Nine and a half years ago my life changed dramatically within the span of a week. I don't remember hearing about my girlfriend's...leaving (I still can't say the 'D' word) for the first time but according to my mom she was the one to tell me and I didn't take it well. Then came my accident and I woke up two weeks later in a hospital bed and I didn't know what had happened to me but I knew something wasn't right because the one person I knew would always be there was not there. I had no recollection at all of what had happened to her. I asked where she was and the look on my mom's face told me all I needed to know. I wish I didn't remember hearing it the second time. I remember every feeling that went through me. I remember literally getting sick and needing to be sedated. And I remember the procession of shrinks and specialists that tried to get me to talk about my feelings in the days that followed. I've never experienced worse pain, in every way imaginable. There are some people in this life that I cannot stand but I wouldn't even wish that experience on them. It's too much. It's still too much sometimes when I think about it, as I've been doing a lot today. There isn't an adjective strong enough for how that felt. I could've just crawled into a hole and died as soon as I heard the news (both times, I imagine) and I came close to doing that several times. I didn't eat much, I could never sleep more than a few hours at a time and I kept thinking it was all just a dream. Every time I woke up after some nightmare I thought I'd be waking up to her. I completely shut down because I didn't know what else to do or how to react. I self-medicated because it was the only thing that didn't remind me of her. The only thing that would numb me and keep her off my mind. It was awful. It took me years to get back to being ok everyday and it wasn't until last year that I stopped thinking about her every other thought.
The entire experience of the accident and that kind of loss changed me in a lot of ways. I didn't cope well at all. I had PTSD and I was depressed but I refused to get help for either problem (hence the self-medication). I was in and out of a number of relationships but I applied myself in zero of them. I chain-smoked girlfriends and I didn't care what happened to me. Some called me on my behavior, some decided it wasn't worth it and moved on. My mentality was that everything and everyone dies so why get close to anything or anyone. Everyone dies, everything ends so accept that and close yourself off and don't get hurt again. I sabotaged and stopped things dead in their tracks before they could even start. I was a bastard. Nothing made me happy and I didn't like who I was at all because it wasn't me. And when you don't like yourself, you can't love anybody else. Eventually I found my faith, changed to a new way of thinking and realized the live keep living and I'm still here for a reason. I let go of most of my vices and I am a much better person for that. I'm definitely happier overall and I'm thankful for my second chance. But sometimes I still have a problem accepting the good things and I dwell on the negatives.
One area where I continue to be hesitant to accept love is my dating life. It took me a long time to be open to dating anybody seriously again and I still never really fully opened up. I'd get close but there would always be something held back. And even if I felt like I could really fall for someone, I still held back because of the 'what-if's'. What if I fall and the same thing happens again? It's completely irrational but it's how I felt. So I resigned myself to the fact that I'd probably just end up in and out of relationships the rest of my life but never have that same connection again. And that was fine, I'd already had it once and I was lucky for that. Then I was with someone I saw a real future with but things didn't work out. Not long after it ended I was talking to a friend of mine about it and she said something about how she was shocked this chick hadn't dug in her nails and fought harder for me. I was flabbergasted. It hadn't even occurred to me that anybody would want to dig in and stick it out and fight. I never really had (although I did try everything in that particular relationship), so why should I expect it from anyone else? I had more baggage than most and was not really worth sticking it out for. The next "big" (that term being relative since my relationships rarely last longer than 8 months) relationship I was in showed me what it was to fight. Only I wasn't the one doing the fighting, it was all her, because I didn't feel the same way she did. I cared about her, wanted her to be happy but I wasn't in love. But I understood finally what it meant to be on both sides; the one fighting and the one letting go. I felt a lot for one of these women but knew we probably weren't meant to go the distance. I loved the other one as a friend but I was never in love. And as much as I cared about both of them, I never felt the "it" that I would need to officially fall in love and be taken over by that awesome feeling.
So now I'm in something that has an incredible amount of potential. Something that makes me wanna fight and makes me feel like I want to let go and be completely taken over. But the 'what-ifs' are holding me back. And it's this paralyzing fear about losing someone I love all over again. I mean, I'm already in deep so if anything happened to this person it would shatter me anyway. (I get freaked out when she has a bad asthma day, forget about dealing with anything serious.) But I think this is also that arms length thing that I do creeping in. I'm still so afraid to keep anyone close because of what could happen. So I although I'm in deep and close and have fallen and all of that good stuff, I've also keep the distance because I'm terrified that it could all end badly and I know I couldn't handle that again. The funny thing is, it's been a very long time since I've been too close and yet, I feel like all I need is to be too close. I need to be with someone who wants to fight for me and who I'm willing to fight for. I need someone who flat out refuses to let me self-sabotage. Someone who understands where I've been and how awful it was and how much I never wanna go back to that place. So how do I let this last wall down and get myself to that person? That is I question I very much wish I knew the answer to...
