Intoxication, Deposition, & Responsibility

September 2015

Remember when you passed your driving test, when you got your acceptance letter to college, when you graduated college, or when you got a big kid job? Everyone knew, everyone said congratulations and greeted you with excitement and sincerity. Remember when “everyone” didn't include that one person, the person who you held closest to your heart for some incomprehensible and treacherous reason? And remember how what should have been one of the most intensely thrilling moments of your life was dulled by the absence of that one person? I do.

Taylor Swift, in “The Moment I Knew”, says she is dressed with “no one to impress”. I used to feel sorry for her – the one person she wanted by her side was nonexistent for the night. The other people around her, the people who devoted their time and love to her were simply silhouettes in her mind. Taylor that night chose who she conceded meaning to, just as I have done for years. Turns out her and I both got it wrong – we overlooked the devotion staring us in the face, and focused on the lack of it in a person who wasn't worth even our thoughts.

I was preoccupied with him for so long, focusing on what he didn’t do, when he didn’t show up, when he let me down, and when he wasn't my exact construction of a partner. I lent so much meaning to his presence in my life that I gave him the capacity to shape my perceptions of the world around me because they were all tinted with a shade of him. Everything I experienced was somehow a reflection of how I was currently feeling about him. Everyone was less meaningful than him when it should have been the total opposite...

I was intoxicated and overcome by him – mesmerized by his being like his thoughts used to be in my eyes; entangled in our past like his legs used to be in my sheets; and bound to his heart like his arms used to be to be around my chest. The pure thought of him transported my existence to a place of despondency, perplexity, and enervation . . .

When the bouts of sanity fill the crevices of these deranged thoughts and mistaken emotions, I am in disbelief that I have allowed weakness to assail my rationale beliefs, that I have allowed vulnerability to navigate my sentiments, and that I have allowed emptiness to drive me into him.

And so I reprimand myself and forcibly teach myself to lend my attention to the people around me who deserve meaning attached to them, those who honestly want and warrant my attention, my love, and my time. Time is valuable, there are only so many hours in a day and only so many interactions to be had, why waste them on a person who doesn’t invest in me what I invest in them. He never gave me as much meaning as I gave him, however I ALLOWED him to permeate my life – I was and always will be in complete control of my feelings:

I CHOSE to give him enhanced amounts of meaning.

I CHOSE to wake up in the morning and get ready for him rather than for myself and my pride.

I CHOSE to taint my livelihood when he didn’t reply to a text, when he ignored a call, and when he neglected to share the same relationships values as I did.

I CHOSE to where blinders, to focus all of my attention, energy, and love on him.

I CHOSE to make him my center. . .

August 2016

We have this self concept of ourselves that we defend with everything inside of us. If this concept feels to us just the least bit threatened, we preoccupy our mind anything and everything to oppose the source of vulnerability. Rather than admitting we may have a flaw, we deny and deny and deny, and in the process persuade ourselves that we are this indestructible human being who is next to perfect and anyone who believes otherwise, well, we were just too much for them to handle.

That feeling though, the one you feel at the core of your being, that dictates the functioning of your body, your mind, and your heart, is all-consuming. It is the feeling you get when you know you have given all you could have imagined giving to a person or an experience, and the feedback reads "less than satisfactory".

I remember how you said you didn't love me anymore, that you were unhappy and we were too unstable together, and I typically say to myself "your loss". But the fact is, those were your feelings, and your feelings are just as valid as mine, meaning they should be taken into account. Maybe my dismissive and arrogant inward response is me trying to defend myself from feeling negatively about who I am. Or maybe I am trying to cope with very real suspicions about who I am, and denial is the only avenue. Regardless of the root, these feelings are being averted.

But now I see you're happy and I realize that maybe, just maybe, you may have had some valid arguments.

Maybe I was a little too unstable, and maybe that precipitated feelings of unhappiness and your eventual falling out of love.

Maybe I'm not perfect.

Wait, maybe I'm not perfect?

Now, we're getting somewhere . . .

" So you were never a Saint, & I loved in shades of Wrong,

we learn to live with the pain, mosaic broken hearts "

- Taylor Swift