flashback burst
now playing: me, "afterthought"
maybe you, or someone you know, has a situation like this.
(ok, disclaimer time: if you're running short on time, you might have to come back later. otherwise, grab a snack and make yourself comfortable. this one has been brewin' all morning.)
maybe at some point, you - or someone you know, of course - had an intense relationship with someone that ended badly, or strangely, or in a way (in my case) that just never fully made sense...
much more common is the relationship that ends for perfectly logical reasons - maybe the adversary was a smoker and smelled awful, or they had that nasty little coke habit, or they talked too much or not enough or they were a die-hard NASCAR fan, or something of that nature...something that just crossed them off your list, for one reason or another.
or, maybe you were on the receiving end of the pinkslip...even then, usually you'll either work really hard to convince yourself that your ex was an asshole and move on, or things will become apparent to you over time, with regard to why it went the way it went.
in the case of the particular intense relationship of which i find myself thinking about today, it took me ages to put everything together on the back end...because i was absolutely convinced, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this was the person i was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
my take was that i loved her, she allegedly loved me, we were connected so intensely that it actually scared me on a couple of occasions...but everytime we committed to a relationship, it fell apart. twice we took a shot at it. both times it ended...badly, for me. my diagnosis at the time was that every time we tried to make it official, everything went to hell. and that was true. i have the gift of hindsight now, and it makes a lot more sense on some levels why things happened the way they did - i think that my presence was a little too intrusive, and was a lot to deal with in perhaps too short a time. we went from friends to practically living together both times, and actually became engaged on the second pass. i felt that because we'd been friends for so long, that moving straight to where we went felt natural, because we'd already gone through the whole initial process of "getting to know each other". i mean, up until that time, no one had ever shown an interest in, or had been willing to get to know me as well as she knew me. and i loved that (and so many other things) about her. she was an absolute rock for me in certain parts of my life. no one, for instance, was ever as supportive about my talents and aspirations as she was. because i was attracted to her for quite some time before things became official, i had allowed myself to conjure all these pictures in my mind of what our lives would be like together...and for a few weeks each time, every bit of it seemed perfectly within the realm of possibility. it was the one time in my life, after some thought, when it seemed to me that there was absolutely nothing that i couldn't do. nothing exceeded my grasp.
a little age has given me the benefit of wisdom and hindsight, though, and i realize now that you don't walk into a relationship with a clean slate...not your first one, not your last one, nor any of them in between. this, of course, was true of chris and i...we were both quite baggage-heavy, and we only seemed to function when we ignored the fact that we hadn't really unpacked at all. we were both parents outside our own relationship, with different circumstances involved...my children shared their time between their mother and i, which required a great deal of diplomacy and negotiation and compromise, while her son's father was essentially a nonissue and she called all the shots. she felt that i was changing a lot of who i was to be with her, which was both true and untrue. i guess i should take a swing at explaining that one....
perhaps the best example would be the fact that chris was a vegeterian, and i (as is certainly obvious, i would imagine) was/am not. but when i was with chris, i subscribed to the vegeterian ethic as well. i didn't eat meat when i was with her.
i can understand where this would be perceived as something of a leap, but the truth is, i actually enjoyed it. i saw it as a lifestyle choice more than a compromise of any belief that i held, and it was actually a choice i probably would have made for myself, were i not so pathetically lazy where the food i eat is concerned, and were willing to put some forethought and effort into my diet. there was also some duress involving a book that i bought that was important to her that i planned to read to identify with her reasons for feeling so strongly about it. i thought nothing of things like this, but i don't think it was perceived that way. it seemed that she felt that i was bending a little too far backward to compromise myself....which was absolutely true.
i think i can speak for both of us when i say that the reality of "us" was a jarring shock when held up to the fantasy that we both had concocted, with regards to what we thought our lives could be.
reality has a lot of faces, and we only wanted to see the smiley, happy one. we were completely ill-prepared for anything that didn't fit that scenario. and both of us were "runners"...whenever an article of clothing from our formidable baggage collection made its way into the everyday wardrobe, it was met with (individually or in various combinations) avoidance, withdrawal, anger, resentment, or fear. all were available in abundance. and it seemed as though emotions were current - with switches that could be thrown in either direction on a whim. today she loves me, but tomorrow she won't even want me around.
and let me tell ya....I BUSTED MY ASS trying to figure this out, trying to somehow come up with "the trick" for us...thinking that there was something i could do, something i could say, someone i could be to make everything ok. and, of course, there wasn't. with chris, i was in constant fear of saying or doing something that would flip the switch back to the "off" position...if i was guilty of giving myself up for the sake of being with her, that was the primary method i used for doing so....that perpetual fear of upsetting the apple cart. and ultimately, it didn't matter, because the switch eventually flipped anyway - regardless of my efforts.
in both cases, even when things had disintegrated, i blamed myself. i was convinced that i hadn't put enough effort into standing by her when she needed me, that i'd been too quick to turn away, not steadfast enough.
in the years that have followed, i've been able to pinpoint a lot of my own faults a little more closely, but i've also allowed myself to look at our relationship a little more closely. i felt a light go on over my head when it was pointed out to me that "it seems like both of you are in love with chris and no one's in love with tom....". i went from being completely crestfallen over things to being incredibly angry at her and at myself...at her for misleading me, for pulling the carpet out from under my feet, for building me up and tearing me down not once, but twice...who the fuck does she think she is, anyway?!!? i mean, the whole gamut. i said it all, over and over, in my head.
don't get all self-righteous on me, either...you guys know you've done the same thing. i know. you've told me.
i was also angry at myself for what i came to perceive as essentially sacrificing myself for the sake of a very tentative relationship. after looking back on it from some distance, i felt about as pathetic about this as you could probably imagine. here's an example of how bad it was:
she called me at work to let me know that jake was sick, and that she had a meeting at work that she absolutely had to be at (or something of that nature), and i left work to come to her house and stay with jake while she dealt with her work obligations (i picked jake up from where she was working at the time, as i recall)...i stayed with jake for the afternoon and made dinner for the three of us...but when she came home from work, she piled some laundry in her car and took jake to her mom's...didn't stop to eat, nothing. basically left me standing there with a pot of spaghetti.
but i took it all in stride, and got in the van and drove home without saying a word about feeling slighted or anything of the sort...because bringing that up would ultimately lead to "flipping the switch", and as we've established, i just couldn't allow that.
maybe some people don't have to go through this to learn that it's not acceptable, but i did. i could spot a doormat a mile away, unless it was in the mirror.
so i went from being pissed at myself for allowing things to deteriorate to being pissed at myself for being too aloof to see things more objectively...but time does have a way of tempering these things, and ultimately (if you're lucky), you realize that harboring anger or ill will is personally destructive, and that it doesn't allow for moving on, so you find ways to forgive each other and yourself.
and yeah, it's all a total fuckin' cliche', but cliches are cliches for a reason...
i got married the first time because i was a doormat, and chris managed to cure me of that...it took a while, and she wasn't around to reap the benefits, but had i not gone through all that, i would never have had a reason to change. this is not to say that our relationship was without casualties - there are certain things that i lost through that whole process that i haven't really gotten a bead on in the time since, but it's a trade i've made willingly and gladly. in the relationships i've been in since, i've been pretty adamant about what i will and will not accept or tolerate in a partner, and i've maintained the will to walk away if it becomes necessary. and, ultimately, i feel better about myself now, and my boundaries are much more specifically defined. i certainly don't (and haven't) felt as vulnerable in subsequent relationships as i ended up being in that one, but i think that comes at a price, in terms of being willing or able to go past a certain point in my head.
i'll take now over then, though, anyday.
it seems like (for both of us) this time of year...the fall...ultimately brings about a flashback burst on occasion. working on the book probably didn't hurt. sometimes it skips a year, now and then...but it does seem to visit on a sporadically annual shift. i certainly don't hear from chris on anything resembling a regular basis, but she does seem to turn up more often around this time of year. we've actually talked a number of times lately, today being the most recent...she's actually become a regular visitor to the page, and today she sent me a one line email:
"what if your true companion is not your true love?"
now, you have to understand, she used to do this to me all the time...at lunch where we used to work, she'd sit down at the table and ask a question, totally out of the blue, that'd have me scratching my head. once she came in and asked, "what would you ask god if you had just one question?" and another she asked "what would you change about your life if you could change one thing?" and yet another she asked me to describe myself using just three words...then today, during our post-email conversation, she asks, "what one toy would you want if you could have any toy you wanted from your childhood?". i told her, "you know, you used to do this shit to me all the time...i'd come in the lunchroom and you'd hit me with one of these questions that i didn't have a ready answer for, and i'd have to sit there and think about it....jesus, man, all i wanted was a soda!"
this time, though, i had a ready answer, even though i can't remember what it was called...those small motorcycles that had the blue ramp that had the air pump on the back of it that you'd pump up until the back wheel was spinning...then you'd release it and it'd go zooming across the floor...into the wall...under the sofa...
...you get the point.
anyway, i bring all this up because it seems like every time we've tried to re-establish amicable contact in the time since, it seems as though 1997 and 1998 have been in the room with us. i've often thought that it's entirely likely that our past is gonna govern our future, if there is one...if we're gonna be friends, it's something to be conquered, and i've been resolute in the past that it's not really worth revisiting. maybe, though, enough time has passed that it's not necessary to, anymore. i've always had a ready list available, of reasons not to be bothered with the process...and ultimately, it's never been a priority. but the few conversations we've had lately haven't felt so much like work, and it doesn't feel as awkward to go past idle chatter into some of the deeper stuff now, either.
what remains to be seen is if either of us are viable to the other anymore, after so much time and so much experience and change has passed under the bridge.
this, though, has definitely been the year of reconnection for me...a lot of ghosts have come out of the woodwork lately. so i guess it remains to be seen.
interesting sidenote:
chris' son jake goes to the same school as bam margera's girlfriends' son.
also:
comments have been added. go ahead and lemme have it. (this does not mean that you can't hop over to the forum and leave a note now and then, too, though.)
maybe you, or someone you know, has a situation like this.
(ok, disclaimer time: if you're running short on time, you might have to come back later. otherwise, grab a snack and make yourself comfortable. this one has been brewin' all morning.)
maybe at some point, you - or someone you know, of course - had an intense relationship with someone that ended badly, or strangely, or in a way (in my case) that just never fully made sense...
much more common is the relationship that ends for perfectly logical reasons - maybe the adversary was a smoker and smelled awful, or they had that nasty little coke habit, or they talked too much or not enough or they were a die-hard NASCAR fan, or something of that nature...something that just crossed them off your list, for one reason or another.
or, maybe you were on the receiving end of the pinkslip...even then, usually you'll either work really hard to convince yourself that your ex was an asshole and move on, or things will become apparent to you over time, with regard to why it went the way it went.
in the case of the particular intense relationship of which i find myself thinking about today, it took me ages to put everything together on the back end...because i was absolutely convinced, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this was the person i was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
my take was that i loved her, she allegedly loved me, we were connected so intensely that it actually scared me on a couple of occasions...but everytime we committed to a relationship, it fell apart. twice we took a shot at it. both times it ended...badly, for me. my diagnosis at the time was that every time we tried to make it official, everything went to hell. and that was true. i have the gift of hindsight now, and it makes a lot more sense on some levels why things happened the way they did - i think that my presence was a little too intrusive, and was a lot to deal with in perhaps too short a time. we went from friends to practically living together both times, and actually became engaged on the second pass. i felt that because we'd been friends for so long, that moving straight to where we went felt natural, because we'd already gone through the whole initial process of "getting to know each other". i mean, up until that time, no one had ever shown an interest in, or had been willing to get to know me as well as she knew me. and i loved that (and so many other things) about her. she was an absolute rock for me in certain parts of my life. no one, for instance, was ever as supportive about my talents and aspirations as she was. because i was attracted to her for quite some time before things became official, i had allowed myself to conjure all these pictures in my mind of what our lives would be like together...and for a few weeks each time, every bit of it seemed perfectly within the realm of possibility. it was the one time in my life, after some thought, when it seemed to me that there was absolutely nothing that i couldn't do. nothing exceeded my grasp.
a little age has given me the benefit of wisdom and hindsight, though, and i realize now that you don't walk into a relationship with a clean slate...not your first one, not your last one, nor any of them in between. this, of course, was true of chris and i...we were both quite baggage-heavy, and we only seemed to function when we ignored the fact that we hadn't really unpacked at all. we were both parents outside our own relationship, with different circumstances involved...my children shared their time between their mother and i, which required a great deal of diplomacy and negotiation and compromise, while her son's father was essentially a nonissue and she called all the shots. she felt that i was changing a lot of who i was to be with her, which was both true and untrue. i guess i should take a swing at explaining that one....
perhaps the best example would be the fact that chris was a vegeterian, and i (as is certainly obvious, i would imagine) was/am not. but when i was with chris, i subscribed to the vegeterian ethic as well. i didn't eat meat when i was with her.
i can understand where this would be perceived as something of a leap, but the truth is, i actually enjoyed it. i saw it as a lifestyle choice more than a compromise of any belief that i held, and it was actually a choice i probably would have made for myself, were i not so pathetically lazy where the food i eat is concerned, and were willing to put some forethought and effort into my diet. there was also some duress involving a book that i bought that was important to her that i planned to read to identify with her reasons for feeling so strongly about it. i thought nothing of things like this, but i don't think it was perceived that way. it seemed that she felt that i was bending a little too far backward to compromise myself....which was absolutely true.
i think i can speak for both of us when i say that the reality of "us" was a jarring shock when held up to the fantasy that we both had concocted, with regards to what we thought our lives could be.
reality has a lot of faces, and we only wanted to see the smiley, happy one. we were completely ill-prepared for anything that didn't fit that scenario. and both of us were "runners"...whenever an article of clothing from our formidable baggage collection made its way into the everyday wardrobe, it was met with (individually or in various combinations) avoidance, withdrawal, anger, resentment, or fear. all were available in abundance. and it seemed as though emotions were current - with switches that could be thrown in either direction on a whim. today she loves me, but tomorrow she won't even want me around.
and let me tell ya....I BUSTED MY ASS trying to figure this out, trying to somehow come up with "the trick" for us...thinking that there was something i could do, something i could say, someone i could be to make everything ok. and, of course, there wasn't. with chris, i was in constant fear of saying or doing something that would flip the switch back to the "off" position...if i was guilty of giving myself up for the sake of being with her, that was the primary method i used for doing so....that perpetual fear of upsetting the apple cart. and ultimately, it didn't matter, because the switch eventually flipped anyway - regardless of my efforts.
in both cases, even when things had disintegrated, i blamed myself. i was convinced that i hadn't put enough effort into standing by her when she needed me, that i'd been too quick to turn away, not steadfast enough.
in the years that have followed, i've been able to pinpoint a lot of my own faults a little more closely, but i've also allowed myself to look at our relationship a little more closely. i felt a light go on over my head when it was pointed out to me that "it seems like both of you are in love with chris and no one's in love with tom....". i went from being completely crestfallen over things to being incredibly angry at her and at myself...at her for misleading me, for pulling the carpet out from under my feet, for building me up and tearing me down not once, but twice...who the fuck does she think she is, anyway?!!? i mean, the whole gamut. i said it all, over and over, in my head.
don't get all self-righteous on me, either...you guys know you've done the same thing. i know. you've told me.
i was also angry at myself for what i came to perceive as essentially sacrificing myself for the sake of a very tentative relationship. after looking back on it from some distance, i felt about as pathetic about this as you could probably imagine. here's an example of how bad it was:
she called me at work to let me know that jake was sick, and that she had a meeting at work that she absolutely had to be at (or something of that nature), and i left work to come to her house and stay with jake while she dealt with her work obligations (i picked jake up from where she was working at the time, as i recall)...i stayed with jake for the afternoon and made dinner for the three of us...but when she came home from work, she piled some laundry in her car and took jake to her mom's...didn't stop to eat, nothing. basically left me standing there with a pot of spaghetti.
but i took it all in stride, and got in the van and drove home without saying a word about feeling slighted or anything of the sort...because bringing that up would ultimately lead to "flipping the switch", and as we've established, i just couldn't allow that.
maybe some people don't have to go through this to learn that it's not acceptable, but i did. i could spot a doormat a mile away, unless it was in the mirror.
so i went from being pissed at myself for allowing things to deteriorate to being pissed at myself for being too aloof to see things more objectively...but time does have a way of tempering these things, and ultimately (if you're lucky), you realize that harboring anger or ill will is personally destructive, and that it doesn't allow for moving on, so you find ways to forgive each other and yourself.
and yeah, it's all a total fuckin' cliche', but cliches are cliches for a reason...
i got married the first time because i was a doormat, and chris managed to cure me of that...it took a while, and she wasn't around to reap the benefits, but had i not gone through all that, i would never have had a reason to change. this is not to say that our relationship was without casualties - there are certain things that i lost through that whole process that i haven't really gotten a bead on in the time since, but it's a trade i've made willingly and gladly. in the relationships i've been in since, i've been pretty adamant about what i will and will not accept or tolerate in a partner, and i've maintained the will to walk away if it becomes necessary. and, ultimately, i feel better about myself now, and my boundaries are much more specifically defined. i certainly don't (and haven't) felt as vulnerable in subsequent relationships as i ended up being in that one, but i think that comes at a price, in terms of being willing or able to go past a certain point in my head.
i'll take now over then, though, anyday.
it seems like (for both of us) this time of year...the fall...ultimately brings about a flashback burst on occasion. working on the book probably didn't hurt. sometimes it skips a year, now and then...but it does seem to visit on a sporadically annual shift. i certainly don't hear from chris on anything resembling a regular basis, but she does seem to turn up more often around this time of year. we've actually talked a number of times lately, today being the most recent...she's actually become a regular visitor to the page, and today she sent me a one line email:
"what if your true companion is not your true love?"
now, you have to understand, she used to do this to me all the time...at lunch where we used to work, she'd sit down at the table and ask a question, totally out of the blue, that'd have me scratching my head. once she came in and asked, "what would you ask god if you had just one question?" and another she asked "what would you change about your life if you could change one thing?" and yet another she asked me to describe myself using just three words...then today, during our post-email conversation, she asks, "what one toy would you want if you could have any toy you wanted from your childhood?". i told her, "you know, you used to do this shit to me all the time...i'd come in the lunchroom and you'd hit me with one of these questions that i didn't have a ready answer for, and i'd have to sit there and think about it....jesus, man, all i wanted was a soda!"
this time, though, i had a ready answer, even though i can't remember what it was called...those small motorcycles that had the blue ramp that had the air pump on the back of it that you'd pump up until the back wheel was spinning...then you'd release it and it'd go zooming across the floor...into the wall...under the sofa...
...you get the point.
anyway, i bring all this up because it seems like every time we've tried to re-establish amicable contact in the time since, it seems as though 1997 and 1998 have been in the room with us. i've often thought that it's entirely likely that our past is gonna govern our future, if there is one...if we're gonna be friends, it's something to be conquered, and i've been resolute in the past that it's not really worth revisiting. maybe, though, enough time has passed that it's not necessary to, anymore. i've always had a ready list available, of reasons not to be bothered with the process...and ultimately, it's never been a priority. but the few conversations we've had lately haven't felt so much like work, and it doesn't feel as awkward to go past idle chatter into some of the deeper stuff now, either.
what remains to be seen is if either of us are viable to the other anymore, after so much time and so much experience and change has passed under the bridge.
this, though, has definitely been the year of reconnection for me...a lot of ghosts have come out of the woodwork lately. so i guess it remains to be seen.
interesting sidenote:
chris' son jake goes to the same school as bam margera's girlfriends' son.
also:
comments have been added. go ahead and lemme have it. (this does not mean that you can't hop over to the forum and leave a note now and then, too, though.)
posted by tom at 12:25
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