I need more time, just a few more months & we'll be fine

26 October 2009

It's less than 2 months until Christmas. That means ya'll should start thinking about putting a card in the mail to me.. so it'll get here in time. I'm not kidding. I'm not looking forward to spending Christmas without my family. The thought actually really tears at my heart. Please don't forget about me.
I know I'm far away, but I'm still here.

let's take a look at something:
Freshmen year: relationship A
Sophomore year: relationship A
France Study Abroad 1: relationship B
Junior year: relationship B
France Study Abroad 2: relationship C
Senior year: relationship D
Maine Summer Camp
Home: relationship D
Peace Corps Rwanda: relationship ME

I'm sorry, please don't take offense, I don't by any means think of these relationships as just A, B, C & D. They were all (some more than others) special in their own way, and they all taught me very valuable things about love and life... I have just boiled them down to letters to look at the past 4 years of my life in a more analytic way.

Do you notice any patterns here?
Shoot, it doesn't take a genius to see what I've been up to.

(Relationship + Adventure)Repeat = A continuous cycle of love & loss

That love and loss doesn't just apply to my relationships with guys though, what about me?

In my last post, I referenced the book: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

This is a passage from Chapter 22:
Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that's not fair to say. To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time - everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that they only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.
I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it's always been.
Some time after I'd left my husband, I was at a party and a guy I barely knew said to me, "You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you're with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men."
Dear God, I could use a little break from this cycle, to give myself some space to discover what I look like and talk like when I'm not trying to merge with someone. And also, let's be honest - it might be a generous public service for me to leave intimacy alone for a while. When I scan back on my romantic record, it doesn't look so good. It's been one catastrophe after another. How many more different types of men can I keep trying to love and continue to fail? Think of it this way - if you'd had ten serious traffic accidents in a row, wouldn't they eventually take your driver's license away? Wouldn't you kind of want them to?

When, in the past 4 years, have I taken time for myself? When have I worked on improving the relationship I have with myself, rather than trying to make something (that clearly isn't meant to be) work with someone else?

There were a couple great months at camp this past summer of self-improvment, and I do feel like being at KP helped me to feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin, but even those couple months weren't totally my own as I still spent a lot of time hurt over someone else. Kissing boys is fun, but I think I have been doing a bit too much of that lately... I also think a lot of it has been to distract myself from other things. I spent a lot less time being sad about saying goodbye to my family and friends for 3 months this summer.. and then for 2 years with the Peace Corps this fall because I kept my mind preoccupied thinking about boys and all the fun and trouble that comes along with them (funny how it always seems to be a package deal, huh?).

I don't in any way regret my past relationships, but I do regret that I am going into these next 2 years, as was the case at KP this summer, not fully able to focus on myself just yet. I believe though that it's only a matter of time before I find myself coming first on that priority list.

A, B, C, D, ME.