Wallowing Week, Pt. 3

So, tomorrow ends the week I gave myself to wallow. No more listening to "The Man That Got Away" while walking where John and I walked.

No more that all time thrill.
For you've been through the mill.
And never a new love will be that same.
Good riddance. Good-bye.

I have a picture John took the first day we met and another from the last day we spent together. In the first, I have on my camera face. I look cute. In the last, I'm laughing joyously at the camera. Completely unselfconscious. Joyous in that moment. I'm so scared, I'll never feel that way with anyone else again.

But I feel like there are 3 real issues that John would have liked me to tackle:

1. I hide how I feel when I'm dating.
2. I'm bifurcated and, as John said, "your two halves are not friends."
3. I don't deal well with criticism.

So, dealing with these one at a time. I've decided not to try and change the first issue. I don't think women do all that well going first in sharing emotional feelings. I don't think John would have been more likely to want to commit just because I said "I love you."

The bifurcation issue is real and it is something I'm working on. Strangely enough, the diet book I'm reading is addressing it. I'm doing stuff that sounds silly to me (like journaling with my non-dominate hand) as a way to try and get in touch with that 'inner-child' (I can't believe I'm using that phrase non-ironically). I'm finding my sweet tooth belongs to someone quite younger than the gal that eats healthily the rest of the time, and I think that the sweets-loving gal who likes playing on the swings and blowing bubbles and pink and flowers, well, that may be the gal looking for the sir to protect her. Maybe I'll start to embrace her that way. Maybe I'll do it another. But John is right.

Finally, I wilt in the face of criticism from someone I love. John said: "You often behaved as if you waiting for cosmic permission to simply trust me and trust yourself."

The trusting John issue was a different issue; he was into much harder S&M than I was (wanted to play with a single tail, and that was about it) and he never articulated the tenderness when talking about it. (Although the few things we did do were tender beyond words.) The first time we broke up, it was because I said that if he wanted reaction and power dynamics and submission, I was his gal, but if he was looking to exercise, I simply wasn't and he said he was looking for exercise. (Keep in mind, I was the first person he met from S&M community.) When I let him go (and I told him this), it was because I thought he needed to explore and I hoped we'd get together later.

There was another issue with John, which makes sense now. He didn't always behave in a consistent way. He'd be one way with me, and then another. John confided his fear about his memory problems to me, but I didn't know exactly what that meant. One of my best friends is a doctor, and she believes John might very well have been having mini-strokes. And that would explain a lot.

The final issue is permission to trust myself. If someone I love criticizes me, I hear "you are not a lovable person, Constance." John was harsh with his criticism, and he said basically, that he disengaged because he didn't think I was strong enough to take criticism. (Clearly, it would have been best if he had worked on tempering the criticism a bit and I had worked on withstanding some. He was right that I do hear "you are not lovable" in almost all criticism.)

My mother said that when I was born, she held me and said "you don't have to be perfect to be loved." Unfortunately, I didn't remember that. Clearly, this is an issue that runs in my family.

Part of it is linked to my weight. I'm a size 14 now, which is larger, but not huge. But I used to be a size 22. And I grew up fat. There was a recent story about how growing up fat fucks you up more from a social development point of view than growing up thin and putting on pounds later. I seem to think that if I do everything perfectly, then somehow, someone will love me. I have to earn love. Who I am, is never good enough. I think this is absolutely tied to submission, where I earn a 'good girl' if I'm good, but not if I'm just me.

I also have a dating persona that is unsure of herself. I 'know' I'm too smart and opinionated and headstrong, so I think I've cultivated insecurity as a way to undercut that smart, opinionated headstrong element. I played dumb for a decade when I dated, and now I don't play dumb, I just am unsure.

I'm trying to tell myself that John loved me. He never said it. (He said he was too damaged to know how to love anyone; he didn't even know how to love his sister, whom he adored above everyone else int he world.) But I think he really did. He told me that I was the only woman he could imagine looking at 'for keeps.' He borrowed my ring. He spent 12 hours a week walking and talking with me. He knew me very well, and kept coming back.

And so, I am trying to view my ring, that he kept for a year and a half, as cosmic permission to trust myself. To know that John believed in my potential (although he felt like I hadn't yet emerged from my chrysalis). In John's memory, I will try, just try. My ring, with John's love, can maybe be cosmic permission to know that I am lovable.

I am sure I will be coming back to John as stuff arises. But after tomorrow, I'm going to try and figure out how I go on without him, And I am sure that he would want that for me. Hell, he'd probably point out I didn't have him this last year. I should have done that already.