I came dangerously close to reaching out to BP last night. I'm not sure why I even thought of her, or felt the urge to speak to her, but I did. I used to think still caring made me a glutton for punishment but upon reflection, I don't think that's what it is. Whenever you become friends or lovers (or, ideally both) with someone, you learn all their little personality kinks and what makes them tick and how they think. Sometimes you can anticipate how they will react to certain situations, which can be an asset if you're dealing with a negative issue. I knew BP well; I knew the kinks and I knew how she'd take certain comments or assumptions she'd make about things. But I never did learn what made her tick. I could never pin down her thought process and how she got from Point A to Point B. That always irked me, though I didn't realize it until long after we split. I didn't continue to go back out of love, I fell out of love with her at least a year or so before it officially ended. I went back because I cared about her as a friend and a person, and because a part of me always wondered if I was just missing some glaring, vital clue that would make me understand what made her tick. It's that feeling of, "Did I miss something?" that people get when ish implodes and then go back over everything with a fine-toothed comb, only I was going back to a person over and over again. And in all my searching, I never did solve the mystery.
We all have something that motivates us or drives us, be it career aspirations or family or love or even the pursuit of wealth. BP was (and probably still is) VERY work-driven, though she didn't always devote that energy to her career. She worked a fair amount of temporary jobs and still allowed herself to be completely taken over by them. I used to think work was her motivation, until I saw how unhappy it actually made her. I would try and tell her to take a step back and decide what she really wanted to do and pursue that, and she attempted it a few times, but quickly lost interest and went back to what she knew she was good at. Work didn't drive her, it was just all she'd had for so long and it provided an escape from her own life and problems. I knew family wasn't her motivator. She loved her family and put up with a lot of ish from them, but they weren't her reason for anything. BP claimed to want a life partner and to be in something great romantically, yet she took every opportunity to set us back ten steps over what should have been minor issues. The way she told it, BP once had money to burn and did so by buying a house and car and various other things that later landed her in deep debt. I imagine falling from that height had to be painful, but once I saw how she still spent like she had all the money in the world, I had less sympathy. She once went to a specific retailer and maxed out her store card simply because they'd raised her credit limit (and with zero intent to pay the bill). She would pass on gigs that could help her career and pay her bills, choosing instead to go job to job and live with basically no money. I tuned out of her money woes as time wore on because I just didn't understand the mentality. Which is right in line with not knowing how she ticked.
The one thing I did figure out about BP is that while she claimed to loathe any kind of yelling or conflict, she never hesitated to participate in it and escalate it to an unnecessarily nasty level. I always attributed this to her childhood. Her parents fought quite a bit in front of her and her siblings and always said vile things to one another in the process. She witnessed that at a young age and I think it stuck with her. Part of her brain may tell her that's not the way to fight and to avoid it at all costs, but the other part has conflict ingrained in it and makes it so that she can't help but fight the way she saw her parents fight. That extreme instinct to go for self-preservation probably comes from the fact that she saw her parents get hurt when one went for the jugular on the other, and she doesn't want to be the one to get hurt. While I understood that instinct, and often tried to work things out before we got into fight territory, I also made it clear that I wasn't going to be with someone who fought that way. Our upbringings affect us in many ways, but if someone wants to change something like how they fight badly enough, there are ways to do so. She claimed to know that, but never claimed to want to change. Even if she had, her talk about making changes was just that - talk. She'd constantly tell me she was going to change things about herself or her life but once she lost interest in doing so, which was usually a few days or weeks later, she never spoke of it again and never changed anything. In getting her tank of self-preservation every time she sensed trouble on the horizon, she often ended up hurting me and then not even being able to comprehend why I was upset. Instead of fighting fair or possibly getting her herself, she opted to become the one doing the hurting. And I was always floored by effortless it was for her. At the same time, she could go from being very nasty to being very contrite in a heartbeat. The best example of this is probably an argument we had over the phone in the middle of the day. I don't recall the subject, but she was pissed at me and I was editing while we had our conversation. After about an hour of back and forth bickering she said, "I deserve so much better than this..." and I'd finally had it. I snapped and told her, "Then go find better, we're done". And just like that, she snapped back to reality and came down from her anger. First, she was shocked by what I'd said and thought I was joking, but when it became clear I wasn't, she had a meltdown. I told her I was tired of the endless fighting and the comments like that one and if ish was so bad, she should just consider herself free to pursue "better" options. She begged me not to end it and eventually turned on the waterworks and we finally talked ish through in normal tones, rather than yelling at one another. But even the insinuation that I was gone was enough to bring her back down to earth and make her realize she was acting like an ass. Still, it didn't change the way she fought. If anything, it taught her how far she could push me before I just threw my hands up.
I read a timely quote this morning that said someone shouldn't worry when you fight with them, they should worry when you stop fighting with them because it means there's nothing left to fight for. That was pretty much what happened with us. When BP decided to ignore me in the hopes that I would come to Jesus and settle down with her, it had the reverse effect of allowing me more time with people who did truly love me, and to date people who were interested in me. I found myself to be a little combative with the first few people I dated, constantly looking for something to argue about or make an issue of. Not because I wanted to, but because I'd been conditioned for that by BP. Every time I heard from her, I put up my armor and prepare for war. It took me a minute to re-learn that isn't how a relationship is supposed to be. As I learned this, I began to care less about whether or not the two of us patched things up. I chased her for a minute, but then I got wise to the fact she wasn't ever going to chase me and so I stopped. And the fights stopped. She pitched a good game about still thinking about me "constantly" and "caring immensely", but her actions proved otherwise. If you care that much and if you think about someone all the time, you make a damn effort. She was making none. If I hadn't been initiating conversations with her, I doubt she would've been speaking to me. And there really was nothing to fight for at that point. I didn't feel wanted or loved or like much of anything to her. It would've taken surprisingly little for her to prove me wrong, but she couldn't be bothered. Who wants to be with someone who literally won't even lift a finger for them? Not I.
It was all of these things that swirled through my brain last night as I contemplated reaching out to BP. The feeling I used to get when I contacted her and never got a reply was always awful, and that was back when I actually supposedly meant something to her. The way I would talk to her in a calm way with no intent of arguing and with just one "wrong" word, she would turn on me and then disengage altogether. I feel like I stuck it out as long as I could, and longer than most others would've. I cared too much and that backfired in this particular case. I couldn't just be a bastard and tell her to fuck off and move on. If I'd been able to do that, it would have saved me a world of hurt. But everything for a reason. And all of these reasons were why I ultimately decided against saying anything to her. I know for sure I used to care deeply for her, but now I'm pretty meh about the whole thing we went through. I don't know if she ever really cared, but I know she was meh while we were in the relationship. And I'm not settling for that kind of thing again. Contacting her only opens a line of communication that will end in tragedy. What's past will remain in the past.
