Renewal Thirty : Sometimes It’s Easier To Sleep

Despite being exhausted, I had coffee and talked with this lady last evening. She can laugh easily and honestly, and she is open and attentive to her surroundings. I liked her. We laughed all right, and more than once. There is a lot to laugh about.

However, it finally dawned on me during our conversation that this would not be a good match. My orientation and her orientation were not a lock and key. She noticed it when I realized this, I could tell that she sensed a shift and she shifted herself. I think she probably already knew it, but it was her style to remain open. We both, without saying it, prepared to leave. That’s something all right. I walked her to her car, we spoke a bit more, laughed about something again, and said good bye.

This is an interesting way to do things. I’ve not done it quite this way before. I’m paying attention to my body. I’m not making judgments about someone’s humanity, only about my well-being. And I’m trusting that I’m not going to accidently miss something. Admittedly, this last part worries me. But my worry and my well-being have seldom been congruent.

In any case, I’ve got a full day ahead of me. I’ve run already and I’m writing this little bit before I jump in the shower and get ready for work. Despite my realizations, I’m still feeling a bit caustic, even with a decent night’s sleep. I want to be cared for, deeply and honestly and not just for what someone thinks I can give them. I know that it is my perspective that I’ve not been cared for–the three women I’ve been involved with would not agree, arguing that it was exactly the reverse. Probably just that key and lock thing again.

I know that the way my body is reacting to all of these feelings is by dumping toxins, I can feel them surging in me. This toxic dumping is an interesting creation. I guess that’s what is and I need to not pretend. I don’t need to dump it on others, but I do need for it to get out. Purging the old emotional barnacles will allow for a cleaner space and a cleaner new creation. So, though I’m toxic at the moment, it feels like I’m alive and I’m going in the right direction.

A big part of that positive feeling is dumping the notion that these three women were somehow obligated to give me what I wanted. This is not to say that how they handled the relationship was right or that it didn’t matter. My view is clear, their behaviors were not as loving as those women claimed they were, they were not as free as they thought, and they were not in line with their own stated objectives.

Originally this made me mad that they could treat the relationship in such a blatantly callous manner. This is not to say that I didn’t make my own mistakes. I very much did. I also was callous. The difference, as I saw it, was the ability to overcome my own crap, take responsibility, learn, and attempt to move closer together.

However, what I was slow to learn was the difference between wanting what I want, and being upset that someone didn’t give it to me. I was righteous that they had been busted doing exactly the opposite of what they pledged and, worst, that they seemed so righteous themselves in claiming that I was responsible for their behaviors. This claim was beyond belief.

But, I found myself doing the same to them, holding each of them responsible for my irritation with the relationship. I was mad at them for not being real, for fooling themselves and me that we really had something. A key and a lock are just a key and a lock. If they don’t fit, they don’t fit. But, since we think that human relationships are a bit more dynamic than a key and a lock (at least there’s the potential for the dynamics), apparently we believe that if they won’t fit, we’ll make it fit.

Clearly, I’ve visited this pattern of thought before. But this entire issue came roaring back yesterday when I realized what was happening with the woman I met. This got my mind going about how I am still not with a woman.

Finally, my stupid little brain and my stupid little cells and my stupid little feelings (at least in the relationship context) realized that not getting what I wanted and it being someone else’s fault were two entirely different things.

Yes, I didn’t get what I wanted. Yes, I deserve what I want, if deserving is the issue. Let’s put it this way; I can have what I want. But so can the three women. Just because I don’t agree that they know what’s good for them, doesn’t mean that they have to do what I want. In fact, maybe what they’re doing, however I view it, is what they really need to do to learn. And maybe the same is true for me.

The upshot of the issue, the one that shifts my view and allows me to move from willing something to being something, even if I’m still filled with toxins, is that the three women don’t owe me what I want. For me to spend any time trying to work with them, given what I know and what happened, is my foolishness, not theirs.

Often, the human mind seeks closure by trying to reconcile disconnects. In a relationship, if the person who was cared for is no longer in the picture because of divorce, a breakup, or death, we still seek closure. It may be a dialogue in our head, it may come with another, similar person or similar set of circumstances, or it may come by understanding–let’s call it knowing on an integrated level, cells, mind, and spirit–that one does not have to do what another wants, only what one wants.

I feel like an idiot, not that I should group myself with idiots–they might be insulted. I hope that this understanding is truly a knowing and that I might bring closure to this path I’ve been on so that I loose the final grips about what has happened, so that I don’t take up the same issues with another, and so that I may truly move beyond my needing to prove that what I want is okay and a worthy endeavor.

After all, when I don’t get what I want, just whose fault is it anyway? Well, I don’t know about fault, but I do think I’m beginning to understand that I’m not owed. I get what I get. If I don’t like it, I may need to examine myself and my own compass. The rest is just negative energy, and guess what gets created from that?

I shake my head, and I smile. It’s been a strange journey. I think I understand the concept of hibernation a little better. Sometimes, when winter is approaching, it seems like it’s easier to just get fat and go to sleep.