Running on Empty

We dated a long time ago and it didn’t end very well. He was a liar and I pretended to be a fool, and it worked for a while, but then the cracks in his stories and my patience got too deep to ignore, and he decided to move on.

At first I was crushed, but over the next few months I told myself that he never really rejected me for the simple fact that he never really knew who I was. I pretended to be who I thought he wanted, and in the end, he didn’t want that girl either.

After the breakup and a couple years had passed, we somehow started talking again and became friends, or as much as one can be a friend in that position. He apologized for treating me so bad, for lying, for hurting me. He was a whole new person now and he asked me to forgive him, which I did. But I never could forget.

Our relationship would ebb and flow over the next several years. At times we were each others strongest supporters, at other times each others worst enemies. But we were never quite just friends. I soon realized that no matter how much you may want to, you can never forget the past or the history you share with someone. He was able to stir the strongest emotions in me that anyone has ever reached, and he still could. And did.

The problem was that he still didn’t care. I was still in love with him after all these years, and he was still in love with himself. Only this time around, I could no longer pretend to be the fool I once was. I could no longer deny the emptiness I felt by his lack of love for me. And I wondered how much longer I could continue to keep him in my life under the premise of friendship when it left my soul running on empty.

The yin and the yang of love

I lay awake in bed last night, losing sleep, contemplating the intricacies of personal relationships. To have a meaningful relationship of any kind, you must open yourself up and share the most personal parts of your soul. Some are the secrets you keep closest to your heart for fear of exposing them would expose your weaknesses and leave you wide open and vulnerable for ridicule. As much as you try to keep these things to yourself, once someone knows you well enough, these secrets you keep expose themselves and you must trust that those who see them will know you better for it, but also keep them as closely guarded as their own secrets.

Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how it works.

Even the best relationships hit ruts sometimes, and even those closest to us will sometimes use our secrets to hurt us. It is here that I find the line is blurred and the futures of my relationships grey.

What do you do once someone calls you out on all your shit? When they yell at you the same things your inner voice tells you on your darkest days?

Common sense tells most of us to cut this person loose and that anyone that would do such a thing has no place in your life. But matters of the heart rarely use common sense, and things are never that clearly defined. People lose their tempers. Arguments happen. Feelings get hurt. Even with those we love. Especially with those we love.

So do you bounce back and suck it up, or cut them loose?

Sucking it up sometimes takes more forgiveness than I can muster. The cost of love is sometimes too high for me to pay. I know my faults and weaknesses and I don’t need to be reminded of all I lack and all I can never have and never be. Getting over having it all pointed out for me is often too much to recover from and once my trust is shaken it is nearly impossible to gain it back.

The alternative is to cut someone right out of your life as soon as the first argument occurs. But is that reasonable? Don’t we all argue occasionally within our own relationships and friendships? If you cut out a person the first time they upset you, won’t you always find yourself alone? Sure, you could keep up a façade, for a while, and pretend that nothing hurts and we’ve nothing to hide, but in the end who does that really hurt? Without opening ourselves up fully, we will never really be close to anyone, never feel the joy that love can bring, and never feel the sting of the words you wish they’d never said.

I suppose it is the yin and the yang of love.

Olive Branches

The last couple of years of my life have been spent reflecting on myself, my life and the people in it, and all the events that have shaped who I am as a person. It’s not been an easy journey, and not always rewarding, but I have definitely grown.

In my struggle to learn about and improve upon myself, there have been several times when I’ve felt it necessary to reconnect with different people for different reasons. I’ve learned that extending the proverbial olive branch does not always yield the outcome we desire.

Sometimes the olive branch wilts like a bad handshake. Sometimes it is dry and brittle and crumbles at your touch. Sometimes the other person doesn’t grab it; or worse, they grab it and smack you around with it. And occasionally, olive branches have thorns. Thorns are unresolved issues you haven’t been able to work through or learn to ignore. We skate around these uncomfortable issues just long enough to realize that sometimes it may have been better if you’d never extended that olive branch at all.

I am all for forgiveness and second chances, and I encourage you all to welcome second chances. However, keep in mind that regardless of what the reason was, you stopped speaking to this person for a valid reason, and one you will be reminded of as soon as you make contact again.
So, extend that olive branch, just watch out for the thorns.