Mugtoe
Cuddly Puppy
Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 17889 |
Things are better now to some extent, but I still think sometimes in terms of what might be possible for the two of us for the future once we both get past this. I routinely save most of my instant message logs and always have. I've had moments in the last week when I went back and read our conversations from last year and last summer and how committed we were to each other and the promises we both made and things we said - mostly meaningless now, I guess - and I wonder what might have been different and what I could have done differently. It's certainly not something to make me necessarily feel better, but it's also not completely negative. For one thing, it reminds me that what we had was pretty genuine, and it also points out how much damage we both did to it.
The point isn't that we get back together. That would be nice at some point in the distant future, I guess, but a lot can change in the meantime for either one of us. And I'd be stupid to count on that or, at the moment, even to wish for it. The things I did weren't the only thing wrong with our relationship by a long shot. And there is a genuine sense of relief to be out from under all that mess, because there were reasons it wasn't working and reasons we both needed out at the time. The point is that I face all that and work it out.
I almost wish I'd stayed in Minneapolis and gotten it together up there. It was a bit of a surrender to my own hurt feelings and wounded pride for me to return to Texas. I'm glad I did it at the time; I was really messed up and wouldn't have done well at all up there leaving my apartment to him and trying to find a place of my own. And my job wouldn't have lasted another month, I don't think. But it also leaves some things hanging insomuch as I didn't really try to rehabilitate my individual situation where I was and work things out for myself right where I messed them up. I just escaped and ran to the place and person I always run to when I'm feeling broken. I didn't make an attempt to redeem myself in the midst of my wreckage and try to clean any of it up. I just ran.
There are guys online who flirt with me and who I think are really nice. But the idea of getting involved seriously with anyone at this point just seems so foreign and wrong to me that I can't even contemplate it. He is free to do that with impunity; in fact it's the best reason I can think of for him wanting out. He never dated anyone but me in his life. My behavior over the last few months merely gave him a reason to get to that sooner than he perhaps would have otherwise. But I think it was inevitable at some point, even if I had been a perfect angel. He was disatisfied before I even returned to pick him up in Wisconsin. I guess that's part of the problem with falling in love with someone a thousand miles away and that much younger than myself. This was in my future from the beginning no matter what he might have said to the contrary, even days before I arrived back up north.
So what am I left with? Nothing really. Matt will probably get seriously involved with someone at some point, and it likely won't be me. I doubt it will be the guy he met when we broke up. He was just greener grass, for one thing, and he has a reputation among the guys up there for being almost sociopathically a player of guys just like Matt. But there are other guys up there who are good looking and available. So I'm not going to gamble myself away on some notion of a triumphant return and attempted reconciliation. I just feel like I missed the point by running back to the farm to lick my wounds. I didn't clean up any wreckage. I didn't fix anything in my life. I cut my losses and made out while I could. I couldn't have done much else, given that we had been spending all my money on just living and feeding our toxic situation at home. And he was right at the time; it would have been petty and mean for me to make him leave and get his own place. He had all the furniture, and I had nothing in the end but seventeen boxes of books and clothes and CDs, and a trunk. There's no sense in second-guessing what I did now. But there are some things I can do going forward towards that end.
I told Dad today that I wanted to go back to work as soon as I could manage it. I need an income of my own, and I need the ability to save my own money. I can do that and still manage the farm for him without much trouble. I did it before for two years working sixty-five miles from here and commuting every day. Barring a return to Minnesota, I still have to address those things that caused me problems there. I won't solve any of this by hiding from it, though I am being useful here and feel positive about what I'm doing for Dad.
Jumping into another relationship is insane at this point, and I really have no interest in doing that. There are a couple of guys I'd love to consider that with, but lord, it's only been three weeks since my marriage ended. And what purpose would I be trying to serve other than making myself feel better? This is about getting my shit together, not licking my wounds by objectifying yet another human being. Love may have been a salvation for me in Matt's case, but those days are done.
Matt was the most important person in my life, but I worked that out in such a way that I treated him like a possession, a parent, a nurse, a pet and an ornament. I also treated him like furniture at times, because, frankly, he acted like it from almost the time we got back to Minnesota. I yelled and begged him to change things that I myself wasn't willing to do anything about. He rebelled and realized at some point that I just wasn't the kind of person who made him want to be better than he was. I was trying to manage him as just another part of my unhappy life rather than work with him as a partner. And also, I think I failed to accept the fact that, given his age and our background, it wouldn't take much for him to chuck it all and try living alone, regardless of how he might have felt just weeks or months earlier. I don't blame him for that, in spite of how much it hurt for me when he made that choice final.
I kept waiting on him to make the changes I was unwilling to make myself. I blamed him for us smoking and partying, but I was the one paying for most of it and keeping it going. I was resentful at him for saying he missed the "sober Frank". He broke up with the sober Frank in 99, and then we I sobered up in 2002 he kept getting high and didn't have much to offer in the way of the kind of support I'd expect from a life-partner. But then, I didn't stay sober but six months, and I used that perception of his indifference (which was mostly in my head. He did want me sober) as a weapon against him in my mind. It was about the end of that time that I first considered returning to Texas. Matt didn't really give up on us first. I did it several times and kept returning to him out of habit and a need to feel wanted. We're both better than that.
This is not about me leaving the farm yet again, or where I live at all, really. It's about what kind of person do I want to be and how do I want to go about forming a true partnership with another human being in my life. I don't really need to look for anyone else to do that with. Whether or not he wants to work towards something like that, I want to be fit for that ability to share a life with him, even if I spend the rest of my life alone and living right here on the farm. And a big part of that ability is the willingness and discipline to follow my own idea of what makes me happy and creative and usefully whole and to value and encourage that willingness and discipline in him. It doesn't matter that we don't share the same bed any more, or even that we may never do so again. He's still the guy I love and carry around in my heart, and I wouldn't change that no matter what my feelings have to say about it. Real love isn't a feeling; that sort of thing is just chemicals in my body. Love is an attitude and a way of living and thinking about someone, and about the world in general, I guess. It means doing what is wise right now, rather than what is familiar. It means getting to work and consciously living my life as if I have a future that I would want for myself as well as one I would be willing to share, and it means valuing that in him as well. And it means supporting the idea of him doing whatever it is he thinks he wants to do right now, even if that wounded part of me shrinks from the idea. It also means finding some way to give him space. Because believe me, even though I'm a thousand miles away, I can still be a big presence in his life and am almost by accident sometimes.
I honestly think this is the grandest of human adventures, because it is part and parcel of what we are all here for. It is the ability to have an authentic life and to share that with other people, and more specifically with one other person in genuine partnership. In a lot of ways, Matt taught me that without even realizing it, and perhaps without knowing it himself yet.
I can practice that in my life right now as well. I can be here for my father, rather than just leaning on him for support and solace and forgiveness for being broken and having been the one who did the breaking myself. It means that Dad and I can do all the things he wants to do here without it being a source of conflict with the things I must do for myself. I know this as an article of faith. A way is made for those who follow what they are supposed to do, and it is a way that would not be open to anyone else in that specific way and wouldn't necessarily make sense to other people - it doesn't have to. And God does work in mysterious ways, I reckon. But I can't do it by sitting on the internet every day and wondering what I did with my life and how I got here and how sad it all is that I made a mess of things and couching it all in the most beautiful language I can muster so everyone will say how noble I am for acknowledging what a mess I made and how I am here for my poor aged father in his time of need. That's just ego looking for a stroke from strangers and friends. It's too easy and evaporates under the sunlight of reality. Even my powers of self-deception aren't sufficient to cover that charade for long. It would gnaw at me until I left or got drunk or somehow ruined everything here as well.
So I'll do what I came down here to do. I'll work. I'll write. I'll get better. I'll share that and move forward. And I'll trust whatever it is in me and everywhere and everyone else that I pray to when I'm outside working. I tell myself sometimes, "In the garden, no one can hear you whine."
But my prayers are heard and worked upon.
It's after 3am, and I'm sober and without a cigarette for going on three days now. I trust that I can continue along that path. But part of this deal is not staying up all night on the computer and squandering valuable daylight sleeping off my late-night brainstorms and mental mastrubation. Because truthfully, none of this makes a damn bit of difference if I just leave it here on the messageboard.
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02-27-2005 05:54 AM
