The road not offered...
I don't even know if this is normative ("normal") behavior so I'm having more trouble than I ought to with something. I think it grows out of the "raised in an alchoholic household=uncertain of boundaries" thing.
A great friend, who I am blessed with keeps in touch regularly, because, well, he's just that kind of a guy. I just got off the phone with him. And I am unfortunately, wrestling down some unproductive emotion. It is a very very rare event these days, but it stil happens now and again.
The setup of our relationship has been clear for *decades.* And the rational old hag sitting in front of this computer would never want it to change now. I have this discussion inside my head about relationships "Remember your husband? Well, not because he wanted to be or anything, but he's Permanently Gone. And remember TheMostEvilDisabledManAlive? He earned the title, but you gave new meaning to KickingAManWhenHe'sDown in verbal retribution...Do you really want to wish for a "relationship" again, just to be rejected *again!* All done carefully and with mercy because that's who the Longtime Friend is? And *then* you revert to bitterness and vengeance against someone who will *never* wrong you?!!! No! So...
What do I do with those ancient feelings that only rarely surface?
Slap them into a box and put them somewhere in my head so they don't threaten the settled contentment of our present friendship by making me look pathetic or desperate, even when I'm not.
But.
They exist.
Even though I could *never* share space with this person because we would drive each other batshit crazy in the space of a month...
(maybe a week.)
I did love him. (I know the difference between a crush and love. It was love.)
I do love him.
I will always love him.
And he never loved me romantically.
But I grow and learn from his friendship so much that I cannot afford to lose that by contiuing to drag out the emotions that he would only have to refuse.
Thank God he's my friend. Not too many lost loves manage that.
It is not tragic, because we aren't lost to one another.
Currently, there is no pining. I'm not the sort to pine. Any actual pining ended in 1985 when Future Husband showed up.
I just wish the old stuff wouldn't do it's JackInTheBox routine.
It's unsettling.
A great friend, who I am blessed with keeps in touch regularly, because, well, he's just that kind of a guy. I just got off the phone with him. And I am unfortunately, wrestling down some unproductive emotion. It is a very very rare event these days, but it stil happens now and again.
The setup of our relationship has been clear for *decades.* And the rational old hag sitting in front of this computer would never want it to change now. I have this discussion inside my head about relationships "Remember your husband? Well, not because he wanted to be or anything, but he's Permanently Gone. And remember TheMostEvilDisabledManAlive? He earned the title, but you gave new meaning to KickingAManWhenHe'sDown in verbal retribution...Do you really want to wish for a "relationship" again, just to be rejected *again!* All done carefully and with mercy because that's who the Longtime Friend is? And *then* you revert to bitterness and vengeance against someone who will *never* wrong you?!!! No! So...
What do I do with those ancient feelings that only rarely surface?
Slap them into a box and put them somewhere in my head so they don't threaten the settled contentment of our present friendship by making me look pathetic or desperate, even when I'm not.
But.
They exist.
Even though I could *never* share space with this person because we would drive each other batshit crazy in the space of a month...
(maybe a week.)
I did love him. (I know the difference between a crush and love. It was love.)
I do love him.
I will always love him.
And he never loved me romantically.
But I grow and learn from his friendship so much that I cannot afford to lose that by contiuing to drag out the emotions that he would only have to refuse.
Thank God he's my friend. Not too many lost loves manage that.
It is not tragic, because we aren't lost to one another.
Currently, there is no pining. I'm not the sort to pine. Any actual pining ended in 1985 when Future Husband showed up.
I just wish the old stuff wouldn't do it's JackInTheBox routine.
It's unsettling.
Labels: Autobiography, Friends
posted by imfunnytoo at 5:29 PM
6 Comments:
That is really unsettling. At least if those painful feelings showed up regularly, you'd be able to deal with them once and for all.
But as it is, you get hit with them, and then they're gone. Sounds like you're dealing with them as well as you can. You also have a lot of insight into a relationship that many people would lie to themselves over.
More than any of the old feelings, I am now more bothered by the people back in the day that made assumptions that it *was* a 'crush,' that they knew better...*That* is the piece of it that still makes me angry. And paradoxically that piece of it has nothing to do with the Longtime Friend himself. It's that the feelings were never validated as true except by a very loyal aunt...never by my peers.
Aw hell. Not to excuse myself from the harmful effects of my behavior, but I was fairly consistently wrong about a lot of stuff on the inter-personal front. I was -- y'know -- a not-too-mature teenager at the time and sort of a dumbass to boot. However, I'm sorry that my trivialization of your feelings caused you pain and continue to trouble you.
Heh. You didn't make it as *bloody obvious* as certain others I will not mention...so your specifics were kinda just a mental shrug "One more on *that* bandwagon..." and didn't hurt much.
This post caught my attention and it is making me think. Rejection is quite a familiar concept to me. I have been able to force myself to rise above the fear of it in order to "put myself out there" on the rare occasion, but my experience in doing that has never gone well. I have also never mastered the art of remaining friends with someone I have romantic feelings for. I envy that you have found a place where you can do that, even if those old feelings surface from time to time. I pretty much always practice avoidance now, and I hate admitting that.
I don't know why, but I wasn't able to hide *many useless crushes* beginning in the fifth grade and continuing on through to high school and even persisting into college...it's just I'd blush easy and then when the able figured out that the girl on a crutches had a crush, the object of my crush got really fearful and the rest of them laughed it up. By junior year in college I had created (mostly) enough emotional control that I didn't act the fool around the crush,but before then I did let my feelings known and get my heart stomped often, because I came off as pathetic.
Dignity can be a livesaver.
Separate from the situation above, I have had what I now know were "crushes" on, lessee
three other fellow high schoolers, then in college A music major who met the love of his life two days after he met me (sigh.) A french professor,a couple of history students,(a green eyed young fellow in particular, yum.) a piano player,a geek,another geek...
Then after my husband's death, a couple of grownup things that were connections but were short term...then TheMostEvilDisabledManAlive...then hung it up Jack.
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