somewhere under the sky

uncanny

i happened to be perusing my blog a few days ago, which i have never done before, and found an entry, that, unlikeliness of unlikelihoods, came to pass again - three and one half years later, to the exact day, i feel EXACTLY the same way today as i did on 6 May 2007, when i wrote the first entry. it is a very different situation, of course, so i am deleting a few sentences here or there, perhaps adding a few. and so here is today's post:

This is an excerpt from a book called "Dear Exile," which is the one-year written correspondence between two women friends. One woman writes of her breakup:
"I hate the idea that he continues to pay his phone bills, to button his shirts, to age, to eat, to read or not read the newspaper. I hate that he lives in real time, that everything he does involves the decision that he didn't want to do it with me. Somewhere he's filling up his gas tank and I'm thinking about how I'd like to see the way his arm looks doing that[...]how his fingers looked, by themselves and against mine. How his sentences came slowly, for reasons I won't find out. How tired he was, how sad and tired all the time and determined to be well and good. How I wanted to heal him, not by helping him or carrying him but by huddling next to him. How I wanted to have his whole world, to move it in some way across my body, or to digest it, to have it be at once foreign and part of me. I wanted him to talk forever for the sound of his voice, for what he said and what made him think of it and what it made him think next, for how it sounded in the trees or in a room, for what the room said back."

No one told me life was fair; but I'm going to complain about its unfairness anyway. Why do men make women feel like fools? Note here that I say men, not love (I concede lust and infatuation must leave one feeling like a fool. Of course. I also fully concede that women make men feel like fools). Why do they pursue us, treat us well, pretend to be a friend and then disappear into their own lives? Were we wrong to hope that a person cared about us enough to want to be with us over a long period of time? Were we wrong to believe him, to believe in him, to believe in a real relationship? And even at the end of it all, were we wrong to believe him when he said he wanted to still be friends? Left with feelings of frustration, disappointment, anger, hurt, disillusionment and foolishness, one is looking for someone to blame. I don't know where the blame falls although I know this post looks like I'm blaming men. And I know you (men and women) hate me for stereotyping (both men and women). But even if I weren't speaking from personal experience, in the past 6 months 11 women, that's right, 11 of the wonderful women I know have had uncannily similiar experiences; such that it's beginning to sound to me like all men have the same recipe for a relationship. And it's 12 women who have been hurt, but by 19 guys. These are not good statistics.
The pain could disappear instantly, if one could just erase all the memories. All I want is someone who wants to commit to me because he values me, who thinks being with me (not 24/7, certainly) is a joy and not a burden, someone who is my friend, someone whom I make a better person and who makes me a better person. This is love.
And these patterns that I see are that things start well, and then one person pulls away, shuts the door, but shuts the door without telling you, so you are still knocking and eventually you realize the door isn't open anymore and then you knock really hard to say, um, hello? And the door is opened and greetings are made and then it's shut in your face again except you are now standing on the threshold so you get knocked over. And the other person continues to live his/her life, and like the quote above, you continue to live your life, knowing that the person behind the door decided not to share it with you.
I realize that nothing is as it seems and that everything is more complicated than it appears. But the feelings I listed above remain, despite any understanding of the situation or of the guy, and I don't like feeling them because it hurts and hurts and hurts. And I feel like such a fool for having believed, again, that something beautiful could have lasted.

posted by leah v @ 9:02 PM