BlogSpot Entry
Oct. 15th, 2002 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookofmirrorsMy intuition the other day was this:
You are still holding Rob's abandonment of you in high school / post
high school in your heart. It has colored your every relationship with a
man since then. I don’t know if your thing with being treated poorly by
men and enabling that started with Rob or not, but it seems to come
back to it.
But honestly....it tracks much more with your
issue of giving away too much to the men you love, that you never want
closure
The above are quotes from Mikey, taken from chatlogs. This all relates back to the issues I posted on a while back to when Rob decided we needed to be apart for a while. So, I'm going to try to do justice to all this, get it out on "paper", as it were, and see if something comes of it. I think the only way I can truly look at what Mikey said is to try to put myself back there, back to when Rob and I were dating, and we broke up, or, more accurately, he broke up with me, because he realized he was gay. I still have the letter. Hell, I still have all his letters. Looking over it again now, I can feel the pain I felt back then... not so much mine, but his. It's always my nature to feel others' pain before my own. "I couldn't bear to lose a friend like you, whose put up with my eccentricities, my abuse, and all the while being there faithfully." "But know this: for all the compasssion, the understanding, the presents, the tolerance, the inclusions in your life. I love you for that." I'm bawling as I read/write this. I remember reading it, getting upset. Remember that this was back when I didn't cry. I remember sitting in homeroom, curled up around his coat, the scent of him in my nostrils. Hell, Rob's scent still comforts me. Anyway, I was reading that, and being upset about it, and not wanting to cry, but almost feeling like I should, that anyone else in my position would, and wasn't I a bad person for not doing that? Hell, I'm not much better acquainted with my feelings now than I was then, and I can still see how much I pushed them down. I basically shook myself out of it, and made a logical decision. I'd known and loved Rob for months at that point... in fact, I think we'd been dating for about 3 years, so it was longer than that. In his letter, he said that he had always been gay, but that he'd tried to convince himself otherwise when he met me, until he just couldn't anymore. So, I reasoned that this person I'd been with this long had been gay the whole time I'd known him, and I'd still loved him, so why should it be any different now? I came to a pretty quick conclusion that I had nothing against gayness in general, so hating him or his gayness on principle never even factored into my equation. I think I basically expected that things would go on exactly as they were, except we weren't gonna have sex. That's probably my first mistake. I maybe just didn't get it enough. I still expected Rob to be my lover, at least in the emotional sense. I think I carried that for years, and Glenn is truly the only person who surpassed that. Even when I was married to Leo, Rob was the one thing I wouldn't give up for him. When I was engaged to Leo, and by all rights should have been calling his name, when I went into my appendectomy, a good two years after having broken up with Rob, I was calling Rob's name before I went under.
No, I didn't want to lose Rob. Or, if I did, I wanted to keep the important part - the friendship. Hell, we both did, I think. He even mentioned once that he'd toyed with the idea of he and I getting married, just to put on a face for society. We could each bring home our men, and be the perfect couple to the outside world. And, to be honest, I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea, although I think we both knew in our hearts it was a bad one.
And I don't think either of us would argue that our friendship didn't get much stronger and much deeper after our dating relationship ended. When he told me the truth, I think we both interacted on a deeper level. I don't think it was until Shayne, or more likely, Mikey, that I wasn't the closest person to Rob. I could be wrong. I'd like to think I'm right. I guess I just wanted to be as important in his life as he was in mine. Maybe I resented that I wasn't, or at least that I didn't perceive that I wasn't. I would read his journal, and be so damned proud of him. But, admittedly, there were times when I was really scared. Scared that he'd outgrown me, and scared that he'd wake up and see it. Scared that I'd outlived my usefulness to him. I remember once Rob telling me a theory he had on friendship - that none of it was altruistic. That you were friends with someone only because you got something out of it. Even if that something was as benign as a good feeling. But, while I think this is probably true, I guess I was always afraid that whatever Rob got from being with me would go away. And the more I saw him progress, the more I felt like I was useless to him. I think that really came to a head down here. I mean, on some level, I knew he had a whole life without me, and just because he suspended that life (for the most part) once a year or so when we visited each other, I guess I hadn't really seen it up close. I got to see how he would be affectionate (for him) with others, but not me. I got to see how I wasn't the first person he turned to... and not always even the last. I saw, in a nutshell, that I'd been replaced. Or at least, that's how it seemed to me. Still does, I think.
God, I hate that. I hate how much that hurts. I want to be important to him, and I came down here thinking I was, and found out I wasn't. I felt betrayed. And I buried it. Rob was/is my best friend. I think Glenn may have usurped that now, which is a huge credit to him, but besides him, Rob still ranks number one on that front. I buried it because you're not supposed to be angry at your best friend. You're not supposed to feel betrayed. By god, you're supposed to be happy for them. Happy that they've found such good friends, happy that they've put so much work into themselves that they've gotten over some issues. And part of me was. But I was also hurt. I felt rejected. I felt alone. I felt useless. I'm re-directing that. I FEEL hurt. I FEEL rejected. I FEEL alone... well, that one's not entirely true anymore, 'cause of Glenn... I FEEL useless - to Rob. I've talked to both Mikey and Shayne, and I've interacted enough with Tim to know how together he is, and I know that Rob can get everything he needs from them. They might have a different perspective than I do, because they haven't known him as long, but they could gain that fairly easily. So, where did I fit in? I couldn't see anywhere. I think I felt like we were going through the motions of something that had died a long time ago, but I hadn't been close enough to see it. Of course, I wasn't that insightful at the time. At the time, I just felt a sense of unease. And I think when Rob decided to distance himself, for whatever reason, I rebelled against it. It was all part of that denial. Denial that I felt like I'd ALREADY been pushed aside, and wasn't ready to deal with it. I'm sure I'm angry as hell about that, but I'm not sure how to express that yet. Besides, I've still got it in my head that you don't get angry at your friends. Intellectually, I know how ridiculous that is. I know that I'm afraid, just as Glenn was, that they'll all go away. And even though I saw in him that that's not the way it works, and even though I know intellectually that it's not the way it works, I'm still terrified of it. Maybe I subconsciously pushed Rob away so I wouldn't be responsible for it. So I could feel guilty for it. Problem is, I've at least progressed enough that I don't feel guilty every time someone thinks I should, or even when I would have thought it before. So, I'm rejecting the guilt I would have, a couple of years ago, or less, pulled over myself like a protective shroud. I don't even have martyrdom to protect me. There's an Alannis Morrissette song like that, but I can't remember the lyrics... it's off her last album. Maybe I'll look it up when I'm done with this.
So, where does that leave me? I'm not sure yet. I think I need to go back again... I had a few relationships with other men after Rob, but none that I would really count, until Leo. Even when I was with Leo, I still clung to Rob. There were so many things about Leo and I that shouldn't have worked, and I think they only seemed to work because I got from Rob what I wasn't getting from Leo. The lack of judgement when I expressed things, the idea that I wasn't a bad person because I thought a different way. The fact that Rob and I had pretty much the same opinions on most things didn't hurt. All the things Rob and I seem to clash on now, although I know that's my perception rather than his judgement. I know he's reacting out of fear, too, although I don't know what he's afraid of. But I digress (imagine that). I think, without Rob, I would have left Leo long before. Leo says that our friends helped kill our relationship. Maybe so, but I also think they made it last longer than it would have. They made life with him bearable, because I had something to escape to that made me forget how miserable I was in the relationship itself. I think Rob did that, too. I eventually went over to Fig moreso for that, because he was closer, more available in the wee hours of the night, and because he was available sexually to me, whereas Rob wasn't. Not sure if there is much more to say about the relationship with Leo as it relates to Rob. So let's move on to Fig, shall we?
Fig was my next-door Rob, to an extent. There's a positive comparison. I'm not sure if Rob would like that any better than he did the negative one. My relationship with Fig gradually took over my relationship with Leo. And, to some extent, I think I may have been trying to model it after my relationship with Rob. Great friendship, without the romantic attachment. Problem was, I think part of me still wanted a romantic attachment of sorts with Rob. I take great pride, almost defiantly so, in the fact that I'm the only woman Rob's ever been with, or is likely to be with. I think I equate that with having some sort of romantic attachment. I think I cling to it. For someone who tends to define their role by their sexuality, this distinction is very important to me. Since I consider sex an extension of friendship, any friendship in which sexuality is completely out of the picture has just been kicked down a notch in my book. So, having had sex with Rob, AFTER he knew he was gay, was that reassurance for me. Of course, I didn't recognize it as such at the time, and I'm sure that's not the whole of it. But certainly, with 20/20 hindsight, I can say it was part of it. So, I had friendship and sex with Fig. Sex, such as it was. I think not having the gayness buffer I had with Rob, I was ripe for falling in love with Fig. Question is, was I rebounding from Leo, or Rob? Maybe both. I don't know. What I had with Fig was bad for me. I know that. Had it remained strictly friendship, I think it would have been wonderful. Oh! I just had a thought... One of the things I told Fig when he started dating Jessica was that, in spite of all the pain I felt, I also felt like a proud mother. Like I'd helped him, been the catalyst for him being able to open his heart to someone else. But, in the end, he dumped me in favor of her. And maybe, coming down here, and getting the impression that Rob had dumped me for Mikey, Shayne, and Tim... maybe it was too much of a blow, and too similar for me to accept it. Luckily, I really like Rob's replacements, and think they're nothing but good for him. I think the opposite of Jessica. Anyway, the good friendship I had with Fig got clouded by the bad romance I had with him. Maybe I was supposed to learn something from Fig that I didn't from Rob. Maybe I've had it put on my plate again with Rob because I didn't learn it from him the first time, nor from Fig. Part of me thinks that's a gift, really - to be able to work out your issues with the person you actually have issues with, rather than doing it in therapy, or having some sort of surrogate.
I don't know.... I think I've gotten off track here, and I'm not quite sure where to go back to it. I just looked back over what I'd written, and I think the stuff in the past is less relevant to what's going on now, for me, than the stuff since I've moved down here. I'm gonna publish this and sit back and wait. Maybe Pam or Mikey will have some insight into this that I don't.
You are still holding Rob's abandonment of you in high school / post
high school in your heart. It has colored your every relationship with a
man since then. I don’t know if your thing with being treated poorly by
men and enabling that started with Rob or not, but it seems to come
back to it.
But honestly....it tracks much more with your
issue of giving away too much to the men you love, that you never want
closure
The above are quotes from Mikey, taken from chatlogs. This all relates back to the issues I posted on a while back to when Rob decided we needed to be apart for a while. So, I'm going to try to do justice to all this, get it out on "paper", as it were, and see if something comes of it. I think the only way I can truly look at what Mikey said is to try to put myself back there, back to when Rob and I were dating, and we broke up, or, more accurately, he broke up with me, because he realized he was gay. I still have the letter. Hell, I still have all his letters. Looking over it again now, I can feel the pain I felt back then... not so much mine, but his. It's always my nature to feel others' pain before my own. "I couldn't bear to lose a friend like you, whose put up with my eccentricities, my abuse, and all the while being there faithfully." "But know this: for all the compasssion, the understanding, the presents, the tolerance, the inclusions in your life. I love you for that." I'm bawling as I read/write this. I remember reading it, getting upset. Remember that this was back when I didn't cry. I remember sitting in homeroom, curled up around his coat, the scent of him in my nostrils. Hell, Rob's scent still comforts me. Anyway, I was reading that, and being upset about it, and not wanting to cry, but almost feeling like I should, that anyone else in my position would, and wasn't I a bad person for not doing that? Hell, I'm not much better acquainted with my feelings now than I was then, and I can still see how much I pushed them down. I basically shook myself out of it, and made a logical decision. I'd known and loved Rob for months at that point... in fact, I think we'd been dating for about 3 years, so it was longer than that. In his letter, he said that he had always been gay, but that he'd tried to convince himself otherwise when he met me, until he just couldn't anymore. So, I reasoned that this person I'd been with this long had been gay the whole time I'd known him, and I'd still loved him, so why should it be any different now? I came to a pretty quick conclusion that I had nothing against gayness in general, so hating him or his gayness on principle never even factored into my equation. I think I basically expected that things would go on exactly as they were, except we weren't gonna have sex. That's probably my first mistake. I maybe just didn't get it enough. I still expected Rob to be my lover, at least in the emotional sense. I think I carried that for years, and Glenn is truly the only person who surpassed that. Even when I was married to Leo, Rob was the one thing I wouldn't give up for him. When I was engaged to Leo, and by all rights should have been calling his name, when I went into my appendectomy, a good two years after having broken up with Rob, I was calling Rob's name before I went under.
No, I didn't want to lose Rob. Or, if I did, I wanted to keep the important part - the friendship. Hell, we both did, I think. He even mentioned once that he'd toyed with the idea of he and I getting married, just to put on a face for society. We could each bring home our men, and be the perfect couple to the outside world. And, to be honest, I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea, although I think we both knew in our hearts it was a bad one.
And I don't think either of us would argue that our friendship didn't get much stronger and much deeper after our dating relationship ended. When he told me the truth, I think we both interacted on a deeper level. I don't think it was until Shayne, or more likely, Mikey, that I wasn't the closest person to Rob. I could be wrong. I'd like to think I'm right. I guess I just wanted to be as important in his life as he was in mine. Maybe I resented that I wasn't, or at least that I didn't perceive that I wasn't. I would read his journal, and be so damned proud of him. But, admittedly, there were times when I was really scared. Scared that he'd outgrown me, and scared that he'd wake up and see it. Scared that I'd outlived my usefulness to him. I remember once Rob telling me a theory he had on friendship - that none of it was altruistic. That you were friends with someone only because you got something out of it. Even if that something was as benign as a good feeling. But, while I think this is probably true, I guess I was always afraid that whatever Rob got from being with me would go away. And the more I saw him progress, the more I felt like I was useless to him. I think that really came to a head down here. I mean, on some level, I knew he had a whole life without me, and just because he suspended that life (for the most part) once a year or so when we visited each other, I guess I hadn't really seen it up close. I got to see how he would be affectionate (for him) with others, but not me. I got to see how I wasn't the first person he turned to... and not always even the last. I saw, in a nutshell, that I'd been replaced. Or at least, that's how it seemed to me. Still does, I think.
God, I hate that. I hate how much that hurts. I want to be important to him, and I came down here thinking I was, and found out I wasn't. I felt betrayed. And I buried it. Rob was/is my best friend. I think Glenn may have usurped that now, which is a huge credit to him, but besides him, Rob still ranks number one on that front. I buried it because you're not supposed to be angry at your best friend. You're not supposed to feel betrayed. By god, you're supposed to be happy for them. Happy that they've found such good friends, happy that they've put so much work into themselves that they've gotten over some issues. And part of me was. But I was also hurt. I felt rejected. I felt alone. I felt useless. I'm re-directing that. I FEEL hurt. I FEEL rejected. I FEEL alone... well, that one's not entirely true anymore, 'cause of Glenn... I FEEL useless - to Rob. I've talked to both Mikey and Shayne, and I've interacted enough with Tim to know how together he is, and I know that Rob can get everything he needs from them. They might have a different perspective than I do, because they haven't known him as long, but they could gain that fairly easily. So, where did I fit in? I couldn't see anywhere. I think I felt like we were going through the motions of something that had died a long time ago, but I hadn't been close enough to see it. Of course, I wasn't that insightful at the time. At the time, I just felt a sense of unease. And I think when Rob decided to distance himself, for whatever reason, I rebelled against it. It was all part of that denial. Denial that I felt like I'd ALREADY been pushed aside, and wasn't ready to deal with it. I'm sure I'm angry as hell about that, but I'm not sure how to express that yet. Besides, I've still got it in my head that you don't get angry at your friends. Intellectually, I know how ridiculous that is. I know that I'm afraid, just as Glenn was, that they'll all go away. And even though I saw in him that that's not the way it works, and even though I know intellectually that it's not the way it works, I'm still terrified of it. Maybe I subconsciously pushed Rob away so I wouldn't be responsible for it. So I could feel guilty for it. Problem is, I've at least progressed enough that I don't feel guilty every time someone thinks I should, or even when I would have thought it before. So, I'm rejecting the guilt I would have, a couple of years ago, or less, pulled over myself like a protective shroud. I don't even have martyrdom to protect me. There's an Alannis Morrissette song like that, but I can't remember the lyrics... it's off her last album. Maybe I'll look it up when I'm done with this.
So, where does that leave me? I'm not sure yet. I think I need to go back again... I had a few relationships with other men after Rob, but none that I would really count, until Leo. Even when I was with Leo, I still clung to Rob. There were so many things about Leo and I that shouldn't have worked, and I think they only seemed to work because I got from Rob what I wasn't getting from Leo. The lack of judgement when I expressed things, the idea that I wasn't a bad person because I thought a different way. The fact that Rob and I had pretty much the same opinions on most things didn't hurt. All the things Rob and I seem to clash on now, although I know that's my perception rather than his judgement. I know he's reacting out of fear, too, although I don't know what he's afraid of. But I digress (imagine that). I think, without Rob, I would have left Leo long before. Leo says that our friends helped kill our relationship. Maybe so, but I also think they made it last longer than it would have. They made life with him bearable, because I had something to escape to that made me forget how miserable I was in the relationship itself. I think Rob did that, too. I eventually went over to Fig moreso for that, because he was closer, more available in the wee hours of the night, and because he was available sexually to me, whereas Rob wasn't. Not sure if there is much more to say about the relationship with Leo as it relates to Rob. So let's move on to Fig, shall we?
Fig was my next-door Rob, to an extent. There's a positive comparison. I'm not sure if Rob would like that any better than he did the negative one. My relationship with Fig gradually took over my relationship with Leo. And, to some extent, I think I may have been trying to model it after my relationship with Rob. Great friendship, without the romantic attachment. Problem was, I think part of me still wanted a romantic attachment of sorts with Rob. I take great pride, almost defiantly so, in the fact that I'm the only woman Rob's ever been with, or is likely to be with. I think I equate that with having some sort of romantic attachment. I think I cling to it. For someone who tends to define their role by their sexuality, this distinction is very important to me. Since I consider sex an extension of friendship, any friendship in which sexuality is completely out of the picture has just been kicked down a notch in my book. So, having had sex with Rob, AFTER he knew he was gay, was that reassurance for me. Of course, I didn't recognize it as such at the time, and I'm sure that's not the whole of it. But certainly, with 20/20 hindsight, I can say it was part of it. So, I had friendship and sex with Fig. Sex, such as it was. I think not having the gayness buffer I had with Rob, I was ripe for falling in love with Fig. Question is, was I rebounding from Leo, or Rob? Maybe both. I don't know. What I had with Fig was bad for me. I know that. Had it remained strictly friendship, I think it would have been wonderful. Oh! I just had a thought... One of the things I told Fig when he started dating Jessica was that, in spite of all the pain I felt, I also felt like a proud mother. Like I'd helped him, been the catalyst for him being able to open his heart to someone else. But, in the end, he dumped me in favor of her. And maybe, coming down here, and getting the impression that Rob had dumped me for Mikey, Shayne, and Tim... maybe it was too much of a blow, and too similar for me to accept it. Luckily, I really like Rob's replacements, and think they're nothing but good for him. I think the opposite of Jessica. Anyway, the good friendship I had with Fig got clouded by the bad romance I had with him. Maybe I was supposed to learn something from Fig that I didn't from Rob. Maybe I've had it put on my plate again with Rob because I didn't learn it from him the first time, nor from Fig. Part of me thinks that's a gift, really - to be able to work out your issues with the person you actually have issues with, rather than doing it in therapy, or having some sort of surrogate.
I don't know.... I think I've gotten off track here, and I'm not quite sure where to go back to it. I just looked back over what I'd written, and I think the stuff in the past is less relevant to what's going on now, for me, than the stuff since I've moved down here. I'm gonna publish this and sit back and wait. Maybe Pam or Mikey will have some insight into this that I don't.
