let it go

..i am back to where i started from.. hm. i really need to let go.

Meaning, everything I hold as negative in the past; mistakes, fears, failures, missed opportunites- I want to let them go and not hold on to them anymore. I want to stay in the present, be positive, learn from mistakes, and know that I am not the same person as I was in the past.

i think the biggest thing holding me back from getting over him was that i didn’t WANT to get over him. he’s the only guy who had ever made love to me so passionately, with his whole heart and soul, and i couldn’t forget it. i couldn’t imagine that any other guy would ever make me feel the same way. of course, after the breakup i was too afraid to trust guys with my heart, and especially to let myself go emotionally during sex, so i never really tested this idea.

i was wrong. stupidly, laughably, ridiculously, psychotically wrong. it’s so liberating to admit it, and so hilarious at how crazy i was. i thought that once you fall in love once, that’s it, that’s love. the secret to falling in love again is COURAGE. just get over your fear of pain and heartbreak and TRUST YOURSELF. trust YOUR HEART! even if it doesn’t make sense. even if the guy doesn’t have any money or career plans or any of that superficial stuff that your parents think matter. guess what? love is free! happiness is free! and if you can learn how to trust your own heart and see peoples souls for what they really are and look at people for their values and their character their ability to think for themselves and be self-aware and brave and strong and respect themselves, you can find so much more value than any salaried man can give you. so i was afraid to trust my heart. first problem solved. i am no longer afraid. and it’s liberating! i know i can love and get broken and get back up and love again. how powerful is that? even if i get my heart broken again, i’ll be okay! to love without fear is so incredible.

second problem: i had no closure. i had no idea how he felt about me or where i stood. he never broke up with me – he just disappeared. according to he’s just not that into you he wasn’t that into me and i should take the hint, but i still honestly believe that he was crazy about me and had low self-esteem or trust issues or something, which are all very bad traits in a boyfriend i have learned from reading that book. also that book called him a coward, and that’s a turn-off. it’s a good book to read. i recommend it. anyways, i felt so terrible about breaking his heart that i had this terrible burden of guilt around my neck, choking me. i felt like i needed to see him again, to talk about our feelings and figure out where i stood and whether or not there was a chance we could get back together.

seeing him again definitely helped. he has a girlfriend, they are getting serious and they both seem happy. she seems like she is good for him. and she got really jealous around me, which reveals a few things (maybe she is insecure? i was hoping he would pick someone more confident…) but the most important is that she really loves him and values him which he deserves.

also, and this is what i hadn’t counted on: my perspective had changed during the time we were apart. when we were together, i saw only what i wanted to see. i was smitten by all of his good qualities, how loyal and honest and hardworking he was. i was completely ignorant of all the red flags i should have been picking up on. maybe i chose to be ignorant. i was young, imperceptive, naive, and blinded by love. when i saw him with fresh eyes, i was so aware of all the red flags. all the insecurities were so clear to me.

maybe listing all the reasons that he is not right for me will help. here is my list of red flags:

• he didn’t have the balls to actually break up with. he just refused to return my phone calls. that makes him a coward.
• he says he could never ever get married because his parents had a terrible marriage and the idea scares the shit out of him
• he tells a girl she is intimidating because she is ambitious
• he says he is afraid to have children because his dad beat him up terribly when he was a boy and he is afraid of losing his temper and hitting his kids
• he is afraid to meet my parents
• he tells me he isn’t good enough for me and doesn’t deserve me
• he says he is not afraid to die because if he dies no one will really care
• he doesn’t care about injuring himself while doing sports
• he is obsessed with fitness and controlling his weight, almost like an anorexic person needs control
• he believes that a long distance relationship has no chance of ever working out ever
• he is filled with fears and self-doubts
• he doesn’t believe that he can ever move
• he is afraid to integrate himself into society
• he is afraid to fight for what he really wants
• he isn’t a leader nor does he have a social conscience or care about contributing to make the world a better place

third problem: i was afraid to feel the heartbreak. as long as i was in denial and there was a tiny sliver of hope, no matter how tiny, that maybe, just maybe there was a teensy tiny chance that we would get back together again, i could avoid the pain because what’s the point of grieving something that you haven’t truly, finally lost yet? finally recognizing that he is committed to her and he is happy has really helped me to work through the pain. it’s been tough – sleepness nights, tons of adrenalin, tears during yoga class, difficulty concentrating at work. but i figure that if i just work through the feelings and let them move through me like waves i will be lighter afterwards. let me release the pain and guilt and be free!

and now i know that i can survive heartbreak, i can love freely without fear. that’s liberating.

• i would have regretted it if i hadn’t at least tried to find out whether or not he was single and whether or not he was serious
• i can live my life guilt free knowing that i never gave up on him and never let him down – it was his choice to settle down with another girl.
• i’m really glad that i checked up on him to find out whether or not he was happy. i love him so much and i care about him so much. the hardest part about all of this was that he was unhappy on the inside when we broke up, and i really cared about him so i wanted to make him happy. i’m realizing now that he had to become happy on his own. i felt like i failed at making him happy, and i felt guilty for not being there for him. i’m realizing now that i couldn’t make him happy if he had deep down big bad problems. i shouldn’t beat myself up over this anymore. he’s met another girl and he is happy now, so that’s a huge relief since i felt terribly responsible for ruining his life, even though i probably would have married him had he not had all of those red flags that i mentioned earlier.
• to be completely honest, i’m almost a little relieved that he met another girl. now i don’t need to be responsible for dealing with his low self-esteem and his cowardly and defeatist attitude towards life. ultimately, those are not the characteristics in a guy that are right for me. i’m realizing that a lot of the feelings i was lugging around were guilty feelings. i felt like he was too fragile to handle a heartbreak or something so i shouldn’t have let him down. lesson: get to know a guy well before getting romantically involved with him, just in case he is like a flashy corvette with a broken engine, and never get super intimately attached with a guy who isn’t strong enough to handle losing you.

Drinking wine and thinking bliss, is on the other side of this
I just need a compass and a willing accomplice
All my doubts that fill my head are skidding up and down again
Up and down and round again, down and up and round again.

Oh, I’ve had my chances and I’ve taken them all.
Just to end up right back here on the floor.
To end up right back here in on the floor.

Pennies in a well, a million dollars in the fountain of a hotel.
Fortune teller that says maybe you will go to hell.
But I’m not scared at all… hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm

The cracks in the crystal, the cracks in the crystal ball.

Sometimes you think everything is wrapped inside a diamond ring
Love just needs a witness and a little forgivness
And a halo of patience and a less sporadic pace and
I’m learning to be brave in my beautiful mistakes.

Oh I’ve felt that fire and I’ve been burned
But I wouldn’t trade the pain for what I’ve learned
I wouldn’t trade the pain for what I’ve learned.

Pennies in a well, a million dollars in the fountain of a hotel.
Fortune teller that says maybe you will go to hell.
But I’m not scared at all… hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm

Of the cracks in the crystal, the cracks in the crystal ball.

Irony, irony, this hate and love, hate and love
What it does to me, what it’s done to me.
What is done… done

Pennies in a well, a million dollars in the fountain of a hotel.
Broken mirrors and a black cats cold stare,
Walk under ladders on my way to hell, I’ll meet you there.

But I’m not scared at all, hmm… I’m not scared at all.

Bout the cracks in the crystal, the cracks in the crystal ball.

i think that love makes us blind, and oblivious to a lot of things. when we are terrified to get hurt, we are terrified to face the truth because truth can cut us deep, and it’s painful to take a hard sober look at our own actions and accept our mistakes. it’s also hard to admit that we have flaws and we are “good enough” to hurt people.

i think that admitting all my mistakes and listing all the reasons i wasn’t right for him is a first step. basically, i deserved to get dumped because i said some really hurtful things and made him feel small. i need to recognize that yes, i did deserve this heartbreak, and yes, i could have done things differently and he would have kept me around. i didn’t make him feel good about himself. i didn’t make him feel like i respected him or took him seriously as husband material. i didn’t have the courage to tell him that i loved him. i could have said more things to make him trust me. deep down i wasn’t anywhere near ready for commitment, and he probably wasn’t the right guy or i would have felt ready, so i need to accept responsibility for my actions and deal with the guilt of breaking his heart and let go and move on. how do you deal with the guilt of hurting someone you loved so passionately?

i will list all the reasons we weren’t right for each other, to better help me to understand why we are not together and accept it:

• i wasn’t ready for commitment or to settle down. i had big dreams of traveling the world and he wasn’t in a good place financially to come with me. he told me that he didn’t want to hold me back from my dreams and that he couldn’t keep up with me. looking back on all the traveling i’ve done and how my mind has opened from living on 3 different continents, would i trade the pain for what i’ve learned?

• because he was struggling with his career, i didn’t take him seriously as “husband” material. i actually told him this out of spite after he dumped me, but really i need to be with someone i admire and respect enough to take seriously, and he deserves to be taken seriously, which means i need to find someone who is not intimidated by any career success that i have. i was angry at him for calling me “intimidating,” – it hurt a lot – and he actually told me that my university degree was a waste of time, which was incredibly unsupportive. now i have an awesome job and he is still trying to finish school in his late 30s so look who wasted her time. but i need to take accountability for this: i had a snotty attitude and i probably made him feel small. i had a narrow view of the world and i thought that the playing field was incredibly level. i went to a very academic high school with wealthy peers, and when i was young i thought all those people were “normal.” it took a lot of growing up to realize that we don’t all have equal opportunities, and there is more to getting ahead than simply studying hard and being smart with your money.

• i didn’t understand love because he was the first guy i really intensely and passionately fell hard for on an emotional and intimate level, so i was really caught off guard by the intensity of my feelings. it hit me by surprise, and really threw a curve ball into everything i thought i understood about love. with my heart, i really saw the person he was underneath his skin, and all the good qualities (honest, loyal, sweet, passionate), but my brain kept playing devil’s advocate and trying to point out red flags (he’s struggling with his career, he doesn’t understand my career ambitions, he doesn’t want marriage or a family, he has no intention of ever leaving his small town or traveling with me). i guess deep down my brain knew he wasn’t the one, but my heart stubbornly burned on and refused to give up hope that he would change. it’s crazy how loves makes us want to change people who are almost perfect.

• he had made a lot of mistakes and bad financial decisions, including an intense amount of debt (something i have been cautious to never take on) and i had always envisioned myself settling down with someone who had his shit together. most divorces happen over financial arguments, right? i feel guilty now for being so judgmental instead of supportive, but at the time i was too young to truly understand social class differences and how people’s upbringings and economic opportunities impact their career decisions. he was seeing the world from a totally different perspective than me. he thought things were really tough. he also came from a completely different part of the country where the economic opportunities are a lot rougher, which i was too naive to understand. i grew up believing that if you work hard and study hard and trust yourself you will be successful, which works well if you really believe it. i reality, not everyone grows up seeing it work in action (they watch their parents struggle instead of watch them succeed), which really impacts their decisions. i was really snotty and judgmental when i was young, and i probably made a lot of people feel bad about where they were at in their career paths. i viewed people who skipped university as lazy, because i grew up believing that paying your own tuition came down to work ethic but i was too young to see that many people have many more obstacles than simply saving up some money and studying hard.

• different people have different priorities and values. some people really value having a job they love, while some people don’t really care what their work is as long as they are scraping by financially and have enjoyable leisure activities and good relationships with their family and friends. i always assumed that everyone wanted to have an awesome and rewarding “career” that they loved, but many people are completely satisfied with simply having a “job” that pays the bills. this is a choice and it is different for everyone and just because someone chooses to be “working class” and have a blue collar job, doesn’t mean that they wish they had an intellectually stimulating job. people do what is right for them and what is right for them isn’t necessarily right for me.

• i asked him if he wanted to get married and have a family one day and he said marriage was something he never wanted and he definitely never wanted kids. he was afraid that if he got in a committed relationship with a girl who wanted a family there would be pressure that he wasn’t ready to deal with. he is still not engaged. maybe he’ll change his mind when he is ready and i can’t take it personally.

• he lived in a very small town that he was afraid to leave because the big city is overwhelming. i lived in the big city because i didn’t want to leave all of the awesome job opportunities.

i guess we were in totally different places as far as our careers went, and we had completely different economic and geographical backgrounds, so we saw the world from completely different angles. we found common ground through really intense passion and intimacy, which is the part that is hard to let go of, and a passion for being active and spending time outdoors, but when we were out of the bedroom or the hiking trails and into day-to-day life, we didn’t match up or see eye to eye about the direction that our lives were headed.

to “let it go.” i think i’ll feel lighter and happier if i just move on and do my own thing with my own life my own way at my own pace. i can’t tell whether it’s hope or guilt that kept me wanting him back all those years… but it shouldn’t be this hard. if he’s too insecure to believe that he is good enough to be the guy that i share my future with… he’s probably not strong enough to be the man that makes me the happiest i can ever be.

I hear my name
I hear the trash you’re talking
In your sleep
The secrets that you’re keeping
A chick, that’s smart
Did you really think that you could keep her in the dark?

Does she purr?
Does she make it hard?
Hard to speak
Does she dress the part?
I’m sure she’ll take some getting used to
Darlin, she won’t ever be me

I felt the bite
Take a spit
Suck the poison out of me
I’ll make you beg
Make you come
To your senses
If you keep up the shit
Take the hit
Dig the grave
This is how it goes down
This is how it goes down

Gonna run
Gonna scream
Gonna crawl round on your knees
When you realize that no one’s gonna measure up to me
Doesn’t matter cause I’m over it now
This is how it goes down
This is how it goes down

I’m gonna rage
Stay out really late
I’m gonna hang with all my friends you hate
I may try that threesome
Better late than never and
Better without you

This is your future as I see it
You will be homeless, poor, and broken
She will have left you when she finds out who you are
You’re nothing but an extra, and baby I’m the star

I felt the bite
Take a spit
Suck the poison out of me
I’ll make you beg
Make you come
To your senses
If you keep up the shit
Take the hit
Dig the grave
This is how it goes down
This is how it goes down

Gonna run
Gonna scream
Gonna crawl round on your knees
When you realize that no one’s gonna measure up to me
Doesn’t matter cause I’m over it now
This is how it goes down
This is how it goes down

I suppose this is how the story goes, but
Ever since that door closed, I’ve been going (down, down, down, down)
The drain and the pain got me nauseous (down, down, down)
I should have been more cautious or clever
Whatever, you’ll never find a dude with a better headgame, and
You can take that both ways
You laughin’ like I’m playin’ wit your fingers up like oh ? (down, down, down, down)
Wish you would have a threesome without me I pull a O. G. (down, down, down)
And text you something incriminating pictures from my old days

I felt the bite
Take a spit
Suck the poison out of me
I’ll make you beg
Make you come
To your senses
If you keep up the shit
Take the hit
Dig the grave
This is how it goes down
This is how it goes down

Gonna run
Gonna scream
Gonna crawl round on your knees
When you realize that no one’s gonna measure up to me
Doesn’t matter cause I’m over it now
This is how it goes down
This is how it goes down

Somebody doesn’t like you
Cause you’re not such a bigshot dude
Might wanna rethink it through
Coulda asked me, I woulda told you the truth

Somebody doesn’t like you
Cause you’re not such a bigshot dude
Might wanna rethink it through
Shoulda asked me, I woulda told you the truth

i don’t feel “done” after writing my last entry. i thought i would feel lighter after just deciding to let this go and move on. however, after pouring my heart onto the page in my last entry, all kinds of passionate feelings have been awoken, and i’m starting to really wonder if i’m ready to let go, 100% done and forever. i still feel like it would be nice to talk to him, just to really truly have that final bit of closure and once and for all hear it from him that there is 100% not a chance at all of us having a future together.

it helped seeing him because i felt like i didn’t want him anymore, but at the same time he was so shy and awkward and uncomfortable around me that i couldn’t help but wonder if there is still a slight chance that i could convince him to share his life with me.

this is really confusing and hard for me right now since writing that entry stirred up a whole set of emotions that i thought i had worked through. now i am really uncertain where i stand and the mystery is killing me. why won’t he just sit down with me over coffee for one hour and either explain to me why we are not together or give me a second chance? i gave him my card with my number and email address fully expecting to hear nothing. i think it’s just hard not knowing any of the reasons for his actions. if he loves me so much why wouldn’t he at least try and get me back?

after writing the last entry i felt so much pain and grief over losing him that now i am really uncertain whether or not i want him back. i gave him my soul and i want it back. why is it so hard to let go and move on??? i met someone else that i am passionately in love with – why can’t that be enough to make me happy?

this is one demon that is very stubborn and hard to make peace with. i feel so many emotions all at once and it’s hard to straighten them out: guilt, regret, anxiety, curiosity about how he feels, grief, heart break, loss, nostalgia. oh, wouldn’t it be simpler not to have feelings???

i didn’t even know how to handle this. i finally just went up to him and said “hi.” from there we hung out for a while. it was awkward and i was nervous and shaking the whole time, but i wanted to prove to myself that i had the courage to be around him even though we weren’t together and he broke my heart into a thousand pieces and now he is dating a girl 10 years younger than him who can’t even spell (can you say “Natasha” from Sex and the City?). she was there and i shook her hand and smiled and tried my very very best to act sweet as pie. i wanted to prove to myself that i was strong and tough enough to accept his decisions and come to peace with the fact that we weren’t going to have a future together.

i had a million things in my head that i wanted to tell him about my feelings and how i had wanted him to be the one that i shared my life with and how i had wanted to have a future with him but i had never had the guts to tell him … and i wanted to tell him how sorry i was for hurting him and how deeply i had regretted not fighting harder for things to work out between us, and i wanted him to realize how badly it had hurt for me because he probably didn’t even clue into the fact that i had feelings too.

but i didn’t. i never said any of those things. i got the impression that he didn’t really want to be alone with me or talk about feelings, and i realized that it was probably just as painful and awkward for him as it was for me. i also realized that i probably shouldn’t tell him any of those crazy love confessions unless i was really serious – and by serious i mean ready to put my money where my mouth is. and by that, i mean i had to be willing to end things with my new lover in order to get a second chance… and you know what? i wasn’t. seeing the two men side by side, and feeling all my feelings at once, made me realize that what i have now is a better fit for me than what i had then. i’m still in love with the person he was 5 years ago, of course, and he will always occupy a special little corner of my heart, but he has changed and i don’t know him anymore. i would have to start over with getting to know him.

but what’s more – and this is the part that i was NOT banking on – is that i have changed. A LOT. more than i ever imagined i would change. and i saw things in him that i hadn’t seen before when i was young and naive and smitten. and blinded by love. i saw insecurities, discomfort, a lack of confidence, and a lack of courage. i saw fear. he was afraid to approach me, he was afraid to be alone with me, he was afraid to address our feelings and talk about our past. he was afraid to keep in touch with me, he was afraid to ask for me phone number, he was afraid to call me, he was afraid to pursue a friendship. he was afraid to offer me a second chance at loving him and he was afraid to accept the fact that we will not have a future together and let go of his feelings enough to be friends. i sensed a small amount of fear and insecurity 5 years ago, and i tried to be loving and encouraging and supportive, but i think i must have gained some sort of wisdom or perceptiveness or become better at reading people over the past few years, because i saw him in a different light. my memory of him (or my romantic imaginary fantasy) didn’t match up with the man i saw in front of me with my very own eyes.

and i drew this conclusion: i want a man who has the courage to fight for what he wants. if he had really loved me so much that it hurt to be apart from me, why didn’t he try and get me back? why didn’t he call or write or track me down or drop by my work or accidentally run into me on the street? why didn’t he have the balls to tell me how he really felt or what he really wanted? why was he so afraid of commitment – so afraid that he told me he “never wanted to get married to any girl ever?” why was he so afraid to be happy? why was he so afraid to let go, to feel vulnerable, to surrender his heart?

all these feelings are scary. terrifying. frightening. petrifying. i know this. i’ve felt them. i’ve found the courage inside of me to fall deeply and passionately in love with him and let myself go… and then feel all the pain from losing him, and even after knowing all that pain and loss, letting myself go all over again with someone else. now that my heart is here, i don’t feel sorry for him for hurting for losing me. i don’t feel guilty for breaking his heart. he had me. he could have married me. he didn’t fight for me. when i moved away for a few months for school, i wanted to make things work. he told me that long distance relationships were “too much work” and that it “wouldn’t be worth the effort.” then he refused to return my phone calls and acted so sad and heartbroken. well, he could have tried. i would have been worth the effort. i hope he regrets giving up on us because it was silly and cowardly. and i hope that he finds the courage inside of him to hold onto the next girl who works her way into his heart. i truly, genuinely, and deeply wish him all the love and happiness in the world.

but just not with me. i don’t want him anymore. i never in a million years imagined that i would feel this way about him, but i want a man made of courage, not a coward. i want a man who is strong and gutsy and passionate and confident, and loving and generous and sincere and authentic, who can give his heart to me wholly without being afraid and without holding anything back. if i can find that courage inside of me, i want to share my heart with someone who will share back, so we can both feel vulnerable together, and oh, what an adrenaline rush it is to take that plunge!!

so i never said all those things i wish i had said. i decided that i didn’t want to open a can of worms if i wasn’t sure how to get the worms back into the can. i’ve never said “i love you” to him. i just need to hope and trust that he could feel it anyways, after all those nights of passion and the way i touched him and the way i looked into his eyes. i really truly made love to him with my whole heart every night i spent with him and i didn’t hold anything back. we had such intense intimacy it scared the both of us. i’ve been with enough men to know that the passion we shared was rare and powerful. he was 8 years older than me and he had told me that no girl had ever made him feel that way.

i need to stop regretting not saying 3 stupid words to him. i need to just trust that he could feel that the passion we shared was real and i need to just believe that he could tell how i felt, that he could feel it in his heart, that he knew all along, even though i never actually said it out loud. based on how shy and awkward he was when he was around me, i’m sure many things were going on inside his head, and the gears were turning.

i don’t need to tell him. he knows. he feels it too.

i’m going to let this go. i’m going to cross this goal off as done.

i don’t want him anymore. i’ve found someone better :)

i never imagined i would but i did.

happiness is like a butterfly – the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. but if you turn your thoughts to other things it comes and sits softly on your shoulder.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I know the names of the kids who teased me in 1st grade. This is not healthy.

Last week I had a really bad day at work and the uber-boss is not thrilled with me, nor I with her. I can’t go back and change the past, nor would I change very much, acutally. I’ve been snarky about this uber-boss with my friends and family for the last week, not at work. I’ve got to let the snarkiness go, while remembering to watch my back. (Not only watch it, but straighten it)