My therapist asked me today if I felt like I was in any better of a place than I was the last time I saw her. She wasn’t actually referring to my overall well-being at that moment, she was alluding to the issues I’ve been having regarding some unrequited feelings I had for my ex. As I’ve discussed here, he and I were going to try to do the ‘friend’ thing, although never in my history of breakups have I ever maintained a friendship with one of my ex’s. Ex’s are ex’s for a reason, and I’ve never really felt the need to check up on any of them. Most were not good men – one had a serious drug problem, one had a serious liked-to-throw-me-around problem, another was a delinquent, a fourth was emotionally unstable and others had their own issues that I’ve all but repressed. But this one was different – he and I started as friends, developed romantic feelings towards each other and after an arduous road, we got together. The first half of our relationship was the happiest I’ve ever been; the second half was the most depressed.
He moved out about a year after he moved in, and I’ve spent the last 10 months or so wondering what the hell went wrong. How could something so great, turn into something so miserable, in a years time? It’s painful to clean out the old emails and text messages with the words of doom in them and it’s harder still to think of what used to be. But I was a different person then, and he is a different person now. Despite the issues of our relationship, he expressed interest in wanting to try to remain friends and in hindsight, I think I agreed to venture outside of my norm because it was HIM. Any one else and I would have told them to check their own oil and get the hell out of my face. But since it was HIM, I couldn’t say no. Despite the fact that I still cared for him deeply; despite the fact that I KNEW it was going to be excruciatingly difficult for me; despite the fact that I realized I was doing it more for him, than me.
On my way to work today, I was listening to the cd’s that have been in my dashboard since I bought my car, and came across an old favorite. It used to make me tear up out of sadness and remorse, but today, it made me feel….DIFFERENT. Like, instead of being the ‘you’ that the singer sings to, I was the singer, singing to you. I wasn’t crying over the proverbial spilled milk, instead, I was just letting it go…Letting go of the what-if’s and the why’s and the what could I have done differently, and instead, recognizing that sometimes, you just have to walk away.
So this afternoon, when my therapist asked me if I felt like I was in a better place emotionally, I told her that I felt like I was making progress. Not better, per say, but on my way there. The friendship door is still open, but I’m not going to be pushing any issues or following up with HIM, and I expect that if he truly wants to be my friend, he’ll treat me like one and not just want to chat in order to appease his own curiosity. I mean, he can read my blog to do THAT (and I know that you do….), but a real friend goes deeper than the superficial. A real friend would know more of what’s going on in my life than what I choose to broadcast to the masses, and a real friend want to be there for me when I needed them. Anything less just isn’t ‘friendship’, in my eyes.
~footnotes of an unrequited life~ 