It's amazing how little we can believe our worth to be sometimes. And how the people who make us feel so special in the beginning of a relationship can make us feel like absolutely nothing at the end of it. BP and I had a rocky beginning, but eventually settled into a good place. She made me feel like maybe I wouldn't always be terrible at relationships and lured me into this whole concept of a partnership where both parties contribute equally to keep the ship afloat. Yes, that's right, I was a dude in my late-20's who had not yet grasped the concept that both people need to give their all in order to make something last. Granted, she had not learned how to make things last either, she probably still hasn't, but we forged ahead as two people who weren't good at relationships trying to figure out how to make a good relationship. And for awhile, it almost worked. We were great communicators in the beginning. If one of us had a meeting or was out with friends, they'd let the other know what was going on and we'd go do our things and reconnect later on when we had time. If there was a disagreement, and there weren't many at that time, it was quickly resolved because we both agreed it was better to fix it ASAP instead of letting in fester and get out of hand. But so much changed in the time we were together; our jobs, our family situations, health crises. As time wore on, I began to notice the unsavory parts of her personality becoming more prevalent. She'd never been able to listen worth a damn, often twisting the words I said and spewing them back at me in a way that included very little of what I'd actually said. She even admitted to this at one point, saying she knew my words got twisted somewhere between her ears and her brain and she didn't know why this was. It got so bad that I started really saying things slowly and repeatedly in the hopes she would catch my actual words and not some far worse, twisted version of them, but even that didn't work. Communication soon hit a new low. When she began working again, no matter the job, she would be absent all the time and unapologetic about it, telling me in a condescending tone that she was working and that some people have to work all the time, as if I didn't grasp that or have a job of my own. I thought it couldn't get worse than that, but it got much worse rather quickly when she began avoiding me altogether. This was after a million nasty arguments and make ups and break ups, but I never expected her to just disappear altogether. I was the one who had to initiate absolutely everything and if I didn't, she seemed no worse for wear, while the whole thing would weigh on my mind, eat at me and drive me crazy. Knowing that I loathe having this unresolved, she seemed to enjoy exploiting this and began going even longer periods of time without any contact. One day turned into several and then into a week, maybe two. If we did speak, it was literally not even a 20 minute conversation despite us having major ish to work out and almost always ended abruptly when she suddenly got a call she had to take or a dinner she needed to attend. She'd end those convos with, "I don't know" when I asked what we were doing and what came next. All the while claiming she loved me and missed me so much. Sure didn't feel like love though.
During this time, everything was in this grey area and she didn't care to resolve it, so I followed her lead and stopped reaching out. But it took me a long time to wise up and do so because every time I told myself I wouldn't respond or reach out, I turned around and did just that hours later. It wasn't until I stopped that she seemed to grasp how serious I was about being on the edge and about to leave. She tried to claim she thought ignoring me and the situation would somehow make me have a come to Jesus moment, realize I was madly in love with her and commit to her for the long haul and so she stood her ground about "needing" that...but never made the decision to leave when she didn't get it. She assumed not speaking to me, ignoring what I tried to say to her and generally doing whatever the fuck she wanted would produce this result of me realizing I couldn't live without her. Yeah, I don't get the logic either but that was true of many things about BP. Her brilliant plan backfired majorly when I threw the curveball of saying I was going to see other people. She played it off as no big thing and never asked me not to, hell, she never even acted like it mattered so I went ahead with it. Mind you, I wasn't trying to go out and find anyone else, but I wasn't going to turn down anyone that interested me. I was very clear that if she wanted to talk about the state of our affair and/or work things out, she could let me know and I would be open to that, but I wasn't going to initiate a damn thing anymore and I certainly wasn't going to wait on her decision to grace me with a minute of her time like some lost puppy. She stuck to her belief that I would come running back when I saw what else was out there. Funniest thing happened though - I didn't miss her at all. Almost immediately after I decided to, for lack of a better term, take back my power, this calm washed over me. My blood pressure went down significantly, I wasn't walking around with a clenched jaw all the time and I began sleeping a lot better than I had in years. She surfaced with the occasional text, always containing some kind of BS about her uber-busy life and saying she missed me, though still had no idea when her schedule would allow her to work things out. Instead of shooting off a bunch of annoyed or angry texts at the same old shtick as I always had in the past, I started taking it all in stride and being very short in my replies. This finally got her on the phone, but she still seemed less than interested in resolving anything, not unless I had that one big realization she swore was on the way. I firmly believe she dug the ego boost she got from me begging her for shit and when she saw that her grip on me was loosening considerably, she decided she could half ass it and bring me back into the fold. Unfortunately for her, I did not take the bait. Also unfortunate for her was that I finally began following through on dating other people and realized how fucked up my thinking had become as a result of my association with BP. She'd taken me from being this happy, on a high kinda dude all the way down to the gutter of nasty fights and feeling like absolutely nothing and worth nothing, all in the span of a few years. The reason for this was simple, she needed me to be down on her level in order to gain control and to manipulate me into what she wanted me to do and be for her. And it was so subtle that I didn't even realize it was happening until I cared too much, making it impossible to walk away for awhile.
When the Youngin and I first began dating, I was honest about the whole BP thing and how I was single but had this other thing lingering. I wasn't in love, but for whatever reason, I was still hanging on, maybe out of habit. We both knew given our age difference that we weren't exactly going to last for the long haul, so she didn't care what else I had going on. I think she believed we'd be more of a ships in the night situation than anything else, and I probably thought that as well. But we really hit it off and enjoyed spending time together as friends. The romantic part of it lasted off and on for a few months, and sometimes flares up still, but more than anything we've ended up with a wonderful friendship. The Youngin is wise beyond her years, an old soul as they say, and she helped me begin moving on from BP. She did this for no other reason than to see me survive. It would've been easy to chalk my issues up as being too much and walk away and find someone with less baggage. But she stuck it out. And she asked some thought-provoking questions. Why was I in something that was no longer growing me as a person? Why was I wasting my time with someone I knew I could never spend my life with? And most importantly, why didn't I see what I brought to the table in a relationship? My self-esteem had taken major hits from BP, so much so that it was completely foreign to me when the Youngin was nice and courteous to me. When you think about it, that's pretty sad. The Youngin challenged me in so many ways and almost dared me to pull myself out of the hole I was in, helping me along the way whenever I needed it. She was and continues to be wonderful to me, even though I probably don't deserve it.
Not long after the Youngin and I split for good-ish, I began dating Lu, a client of ours. This was an almost perfect scenario for where I was at the time because Lu was in and out of town a lot, meaning we could keep things casual. She was also 20 years older than the Youngin, making us too far apart in age to end up in something long-term (by her own admission). She got a slightly improved version of me than the Youngin did, but she challenged me just as much. By now, BP and I were officially split, though she still contacted me every now and again with various excuses. Lu wanted to know why I even bothered to read the messages, why I didn't just purge BP and her negativity from my life. After she said that, it stuck in my mind every time BP sent me anything and helped me stick to my guns and not respond. I knew it wouldn't take much for her to lure me back into the fold if I let her, she always was a charmer, but I just couldn't be a part of it anymore. Lu asked what came to mind when she asked why I believed BP and I would never work and the first thing that came to mind was that I could never have kids with her. BP's family is a mess and had always given me pause about a future together. While I always knew I could keep Miss N away from them since she was my kid, any children we had together would be a part of BP's family and would no doubt spend time with them. And that was scary as fuck. Lu said that should seal it then, if I can't see myself having a future with this person, even just being myself with this person, then I should let it die completely. And I proceeded to do just that.
I wrote over the holidays of spending time with an ex, K, while I was home with the family. We had a chance run in at about this time last year and while it was just a quick one, it was like all the negativity from our past together dissipated. When we met, she was just out of a divorce and had a young son and I was, of course, a mess. In hindsight, we both should've not been in any relationship. She was exploring being single for the first time since her early-20's and I was, well, a mess. We were bi-coastal with her on the Left Coast so we pretty much only saw each other when she came my way and I didn't ask questions about what she did while we were apart and neither did she. I assumed she was seeing other people, I heard rumors from a mutual friend, but I didn't much care. We had a good time but I wasn't thinking about the future back then. Still, it ended badly when I confronted her about being almost in a full blown relationship with some other dude and her denying it, even though I knew for a fact it was true. I ended it, she proceeded to...well, try and get my attention by resorting to stalker-ish behavior, even though she was in something else. We didn't talk at all until that meeting last year. I think our whole issue was youth and stupidity and it's obvious that neither of us are who we were back then. We ran into each other again over the holidays, this time in our hometown, and hung out as friends and it ended up providing the last little push I needed to leave BP behind. K is about six months removed from the end of an engagement so she knew what I was still dealing with, and that was the loss of someone I considered a friend, maybe even moreso than a lover. In the end, we were little more than strangers but what I was still mourning was the friendship, not the romantic part. She was terrible to me as romantic partner, but much nicer back when we were friends and not yet into the thick of our time together. I was having trouble reconciling this person with the ugly one I ended up leaving behind. K's ex was also a friend and she found herself surprisingly thrilled about the end of their engagement because they agreed to maintain their friendship and had been doing so successfully. She said, knowing what I do now about how BP can turn nasty on a dime, and knowing the company she keeps as friends (they're not the greatest of friends), would I really want to be her friend? That was an instant, "No". And it was like the final nail in the coffin of the BP saga.
All three of these women are still a part of my life and I'm ridiculously thankful for that, as well as Agent W and Y who loathed BP from the start yet still put up with all my ranting about how unhappy I was. These five people, along with numerous other friends and family, are the true examples of loving someone unconditionally, when they don't deserve it and when they don't love themselves enough to leave a terrible situation. I look at how beaten down emotionally and mentally BP had me and I hate that I let it get to such a point. But, as with everything in life, it was a lesson. It took one chick to take me down and give me the karmic ass kick I probably deserved after what I'd pulled in my twenties, but it took a damn village to pull me out of that abyss. BP turned me into someone I didn't like or recognize or want to be, and I wasn't the only one who noticed this (Agent W planted that seed). And it was a long ass climb to get back to someone I want to be, someone I like being. I'm not a bad guy but I certainly felt like it with BP. I felt pretty worthless and unworthy of even the tiniest bit of time and attention, and it still bleeds into my relationships sometimes. I know someday it won't and that BP will be just a negative memory, but I'm not all the way there yet. I can only hope I do get all the way there sooner rather than later.
