BlogSpot Entry

Tuesday, July 16, 2002


Well, I haven't posted anything meaningful in a long time. I've meant to, of course, and like everything else, I put it off until it's no longer relevant, and I can bury that spark along with all the other sparks, deep down with all the monsters in there. Seems a shame to put them both in the same place, now that I think of it, but I'm sure that's exactly what I'm doing. But, I could be on crack, too. Who knows where all those parts of me I hide live, and how much, if at all, they interact with each other?

Well, let me see if I can re-create any of the stuff that's been going on in my life. We moved to a kickass new apartment, which we (mostly I) are (am) still putting together, but it definitely looks home-y already. That's a plus, although the clutter is starting to get to me, and I feel like I have no time to clean it.

I'm so FUCKING FRUSTRATED with my progress in therapy. I never realized how truly good I am at burying shit. My intellect knows that I have all these repressed emotions. Hell, I could even tell you what they are. I'm angry at Fig. I'm angry with my parents. I'm even angry with Glenn sometimes. I feel hurt, and betrayed, and I don't understand what the fuck I did wrong that people would treat me the way they did. (Note for anyone who doesn't know any better: I wasn't beaten, or sexually abused, or locked in a closet, or anything obvious like that. I just had your typical well-meaning upper-class parents who wanted me to be a "good girl" and do well in the world. And, in the process, I realized I wasn't particularly good, as they defined it. And then I grew up, and made some poor choices that have had their own repurcussions.)

When it comes down to it, I'm not a bad sort. I have all sorts of good qualities. And part of me thinks the Karma Fairy should make me feel wonderful and happy because of it. I've certainly paid my dues as far as helping others out, and truly caring and helping others move forward - all the while holding myself back. Of course, the fundamental problem with this is that I don't believe in Karma. I believe we bring to ourselves exactly what we think we deserve. This is how Hitler can almost take over the world - he thought he deserved to, and that he was doing it for a "good" cause. Luckily, the rest of the world disagreed. But, I feel like I don't deserve love and happiness and all that shit, so I don't get it. It has nothing to do with how "bad" or "good" I am. It has everything to do with how "bad" or "good" I THINK I am, and what I THINK should be the result of being that "bad" or "good". So much for the Karma Fairy.

The other day, I was lying in bed with Glenn, after I had just made us both miserable by trying to horn in on his private time. He had fallen asleep. (An aside note... I discovered this morning that it really annoys me when he stays up SO late on the computer that he falls asleep the second his head touches the pillow. Partially, I think, just 'cause he's obviously ignoring the needs of his body by doing anything that long. Mostly, though, 'cause I want to spend that time in bed cuddling/snuggling, talking, and I don't have that opportunity when he falls asleep so quickly. There are a bunch of pot/kettle references that could be made here, but, hey, I'm supposed to be getting shit out instead of holding it in, right? Problem is, all that was just words on paper. I only have the vaguest awareness of the annoyance itself. ) Anyway, Glenn had fallen asleep, and I was too miserable to sleep, and part of me wanted to wake him and have him tell me everything was OK, and part of me felt so guilty at having tried to take away something that's important to him that I wanted to be alone in my misery, and deny myself the comfort of having him console me. So, I'm lying there, trying to hold in the tears, and feeling like shit, and like a horrible person, and , and all the sudden, I could feel this energy surrounding me, like a hug. I could feel it, and I could feel that I was blocking it, and I could feel what it was supposed to be, and I could feel that I wasn't letting it be all it was supposed to be. But it felt like being held by the hand of God(dess). It was pure Love, pure Acceptance, and it was surrounding ME. And I couldn't understand why. That's when I broke down into tears. Not because I felt redeemed, or was so grateful that Something out there felt that way. I burst into tears because I was absolutely convinced that I didn't deserve the gesture at all. I had no idea how to assimilate it. And I know I've had experiences like that before, where I've felt encompassed by Love like that, and I've accepted it, usually with a sort of wonder and surprise. But I completely lost it this time. Glenn woke up, and asked me what was wrong, and I couldn't even speak to tell him. I eventually quieted down, and he eventually fell back asleep, and we eventually worked that particular difference out.

But my point is, I'm getting so fucking frustrated with not being able to feel what I feel. And, at the same time, I fight it tooth and nail when I even get close. Pam wanted me to get angry at Fig last time in therapy, and I couldn't quite reach it. WOULDN'T quite reach it. In my head, I could hear the words "I hate him", and I rejected them. Part of me believed that, part of me didn't. I think part of me hates him. And maybe part of me still loves him, and I can't assimilate the dichotomy. I know that my issues with Fig are creating a great deal of conflict with Glenn, since so many things come across as similar in my eyes. I remember all the talks I had with Leo before I moved down here, and, even though there was still some tension, and he still held a lot of anger towards me for leaving him, I think we got a lot of things worked out. To the best of my knowledge, I don't have any issues surrounding Leo. In fact, I'd love to be able to talk to him again, from this new perspective, and hope that we could both handle that. (By that, I mean, I hope he isn't going to try to continue to guilt me that I destroyed his life, and I hope I don't buy into it.)

So, I think that maybe talking to Fig and getting some shit out would be beneficial. And I wonder what the fuck I would say. And I know I'm still fragile enough about it at this point, that if he didn't agree with me, or at least accept what I said, work with me, that I couldn't handle the rejection. Part of me doesn't want my pain shared with Jessica, which I think is inevitable if I talk to Fig about anything. Which brings me to the thought that even getting Fig away from Jessica for a private conversation will be like pulling hens' teeth to begin with. And, of course, all of this completely ignores the practical problems of seeing him face to face, with him living in Illinois and me living in Georgia, and both of us (I think) having full time jobs and needing the money they provide. So, I'm left to dealing with Fig, without Fig.

The worst part about Fig is that we were SO close. He was my friend and confidant for 5 years, and that's completely discounting the 4 years before that when he was Leo's best friend, and was still my friend and confidant, if only to a lesser extent. I lived with him, was intimate with him, for all those 5 years, and we would talk about everything under the sun. I'd curl up in his bed with him, and he gave me one of his childhood stuffed animals to sleep with. I really wanted to keep that, but he never told me if I got to keep it, and, in the end, I just decided that unless he specifically said Tigger was mine, he wasn't, and I needed to leave him behind. Symbolic, no doubt. Even so, I miss him. (Tigger, or Fig... Hmmm....) We talked about buying a house together, and being together in our old age. We said everything but love. Oh, sure, we agreed that we loved each other, although Fig did so reluctantly, and usually just on my birthday, lest it be miscontrued as being something more than platonic (can it be platonic when you suck his dick damn near every night for 5 years?). But no one could deny there was a closeness. I was his unofficial wife. His friends loved me, his family loved me (I was an unofficial Dickson), and his sister told him that he broke her heart when he started dating Jessica, because she always thought I would be her sister-in-law. People in public just assumed we were married, even though we never held hands, hugged, or any other PDA.

Of course, there's another side to every coin. I paid all the bills. I took absolute care of him. I knew his personal information as well as, if not better than, he did. When he lost his license due to a bogus drag-racign charge, I was the one who did all the phone calls and arranged everything, and I was the one who took off work to go to Chicago and wait in line for 2 hours and get some sort of paperwork taken care of (I don't remember what it was...) I bought him a new transmission for his truck so he could follow some chick to Texas that none of us thought he should be with. I paid for over a thousand dollars worth of work on his car for his birthday. The car he had only because I traded my grandfather's car for it. I used my birthday money and my Christmas money every year to buy his gifts. I made sure he had current glasses, dentist appointments, new clothes, a new matching set of bedroom furniture. I cleaned the house, did the laundry, and sucked his dick at the merest hint. And it wasn't until the end of our relationship that he started telling me thank you. When he sat on his bed after he'd decided to date Jessica, knowing full well how I would feel about that, and asked me if I was angry. I told him no, and realized I was lying, and told him yes. And he burst into tears, and cried on my shoulder for the longest time. And I comforted him. My Wounded Child was screaming, and my Higher Self was happy that he loved someone that much, and could open up that much to feel that strongly about anyone at all. And I acted from my Higher Self, holding him and telling him that I wanted him to be happy, interspersed with laments that it wasn't me. I really don't remember much about it, except the look in his eyes when he asked me if I was angry, and when, after all that, after 5 years of living with him, he finally said those two words that I'd been wanting to hear for so very long - Thank you. The words I would never ask for, and was always dying to hear. And it wasn't until then that I cried, and called him a bastard for choosing that time to say the only thing that could have broken me down from therapist mode. And I remember leaving. Driving away for the last time, from an empty house, knowing Fig wasn't due back from work, and wondering if I was happy or sad that I was leaving without really saying goodbye. And seeing his car driving around the corner, and pulling over. "Did you think I'd let you leave without saying goodbye?" "I didn't know." "No, never." And holding him, and him holding me, and crying, and trying not to, and knowing my dad was waiting down the road with the moving truck, and wanting me to hurry up, and that he didn't like Fig anyway, and not knowing what to feel myself. Being so grateful for that last moment that said he still cared for me on some level, and that we would always have that friendship that really hadn't ever left (according to him, on those times I accused him of taking it away when Jessica came), and being somewhat angry that I couldn't just call him an evil bastard and be done with it, so I could inequivocably hate him forever.

And therein lies my problem. Fig's not the Devil. Nor is he an Angel. He's a man no better or worse than most, who was my closest friend next to Rob for years, and who used me (as far as I can tell) shamelessly for over 5 years.

The second part of the problem is that I know full well my role in all of this. I know I invited him to use me, offered all that on a silver platter. It was a test, to be sure. I know that now. One he failed by taking all the silver platters I placed in front of him without telling him what it meant to me for him to take them. I know that what happened with Fig and I so closely paralleled what I did to Leo that it can't help but be my "Karma" for Leo. I know that every experience he had with me prepared him to be able to love Jessica, and part of me is very proud of that, and of him. I know that Mark told me even when we were all still living in Dwight that he and Fig were talking, and Mark asked him if he was just gonna keep using me, and Fig just grinned at him. I always preferred to believe that he was just hiding the fact that he really did care about me. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I know that even after he started dating Jessica, I gave and gave and gave to him. I let him drive my car up to Michigan so he could spend weekends with her. When he came back from one of those weekends with chicken pox, I'm the one who took care of him most of the time. I gave him a pair of diamond earrings I had no use for, so he could give them to her as a Christmas gift. And seeing all this, I find it harder and harder to be pissed at Fig for this. He didn't ask for that (well, he asked for the car), and didn't even hint at it. I came up with it on my own, and did a lot of it as a surprise.

Maybe I was trying to be above it all. Maybe I was trying to show him I was the better woman. Maybe I was trying to win him back. Who knows. All I know is that it just feels so POINTLESS to be angry at Fig, when I'm the one who was the common denominator in it all. No, that doesn't absolve him of the responsibility of what he did. But, I don't have responsibility for what he did... only what I did. And I can only change what I did. And all that makes so much sense to me. But, my experience is that keeping the anger in that I know is there is eating me up inside. I think one of the reasons that I don't want to be angry at Fig is because I don't want to negate the good parts of our relationship. There is so much I treasure from that relationship, so much good. I didn't get a tattoo for nothing. And I don't want a release of rage to make me look at the entire relationship in a whole new way, such that there aren't any positive aspects to it anymore. And there's a big part of me that doesn't want to get that angry with him, because then what kind of a person does that make me that I placed myself in that situation? Repeatedly. When I was being told by people I loved and trusted that it wasn't a good, balanced relationship.

Maybe that's why I beat up on my Wounded Child. Maybe I blame her for making all those poor choices, and maybe it's easier to blame her than me.

But I digress. I'm supposed to be getting angry at Fig. And the more I explore all the reasons I should be so fucking pissed at him, I just see more and more clearly that I'm the one I should be mad at.

Either that, or the closer I get to the icky angry parts, the bigger, more convincing shields I put up.

Either choice is equally likely, and neither is mutually exclusive.

No wonder I'm so fucked up.

Bear with me, boys and girls. I think it's gonna be a bumpy ride.