Coming clean
May. 5th, 2003 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walbournMy journal last week contains a lot of emotional angst triggered by my trip back to Austin (which was mostly cool, but a little charged emotionally with explicitly avoiding contact with Kim) and stumbling across Andrea's LiveJournal (I didn't even know she had one) via a link in a mutual friend's entry. Since I didn't have a LiveJournal for the year we were dating, or even most of the past year since the break-up, I don't have any objective perspective from LJ friends on the matter. The truth is though, it doesn't really matter what did or didn't happen, it is all in my head now and Andrea is gone, gone, gone from my life. I certainly don't have a blog covering the complicated up and down months or the dark years that was my relationship with Kim. So in a way, I feel like I'm lying by omission or painting a twisted image of my complete perspective of those events in the words I write here. At the same time, I don't have the energy to explain all of the sorted details nor do I wish to rehash them yet again when clearly they have no real bearing on my life today save putting names and events to every half-healed scar on my heart.
I don't truly think of myself as a victim in all of the mess that has been my personal life for the past five years. I just reached a point of crisis that claimed me for years, and it has been a damn long road to putting the pieces of my life back together. Even now, they don't quite fit and the ragged edges of where they were torn rub at my consciousness more often than not.
I am still 'in love' with Kim in a way, or at least the women she was. More accurately, I miss being the man I was when I was 'in love' with Kim. We both made a lot of mistakes in a troubled time, and she had to take an easier path for herself than the one I was on. Every time I hear from her or hear some bit of news of her, I feel that twisted painful knot of feelings in my gut... desperate longing, bitter resentment, anger at her lack of courage or faith in me, distrust yet desiring her trust above all, concern for her well-being and the sure knowledge that all of it is totally irrelevant to her, to her life, and to the reality of mine.
There is so much about Andrea I miss, so much about her that resonated with me. Her little habits, her mind, her body, her soul, so many things that make up the sum of being in love. Robin Williams character in Good Will Hunting said the great thing about intimacy is that we get to choose who we let into our strange little worlds, and I want to be in her world and her in mine. From experience, I know that connection is rare for me to find and having it squandered by both of us being caught up in our own angst at our past is a hard thing. For a brief time I tried to take solace in knowing that I was always honest with her, that she knew that I loved her and had no reason to distrust me or my feelings, and then it became obvious that no amount of honesty or communication could with-stand the dismantling of her feelings for me or the taint her depression and self-doubt at being lovable put on my actions.
I could have had a chance at making a life with Kim, but the precise moment of opportunity would have required I turn my back on my principles and dump Angela to be with her, to engage in the very replacement behavior that has stung me for so many years. I would have had to ignore the warnings in my mind that Kim only wanted a replacement for her husband, to run away from her loneliness and the demons she hid from in his arms, that this was an opportunity for her to grow and become something more for herself. I would have had to stain my love for Kim with such a betrayal and feel it's presence for as long as our relationship lasted. Instead, she betrayed me. By the time we were both single and available to pursue a relationship again, she no longer wanted me or get past all the ugliness of those years between.
I could have had a chance at a life with Andrea if I had thrown caution to the wind and moved to Portland to be with her immediately. To do so would have required ignoring a large financial burden of debts from previous years (two car payments, credit card, computer loan, and a student loan), moving to a town where I didn't know a soul and would have to find work outside my field of expertise (there are ZERO computer game developers in Portland), and trust that Andrea would actually like working at Intel, be able to hold the job, and wouldn't resent my having to be a bum in her house until I managed to find work in the worst down-turn in the economy in decades. Given that Andrea had told me about at least one relationship where she supported someone else and lost respect for them in the process, that I had a similar situation go to hell right after my freshman year of college, and that we had only had a few months together to base such a decision on, it felt extremely risky.
So, I took the responsible path both times, and lost my lover and best friend for my choice. I tried to find a way to work together for a better option in both instances, and both times I was the only one who could believe there was a better way. It is hard to not feel that being with me simply wasn't worth the effort, and focus instead on the fact that they simply couldn't conceive of it working out.
Walking the path of being true to my heart, living by principles of my morals and ethics, being honest with myself and others, and living up to the responsibilities I've already taken on has cost me love time and time again, but to do otherwise would stain the very loves I valued. It would be nice to think I could be presented with a situation that wasn't doomed to a one-sided hope or require Herculean effort, and simply be allowed to grow and strengthen naturally...
I don't truly think of myself as a victim in all of the mess that has been my personal life for the past five years. I just reached a point of crisis that claimed me for years, and it has been a damn long road to putting the pieces of my life back together. Even now, they don't quite fit and the ragged edges of where they were torn rub at my consciousness more often than not.
I am still 'in love' with Kim in a way, or at least the women she was. More accurately, I miss being the man I was when I was 'in love' with Kim. We both made a lot of mistakes in a troubled time, and she had to take an easier path for herself than the one I was on. Every time I hear from her or hear some bit of news of her, I feel that twisted painful knot of feelings in my gut... desperate longing, bitter resentment, anger at her lack of courage or faith in me, distrust yet desiring her trust above all, concern for her well-being and the sure knowledge that all of it is totally irrelevant to her, to her life, and to the reality of mine.
There is so much about Andrea I miss, so much about her that resonated with me. Her little habits, her mind, her body, her soul, so many things that make up the sum of being in love. Robin Williams character in Good Will Hunting said the great thing about intimacy is that we get to choose who we let into our strange little worlds, and I want to be in her world and her in mine. From experience, I know that connection is rare for me to find and having it squandered by both of us being caught up in our own angst at our past is a hard thing. For a brief time I tried to take solace in knowing that I was always honest with her, that she knew that I loved her and had no reason to distrust me or my feelings, and then it became obvious that no amount of honesty or communication could with-stand the dismantling of her feelings for me or the taint her depression and self-doubt at being lovable put on my actions.
I could have had a chance at making a life with Kim, but the precise moment of opportunity would have required I turn my back on my principles and dump Angela to be with her, to engage in the very replacement behavior that has stung me for so many years. I would have had to ignore the warnings in my mind that Kim only wanted a replacement for her husband, to run away from her loneliness and the demons she hid from in his arms, that this was an opportunity for her to grow and become something more for herself. I would have had to stain my love for Kim with such a betrayal and feel it's presence for as long as our relationship lasted. Instead, she betrayed me. By the time we were both single and available to pursue a relationship again, she no longer wanted me or get past all the ugliness of those years between.
I could have had a chance at a life with Andrea if I had thrown caution to the wind and moved to Portland to be with her immediately. To do so would have required ignoring a large financial burden of debts from previous years (two car payments, credit card, computer loan, and a student loan), moving to a town where I didn't know a soul and would have to find work outside my field of expertise (there are ZERO computer game developers in Portland), and trust that Andrea would actually like working at Intel, be able to hold the job, and wouldn't resent my having to be a bum in her house until I managed to find work in the worst down-turn in the economy in decades. Given that Andrea had told me about at least one relationship where she supported someone else and lost respect for them in the process, that I had a similar situation go to hell right after my freshman year of college, and that we had only had a few months together to base such a decision on, it felt extremely risky.
So, I took the responsible path both times, and lost my lover and best friend for my choice. I tried to find a way to work together for a better option in both instances, and both times I was the only one who could believe there was a better way. It is hard to not feel that being with me simply wasn't worth the effort, and focus instead on the fact that they simply couldn't conceive of it working out.
Walking the path of being true to my heart, living by principles of my morals and ethics, being honest with myself and others, and living up to the responsibilities I've already taken on has cost me love time and time again, but to do otherwise would stain the very loves I valued. It would be nice to think I could be presented with a situation that wasn't doomed to a one-sided hope or require Herculean effort, and simply be allowed to grow and strengthen naturally...
