, the one which he went to Mexico after her to chase her and make it up to her; but he couldn't because they kept fighting over there too and so he left. He left her as he left Mexico.
When he was telling me this story, I remember thinking, "I want something like that. I want that big, 'I can't live without you' type of love, the one which you can't escape, with all the yelling and fighting followed by making hate-love, I'd want somebody to follow me to even another country to make it up, wow, they must have been so in love!"
And I got it. I didn't intentionally turn my relationship into that, but seeing from afar now, I indeed got it. I felt every part of it in every cell of mine, I loved and fought and cried and burned and healed and now I have it. I have that type of story to tell in my 197. date when I am 28, or maybe I'll just keep it to myself as a sacred phase of my life.
"Now what? Do I have to fuck everybody?" "It's not about fucking everybody, it's about not fucking that one body. And you'll be fine."
From my one-two years of adulthood experience, everybody has a different opinion about how things should go when it comes to romance. There is no one way to be in a secure relationship, there is not an "ideal one". But I'd really want my partner to be able to say "I accept her the way she is and I love her despite everything." It doesn't mean I'm "perfect" or every act I do fits him or every thought of me he likes, but it means that the amount of disagreements is so little or so tolerable that it doesn't hold vital values, so I do wanna keep going with her.
I think the worst thing that can happen is when your insecurities are cynically targeted at you; that's not gonna help for improvement. You can't expect a person to understand you at all if they're not paying attention to what you're saying because they're so focused on how you say it. A person won't hear you if you don't communicate with them the way they're used to. A person won't change just because you want to, change begins with will not force. A person who doesn't understand you won't ever change for you. If a person don't stop and put his/her life aside for a second, from a God point of view, wonder and care about your needs, that person will never fulfill them, at all. There is no change in that. They might think they will pay attention more, but as life continues it is nothing but an empty promise to keep you going. Then you're back with your favorite cycle: Am I an insatiable motherfucker or is he/she not there for me, really? The doubt is back, so does confusion, the needs unmet, so do you both.
You also can't expect a person to forgive you when you intentionally hurt them, when you say bad or do bad towards them out of hurt, rage or no matter what- You can't expect a person to hold his/her promise to be always there for you if you push them away in every little situation that triggers the fears you hold about yourself. There is no forgiveness to that. They may think they have forgiven, but in the first seconds of a similar experience the pain is back, so does the blame, so does the distance, so does the separation.
You can't build a relationship when you don't regret what you did that caused pain.
"Okay, they're bad for us. But why do you think we still insist on being with them? Why is it so hard to let go?" "Because it's like losing your favorite toy. Do you stop playing if your favorite toy starts to hurt your hands? No. You keep playing despite the hurt. It is worth it. Or even if you don't, you just put it on the shelf. You don't give it away to your neighbor's kid to play. It's yours. You can't give it away." Okay dude, you got a point there but let's face facts: this is not a playground and they mean much more complicated feelings to us than a toy. I wish I could put people on shelves and when my hands are better I could keep playing with them again and again. To make that happen either I need to go numb on the pain or the toy needs to decide not to hurt me anymore. But toys can't change. And my pain tolerance is not that high...
The way I see it is more like Brida, the book of Paulo Coelho. There's this beautiful flower in the garden which you really enjoy, but you need to stop it there from preventing it to die, and learn how to love it from afar. It is too precious to rip off. Go, for its own sake. Just leave.
The first cut is the deepest, indeed. The first illusion will probably be the hardest to accept and pass over. It will probably take lots of espresso martinis and husky voices. There will be habits to abandon, habits you can't ever get over, funny stories left untold, memories clinging in the first letters of a place, soon-to-be-forgotten emotions pacing up and down in your brain, traces of that smell in your pillow.
But introversion, self growth, optimism and friends will save all of us's asses.
