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Wow it has been a very long time since I posted here.
Retrospectively I wish I had done so more actively over the years. The posts I made from 2017-2018 are valuable to my current self and my ability to make sense of my past experiences and current situation.
There are so many updates I need to log from the last year+, most of them heartbreaking, but I will save that for another time.
For now I will merely reflect on a conversation I just had with Jandy.
Currently (and as of a couple of weeks ago) we are not dating any more. That’s a long story for another time. But today she was feeling very low and came over to spend some time. I gradually was able to coax some conversation out of her, about how she is feeling and why. It took a lot of comforting and patience on my part.
The gist of things is that she feels stuck and conflicted in many ways. She loves Paul but is not “in love” with him in the way she seems to feel for me. That makes her feel very guilty, because she has stronger feelings for her “ex” than for her husband.
She feels trapped because she does not have the career or financial means to be independent. She is terrified of breaking up with Paul because she has no money and no way to support herself. I mentioned she has a “support” network in the form of friends and family and she cast doubt on that, at one point admitting that even if she did move in with e.g. her sister she would feel terrible and “like a Dara to her”. (Wow, this really shows the opinion she has of Dara. Although I’ve known she is resentful/disdainful of her for a long time... I’ll come back to that in another post.)
On top of that, she would feel incredibly guilty to break up with Paul. She feels like she doesn’t treat him very well, and that he deserves better. She admits to still wanting to be with me even though I am distancing myself from relationships (and in particular, a relationship with her) right now.
I was very mindful of being patient and supportive and giving her space during this time. There were a few times I felt the impulse to get defensive but overall I think I resisted it fairly well.
I brought up codependent habits at one point and she agreed that she has a pattern of that, as well as there being some indicators of it in me in the past. This part tested my patience a bit because she got rather defensive and her tone changed a long the lines of “how dare you tell me things I already know after being in therapy for a couple of weeks, it might be new to you but it isn’t to me.” For one thing, it’s not “new to me”, for another I’m not trying to talk down to you, and finally it’s ironic for YOU to say “you think you know so much” after some therapy after you’ve done it for not that much more than me? Pot, kettle much?
Later on I talked about wanting to treat Paul better myself and she said I don’t treat him very well. I asked for some examples of that and what she said was rather... telling. In no specific order:
He was a "non-entity" to me
95% of the time I only asked what she wanted, or if I asked what he wanted it was through her (her % estimate)
I didn't help out as much as I expected him to (her example being when I asked for help moving the laser)
I didn't respect his boundaries like Jandy being "home by midnight"
On the one hand I think she has some fair points and I have seen some of that on my own and want to be more aware and conscientious of it. On the other hand, the way she talks about it and phrases things makes me wonder if we live in the same reality. It makes me confused and honestly like I'm being gaslit? I don't understand.
For example, the part about respecting boundaries. From my perspective, I have been very conscientious about that, often much more so than Jandy. There have been countless times I've had to remind her of the time and that she might need to go. Countless times I messaged Paul directly to let him know if Jandy had fallen asleep or update him in some way. Countless times I asked him directly if she could stay over.
Overall I was very conscious of boundaries and respected them greatly. Any time she spent more time past midnight, my assumption is that she had discussed or cleared that with him already because primarily it is her fucking duty to respect the boundaries between them, not mine.
Or the "helping out" part. Very, very rarely have I asked Paul for help with something. I can think of the laser, my toolchest, and maybe my arcade machine? Meanwhile they have asked me to help with things and I gladly did, like helping load free firewood, or moving the large free freezer they got, or moving bedframes around, or moving the chest freezer that I gave to them for free, or the time I worked with Leeds to tear up their entire fucking carpet. Yet somehow I don't do my fair share or consider Paul enough? He doesn't really ask often and when he does I'm happy to help, PLUS I have gone above and beyond even when there WASN'T a direct ask.
Things like these just... I don't really trust her. It's not that I think she's lying. I don't trust her brain. I don't trust her perception of things. Her trauma makes her hypersensitive to certain things or react strongly to others. She misremembers telling me or Paul something or vice versa. She completely forgot an entire emotional conversation I had with her about the... the...
Sigh.
At the same time, when she tells me I've been selfish or inconsiderate, I can't help but take it to heart. I do actually recognize that I am an inherently self centered person, and over the last two years I've come to realize a lot of my past behaviors and how shitty they've been. I have a lot of work to get closer to the type of person I want to be.
But it is that very self-awareness that causes friction between how I view certain events or patterns that have happened vs how she does. This is not helped by the fact that over time, her perception of how I act has varied greatly, even during times when there was no perceptible difference on my part. This is a hard thing to put into words... as an example, she has basically judged the amount of effort I have put into the relationship, or the care I show her, as fluctuating greatly over time, even over the span of a few weeks or months. But when I look back, my experience does not match that. The care I paid her was fairly stable, fluctuating a little bit but generally following an arc that spanned many months. She sees "change" in my behavior where I see non, either positive or negative. She will comment that things have gotten "better" when I haven't actually changed how I act or my patterns. Likewise, NOTHING may have changed and yet she will freak out over how my attention has faltered over time.
This is a constant battle within me trying to figure out what is real and what isn't. I recognize that my behavior may change much more - or much less - than I perceive. In addition, her feelings are valid - to an extent - regardless of the "actual" reality of the situation. Feelings don't always make perfect sense, and that is okay.
But at the end of the day, I guess I sort of as myself - is this worth it? Constantly doubting myself and my reality? Trying to figure out how much of what she is telling me matches what I know and feel? Feeling judged and watched and all these expecations around how she wants me to act? All for a person who LITERALLY has had waking hallucinations and was unofficially diagnosed by her counselor as having Borderline Personality Disorder?
I have erred on the side of compassion and trust for so long, and it has hurt me. I feel myself turning away from her and distancing myself because not only does it feel safer, but it gives me a chance to recenter myself and align myself to MY goals, MY life, MY feelings. She is in great pain, and I really feel for her. I still love her. But I can't let her drag me down. Almost the entire time I spent around her today I felt an anxious pit in the center of my stomach. Why would I want that when I could be free to be myself, unburdened by someone else's emotional baggage? It's selfish, yes, but I think it may be the healthy and sane thing to do.
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// 2017.12.08 - Home Base //
#progressbeforeperfection #c4d
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Asinas II
Kinetic sculpture by Jennifer Townley is an iteration of a previous piece from 2015 yet still visually complex and mesmerizing:
vimeo
‘Asinas II’ is the successor of the original sculpture 'Asinas’, showing the same concept and overall appearance but a different shape for the white “wing” parts.
The various angles and curves of the individual parts create an elaborated unity when joined together on the shaft. The two “wings” formed by these seventy-seven parts are able to slide through each other and rotate in opposite direction at a slightly different speed. This results in a movement that appears to be far more complex, existing of multiple layers, where repetitive shapes seem to be moving within oneanother.
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Enzo Mari, Disegno per la struttura 773, ca. 1963
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