lunacy

Maybe it’s placebo, but this full moon I feel a bit feral, angry. Might there be rage, even? It’s about my ex –  if that’s the kinda tea that will make you uncomfy, here’s your chance to bounce.

The more distance I get from the situation, the more I understand why my counselor is so confused and concerned by the very dispassionate way I describe his behavior. “Overall, I still think he was a good guy.” “Why?” (I’m sure she said it softer than that, she’s too good of a counselor to so directly challenge my view of something). I used to say the universe was very kind to me, knowing what a delicate flower I was, to make the first guy I found off okcupid the guy I was with for the next 8 years.  I’m beginning to see that it was really just because I allowed it. He was quite happy to have someone who would play the role of mother, and cheerleader, and sexdoll, and therapist, without asking anything in return but his company. 

I think the universe banked on me running for the hills when, in the first few weeks of us dating and during one of our first intimate encounters, he pressured me into doing something that hurt me to the point I was crying and bleeding – but he reassured me we could try again, I just need to relax more. And maybe we should use lube. I thought, “oh, well, he’s probably right, I’ve never done this before and I’m sure I was doing something wrong…” somehow not a thought in my head that if I had just badly physically hurt someone I was in love with (or starting to love) to that degree, I would be horrified, and it would be the last thing on my mind to “try again”. I imagine “my guides” or whoever is in charge of my case file up there pulling their hair out and banging their head against the wall. “Did you fuck up the numbers on her character sheet?? Why does she have no self preservation instinct? Fuck I guess we are in for a detour…” cut to 8 years later…

The damage he did was profound, and mostly invisible. He choked out and beat down and destroyed every part of me except my body. He did it with a smirk, and he got me to thank him for it. To think I should be grateful he would tolerate someone so awkward and weird and shy, that he was kind enough to teach me how to be normal. Don’t hum and dance to yourself, you’re embarrassing me. Don’t giggle like that, it’s annoying. Listen, when you talk too much, it’s irritating to people, you have to know how to read the room. 

The sad part is, I don’t think I ever had any romantic attraction to him either. I thought it was an insane streak of luck to find someone who would be my boyfriend, and I had to take the chance and maybe the love would come. In my mind, anyone I actually liked would be way too out of my league to ever even see me that way. 

Thinking about this has helped me decouple the toxic habit/cycle of asymmetrical attachments, and the subject of those attachments. Other people in my life have inadvertently re-enforced my shame and feelings of worthlessness by echoing the message that my experience of joy was wrong. That I was intrinsically a broken, obsessive person, and the only thing I could do was fight all my instincts and stay away from anything that made me start to feel attached. I understand where that’s coming from – it was a pattern I seemed to repeat and so it’s a fair assumption on the outside to say, “well, she’s just like that”. As advice for the person experiencing it, though, I think it’s very damaging. It sets them up to feel like their mental illness defines them, and they can only ever suppress it. 

When people talk about limerance, they often say, all the good things you think about that person are actually your projections, and all of that good is really in you. When you are out of it you will see that, and the rose colored glasses will come off. I’m sure I have at times been in limerance, but I feel like I had the opposite experience. I have felt a much deeper, more profound, and maybe even spiritual kind of joy from the things I was attached to, and they are even more incredible and wonderful to me now then they were before. I think the idea that applies more in this case is, “you can only love others as much as you love yourself.” Through cultivating self love and self respect, I’ve been able to surrender to circumstance and live fully according to my values. Through shedding my shame, my inner were-panda is starting to come out in the full moon light. She’s starting to dance, and giggle, and love what she loves, even if some people see it as lunacy. The right people will finally be able to see her. 

…is this just Turning Red? I have the mom issues/generational trauma too, shit.