Hiking with the matesprit

(this was hugely inspired by @/erysium and their gorgeous natural scenes! particularly, this post)

Epiphany journal post- i mean, you can read it but its pretty boring without context

My life changed drastically when i started dating my now ex. I moved out of my place into his, then was homeless for 8 months when his parent decided my confrontation of their inappropriate behavior wasnt acceptable. Then, i reopened communications with family i had closed off, and eventually lived with them. Then, i moved out of state to follow him to college. I went back to college for him, taking on debt and diving back into a system i had already shown myself wasnt for me. I gave up myself for him, or at least, so i told myself. But if that were true, i would have been more compromising. I would have been better at listening, been better at making his life easier, rather than harder. I would have been more loving. I think... i think i gave up everything for myself. Telling myself it was for him meant i could self-sabotage to any extent in the name of "love." I made excuses like "he loves me for me, so i dont need to bother" or "everything will work out once im in his arms again." And i admit that despite my growing acceptance that any chances for rekindling a romantic relationship between us are likely fractured beyond repair, just imagining him hugging me is enough of a motivator for anything. I could go back into the closet for that hug. I could kill for that hug. I could do worse. And that scares me, as itd probably scare him, because thats not healthy. What is it that makes his affection, more than anyone else's, sp potent, so powerful? Ive spent a lot of time thinking abiut this, and its complicated, but boils down to this: 1. He loves a better me than the me i see in the mirror. (I have low self-esteem) 2. I met him in the most vulnerable part of my life yet, and he lifted me out of it (i have placed him on a pedestal) 3. I sincerely think he is the only person who has ever treated me with respect, who has listened to my needs and boundaries and tried without complaining to honor them (i am a victim of abuse and as such have a terribly biased scale of "caring") These three things, especially when broken down into the nuanced bits and bobs, resulted in a terrible, terribly warped perspective, which led me to make sone immensely risky/poor decisions. And it was all on my end. Its all me, not him. He was being a badass, sure, but it was me taking that to the next 100th level. That pressure was the base of it all- because it was that pressure that made him feel uncomfortable stepping back, what made him feel terrible any time he stepped out of the image i painted of him. And it made me falsely paint myself too, as the all-understanding, all knowing partner who could practically read his mind. And tge real kicker is that i don't have (nor want, really) the ability to say "woah hey actually he was shitty as hell damn how did i miss that," because he wasn't. I mean sure he wasnt perfect (he didnt find much joy in my gaming, for instance, and we have very different perspectives on "reverse racism") but he was legitimately the most loving, most kind, most patient, understanding, and empathetic partner i have ever had. So now i have to learn to take him off the overextended pedestal, while also knowing he does still deserve to be on one, just... just one he has room to move on. http://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/always-human/27-okay/viewer?title_no=557&episode_no=29 The above is a webcomic i love, and this particular episode, and the one before it, talk a lot about this pedestal idea. I think... i think i never really learned how to acknowledge someones greatness without placing them on a high pedestal. I think ive learned to make everything an exercise in idealism, in excessive optimism... or of course, the precise opposite. Grey space is of course something i recognize exists, and unlike my childhood self, i know that most everything exists within it- but my actions often focus on weighing the good vs bad and then redefining my relationship with it, magnifying one and diminishing the other, either absolving all mistakes, or defining any good as inconsequential. If my apologies meant anything to him, id make them- but seeing as he recently made a post along the lines of "once trust is lost, sorry means nothing," i dont think it matters anymore. Sometimes, its hard to convince myself he even wants to hear from me ever again (see, there i go, running from the grey area towards an extreme). I think the best thing i could do is learn from this experience, not only bettering myself and my life, but by doing so, releasing that pressure on him, and doing what i should have been doing from the get-go: letting him be himself, not just my version of him. I think that would be better than any "sorry" i could utter. Thats something i need to work on: existing in the grey. And perhaps that is why this disability atuff is taking so long: because i need to learn how to exist in stillness. My life has always been me running, either towards death through SI, or towards "happily ever after." Never walking, always running- or if obstacles were impassable, pacing anxiously. I have no idea what i am going to do, where it will be done, or how im going to do it. And maybe... Maybe that needs to be okay.