No Answers

No progress on the new therapist front and I need to put it higher on the list of shit I need to do. I'm recognizing my patterns of depression... the binging show after show, the not eating regular meals at consistent times, the total lack of a sleep schedule and the general apathy. Forced myself to participate in the Friday group videochat with girls from grad school even though part of me wanted to bail. I'm glad I did for sure, I need to do more of that. Other times in my life where I knew I was allowing myself to wallow in the sad things I would distract myself with sports and activities but that's really fucking hard to do right now. Right now I can go like an entire week without actually spending time outside and that has certainly not been fucking good for me and my sanity. However I went for a super short run outside yesterday, it felt good, first time I ran since maybe April? My average daily steps have dropped to like 3,000 and my sleep has dipped below 6 hours...I've been taking naps but like not the helpful kind. Instead it's the ones that cause you to stay up too late and not actually correct your fucking sleep schedule. I still have not really made any head way in studying and it's hard to even understand why not when I know so well that this isn't the kind of thing you can wing and that without passing this test I can't move forward in my career. 

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing right now I just know that I'm not being a very loving person to myself. I'm not doing any of the things I should be doing to continue making this life of mine one that I want. I think that's why I am here tonight because yea I should probably be in bed already or maybe even doing some work stuff if I'm not sleepy, but a part of me knows if I don't take the time to sit and think through all of this and figure out what the fuck is going on with me, how am I going to fix it? How do I make it better? Why am I purposefully and knowingly sabotaging myself? Why do I allow my emotions to derail me so significantly? Why don't I seem to possess the discipline I so clearly need to become the version of myself I know I want and can be? 

I don't have any answers I just know that I think I've finally reached a breaking point with myself, and I'm sick of my own shit. I'm sick of being sad about losing someone that I never actually had. I'm sick of this story I keep telling myself that I'm good for the fun stuff but not the building a life with when there is quite literally always someone trying to be with me. It's frustrating I don't seem to reciprocate with the ones who actually want to try, but I have to fucking acknowledge that their existence and persistence in some makes this narrative I've been allowing to fester null and void. I talked to Shiloh on the phone on Friday, he has been seeing someone and yet the majority of the time he was telling me about her he kept comparing how it was with us and I honestly wasn't sure how I was supposed to be reacting. I wasn't sure if I was meant to be jealous and to say yea we were good for each other stop bothering with her or what. I was mostly drained when we talked, being home for a few days and interacting with way more people than I have been was a lot on my system. I don't know where his head is really at, but I know I've done a decent job at no longer considering him an option and moving him back to the friends basket and I don't think anything about right now makes me want to reconsider that. He's still in such fucking limbo in nearly every facet of his life and I'm tired of having to manage other people's feelings. The actor ghosted me after I was very blunt about how triggering the dynamic had become for me and low and behold, him ignoring me triggered me even more. To this day I can't understand how the man could just stop acknowledging my existence but at the same time I do? It's confusing...like I get that my existence and interaction with me only complicates his life, but no matter all the shitty aspects of all our history across the years, I know I could never be capable of ignoring him, or ever pretending I didn't care. I know part of why the lack of motivation and focus has been worse lately is due to being triggered back to all of this, so perhaps I have more concerted work to do on how do I actually let go of this because clearly I haven't. 

I know there's lingering feelings of the outcome of it all being unfair, but is that objectively true? When I sit in that feeling of unfairness it's because I don't think I ever got the chance to truly be with the man and there's this voice that says if I had, if I had been given more than a few months of regular contact, cuz that's all I ever got during each of the 4 stints, just a few months, and they were always in secret, some to a lesser degree, but still never anything fully out in the world, that maybe he could have had the chance to see everything I could see when I pictured our future. I think a part of me still believes that if he could have seen how different a relationship with me was from what he had resigned himself to, he would have chosen me. However, objectively, me feeling like it's unfair I never got that chance is kinda bullshit because if I was playing fair and by the rules of marriage, I'd have never interacted with him like that at all. I think I reject that aspect of it because it sucks being reduced down to nothing more than a mistake because somehow that causes me to feel less than enough when the very gift he gave me after my marriage was feeling like being just me was more than enough. I think it's that contradiction that fucks with my head and makes it hard to process everything that has happened over the past six years. Way back when it started, he played a major role in helping me see my worth again, but by the end of this back and forth hellscape I felt more worthless than I had in my marriage. I hate even admitting that now because somehow I still think the world of this man yet I have to acknowledge his actions have caused me immense pain. Yet how much of his actions are truly reprehensible and how much of the hurt is because I had expectations that weren't grounded in the reality of the situation and the circumstances. It's hard for me to fully explore that, it's hard not to be biased. He always tried to be honest with me, he didn't always do a great job of actually expressing what he was going through, and how he felt, but in his own fucked up way I know he tried to protect me from himself. Part of me knows he genuinely believed he was a dead end for me and would never be able to give me what he thought I deserved. I don't think he ever fully grasped how hard it is for me to feel like myself around others, to not feel like I'm trying, like I'm putting on a show to a degree. As I've gotten older I definitely have managed to find more people where it doesn't feel like I have to try all that much, but I've yet to come across a connection that felt like the one with him. With him I just existed and I don't really have another way of putting it. I think that's a big part of why I don't like how things ended with him just no longer responding and never a goodbye and feeling like nothing more than a mistake, because I once believed how he made me feel about myself, I did the same for him and this mutuality was so important to me and how things stand now it makes it difficult to believe that. I think that I have the need to believe it was real because if it wasn't, what am I holding out for? I got a glimpse of it with this actor guy, but again he has disappeared and I feel like none of it actually happened and it makes me feel a little crazy to be honest. If none of it was real, what the fuck have I been doing for 6 years?!?! Like what has been the point to all of this and why do I need there to be a reason? When I asked him why he had been hanging out with me during the 4th stint that I didn't understand the point of it when he kept saying he didn't want a relationship and yet we talked every day and hung out once a week and he had even told me he loved me, he said that he was doing it because it was fun and that it was as pointless as everything else. This was during the conversation that would result in me asking for space and acknowledging I needed to just be friends and then it would quickly turn into him ignoring me. I remember worrying shortly after this that perhaps he was depressed, and maybe he was, cuz that sentiment that everything is pointless resonates right now. 

I feel like I'm rambling now and I'm not sure if this was productive, I don't really feel like I have any more answers but perhaps just acknowledging I have all these questions is enough for now. I think I wanted the actor to be this answer, to really allow me to move foward from everything with the man and instead it has brought all of the pain and hurt right back to the surface. I've cried myself to sleep the last three nights actually and instead of wishing none of it had happened, I found myself wishing I could be me six years ago just for a second so I could feel the rush of it all again when he kissed me for the first time. There have been moments when I feel myself getting sad about the loss of it all where I tell myself that maybe it's over now but those moments happened and they will exist for eternity and take solace in that. Shiloh showed me I was capable of actually letting myself see a future with someone else again and the actor showed me there are people out there that share even more common interests than I had with the man and how fun that can be, and even though both of them also hurt me, and I'm clearly still dealing with the other hurts they have triggered, I think at my core I feel the most optimistic I ever have that I really do still have an epic love waiting for me.

Still just dreaming...

Welp I must have fucking jinxed myself cuz honestly only a few days after that last post I had a ridiculously long Thursday where I accidentally locked myself out after trying to get a better signal on a work call and then being worried about Lady getting out and then quickly closing the front door with nothing in hand aside from my work cell and my notebook...which means I didn't even have my sister's number and my mom's is the only one I know by heart these days lol. After being locked out for four hours and utilizing instagram dms and my work phone thankfully lasting long enough before dying, my sister's best friend that lives pretty close to me grabbed me and we went to my sister's to help her pack and I could grab my spare keys. I finally get home a little after ten and I have video messages in facebook messenger from "my peace" *largest fucking eyeroll humanly possible* telling me that he has nothing to give and that while I think he's right for me, I'm not right for him right now because he's not even right with himself. I've gotta be some kind of a fucking magnet for men who are just not emotionally available...and clearly so over eager to have a person in my life I'm not picking up on the signs that have to fucking be there that it's not actually mutual. I've felt pretty fucking deflated the last week and a half. 

We talked more this past Monday night on the phone for a few hours and he apologized profusely for not waiting to tell me all that in person and that he just had to acknowledge that he clearly has some PTSD from his last relationship and needs to get into therapy. We agreed to get lunch together the next day and I felt so much better as soon as I saw him and we hugged for a very long time. Lunch was nice, the banter was still there, he even kissed me... I didn't want things to be over, I was excited to actually fucking try again, and said that I'm happy to go as slow as he needs to, but things feel weird. I just don't understand how things changed so quickly. I felt so blindsided and it certainly fucking triggered me back to when the man would do this to me, I would get that feeling in the pit of my stomach something was wrong and then wham out of nowhere he'd quit on me again and push me away entirely. I feel so much like I did with the man in general now,  especially when I really didn't know where I stood, and what I meant to him, and if he wanted to see me and should I reach out? Just so much fucking over thinking. I hate this. I hate the way it makes me feel about myself. I just want to be enough. I want someone to want to try as much as I do...it feels like I am even more sad right now than I have been because I got a glimpse again of what it's like to have someone. Right now we said that we would focus on ourselves until I take my PE in mid September and he gets into regular therapy but things aren't over. Honestly though I can't tell if there's anything worth salvaging...

I'm struggling to determine how much of what I'm feeling right now is directly related to the current circumstances and how much is just all the years of being in a fucked up limbo like this with the man and how much it hurt and it's being triggered hard core. The man came back and left again so many times that when I didn't hear from him for a few days or so, or it was just super stunted conversations, it was SO fucking hard not to jump to the worst conclusions, it made me a crazy and dramatic person. I know my reactions to all that made things more difficult than they needed to be, but I can't be that hard on myself because he never gave me the reassurance that it was safe. If things are going to make it any longer with... ugh I can't even call him my peace right now...actor feels more fucking accurate cuz I honestly don't even know how much of any of it was real...I definitely need some extra reassurances. Cuz that last sentence shows where I'm at, I don't trust any of it anymore and it sucks because I want to. I want to believe that just like I've experienced across the years, as I've started to let someone new in, issues from my marriage have often been triggered and it's a process to be aware, and to not project on to someone new. I told him that I am in full support of therapy and that it will really help him, but that there are some things that can't be fully healed from unhealthy relationships until you're in a healthy one and that he doesn't have to go through this alone. At the same time though, I remember how I felt after the man ended things on his birthday in 2018 where the core of the conversation was that he wasn't ready for a relationship, he didn't have the capacity for it. We talked about pretending things were still long distance, to relieve the pressure but I quickly understood you can't force someone to be ready. So I said we could be friends, but he became cold and talking felt so forced, and eventually he just stopped responding. That's basically how things went in March of 2019 as well when I asked for space and again said we can try friendship... it honestly still blows my mind that someone I had such a deep connection with and had so many intense memories with across 5 years was cool to just ghost me in the end, never an actual goodbye. That's my biggest why from all that, why didn't I deserve a goodbye? Or an acknowledgement of what we were or that I mattered to him? 

So clearly I triggered the actor, and this dynamic right now is triggering me, so is there hope? Is there a point to interacting right now when it doesn't feel easy anymore? It feels measured and calculated. I'm finding myself sending way more illicit photos, using my sexual energy to try and draw him back in and I don't think that's a good sign. It's making me feel a tad desperate and fuck that. I haven't heard from him all day today even though I know he has off. I texted him a cheeky photo this morning wishing him a good day and nothing. I'm trying to just tell myself he told me he was taking the day for himself, but I have that same sinking feeling that things are off...I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I want to believe that we truly did click the way I felt we had and that this is just a part of the process of letting someone in after you've been deeply hurt. I stalked through his facebook a tad last week and he has a whole album dedicated to this girl. He really fucking loved her, and it feels clear he had hoped she was his forever. You would think all the hurt my heart has felt I would have learned to not jump all the way in so fucking quickly but I just don't seem to work that way. The awkward yeti comics about the brain and the heart always make me think about the man and myself. I am so very much that fucking heart and the brain always reminded me of him. I've been thinking about him more, not only because things with the actor have been triggering, but it's that time of year where I can never seem to escape the memories of how we started. I wonder if he still thinks about me at all...

What I hate the most about right now is that being sad about this shit has also impacted my capacity to be a decent employee... I've been crying a lot and needing to escape into other worlds and thusly binging through a lot of shows. I fucking hate that though, because work is one of those aspects of my life where I like my job, and not doing well at it is all on me and I've been distracted enough the last two years because of shit with my twin. But the fact that our society likes to pretend that your work life and home life are these two distinct things is bullshit. We are all human and our lives are just our lives and work is a big chunk of it, but your emotional life, that doesn't just have a switch, especially if you're someone like me who feels a lot and deeply. Yet all I keep hearing is the man telling me I'm the least disciplined person he's ever met and I make him sick.  He said that after I had owned up to telling a co-worker of ours about our history and he was majorly pissed at me... but even though I've been trying to work on being more disciplined I still feel like a piece of shit right now. It's seriously been making me wonder if I love my job as much as I believe I do...if I did, wouldn't it be easier to stay motivated to do it even though I'm sad? 

I truly love living alone, but it's a lot more isolating in the time of COVID and now that I don't have the actor making plans and breaking up that isolation, my sister is really the only option but I'm trying to give her space as she gets acclimated to living with her bf. I'm not doing particularly great right now and perhaps it's time I find a new therapist... maybe something remote so that the next time I move (cuz who the fuck knows when it comes to my life) I won't have to start over again. Blah is how I feel and just jealous of me from the last entry. She was legit happy, and it really was nice to experience that after so long of just dreaming about it.