More thoughts on Relationships

EDIT: While I've been writing this I notice there's a lot of anger, tears and resentment coming out. I guess it had to come out at some point. This is kind of ... intimate "Natalie needing to document these thoughts somewhere" writing, right here. It's not really for anybody else and while you could argue "well this is on the public space of the www" I really don't see why I have to justify myself to you, dear reader, because this blog? This blog is my private blog. If you're nosy, feel free to read it. But don't you dare get offended by what I've said here. These are things which still hurt and are very raw.

Obviously, I'm single - but I still think about 'the next relationship' that I'll fall into and ultimately, I always come up against the same set of bricks that build themselves up into a wall.

Firstly, even in the short space of eleven months, I've grown far too attached to doing my own thing, in my own space, spending my time alone. I can extend myself for the people who I feel deserve my time and attention and more importantly, I can choose when to do this. When I was in a relationship, I felt pressured to 'look after' him. He was pathetic; he was incapable of getting breakfast for himself or catching a train, or even holding a real conversation with me. I can't stomach people who aren't able to stand on their own two feet and I don't understand why the majority of men are capable of doing this ... until they have a woman to do it for them.

Here, the thought of being in a relationship where it's both necessary and compulsory to spend time together turns my stomach. I can't seem to find enough time to spend with my family, my sister, my (decent) housemate, friends both old, and new. I relish the precious two hours in which I speak to Willow before she goes to school. Spending time with a partner? No. No way.

Secondly, sex. I hate how men always have this expectation for sex. I don't particularly enjoy 'it' - I can't describe the sickening pit-of-the-stomach fear I get, even if it's been safe, even if it was fooling around and nothing much ever happened; the fear of pregnancy. A lot of people say that they suffer from paranoia. My paranoia is crippling ordinarily, but I have, on a number of occasions, worried myself so sick that my period came a whole week late. Worried myself into an insomnia that lasted three days. Worried worse when my period *did* come, because it was light and I thought I was only spotting. I wasn't, it came full force the next morning. I dislike sex, no, dare I say - I hate sex. I'm disinclined to partake in it. The lack of it ruins relationships so in effect you have to be having it if you want your relationship to last. I new the lack of sex was killing our bond, but I struggled to kiss him towards the end. I can't love somebody that way after not having seen him for months, if he never loved me back during the times in between.

Thirdly, I hate how dependant being in a relationship made me. I think I'm slowly learning that above all else, I'm my own person - but when I was in a relationship I expected him to look after me as much as I did him, so when he didn't, I felt very cheated. I hated how he would spend so much time with his female friends, but not me. I hate even now - that he comes up to Manchester so often, but when he was with me, it was such a 'chore'.

They say that it is always the woman who ruins the relationship. To some extent I agree with this statement, but it is also the man who lays the foundations for this ruin. He is the one who ignores her, makes excuses for himself - in turn this makes her paranoid, nag at him, eat away at the relationship until there's nothing left between them at all.

When I broke up with him, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. When people asked me if I was ok, I really was - the only emotion I felt was relief. Naive little me thought that heart-break was supposed to feel like that tightening of the chest I used to get when I thought 'oh, what if our relationship ends one day?' - it was unthinkable, and the thought of it really hurt and I called that feeling 'heart-break'. But that's not it. I have learned heartbreak is the inability to love somebody as fully as you did the first time. Love opens you up completely and lays you vulnerable, and when that trusting bond is severed you quickly cobble together walls around the wound with whatever you have to hand. Paper, straw, bits of fabric. Eventually they'll harden and form a husk around it. Your heart isn't broken in a painful way, it's broken in an inefficient, inability-to-function properly, way. "If I never love anybody ever again" I'll say to myself "That's fine, because I don't need anybody else but me to be happy."

( I find a certain irony that this is a sentiment echoed by another one of my characters, Kiesl. I hope I find some catharsis in helping him resolve his own misery )

I know that has to be a lie, so minutes later I'll add "I don't care who I end up loving, just as long as they love me back just as much"

This statement makes me both content, but also incredibly sad. Right now I don't feel there is ever going to be anybody suited to me for that, because I am most happy when I'm in a close intimate friendship than I am a relationship. I used to think there ought to be no difference between the two, but ... clearly my ex thought differently and now I just feel like I was stupid and naive and wrong.

Finally, I've been thinking about all of this a lot ever since I read something, and I'm not going to say what it was because if this blog hasn't already made people think less of me, then the source of my 'epiphany' will damn me even further. But I recall a conversation I held with a close friend of mine while reading it and the statement rings truer now than it did then;

W: "are you enjoying your book?"
N: "yes, this is ... exactly what I needed to read."

And perhaps I'm being presumptuous, but I found common ground between my situation and what I read there and while it didn't provide me with an answer, it was a comfort. At the same time I'm aware that this kind of thing happens to everybody at some point in their lives (apart from perhaps the very, very fortunate) and it's probably why heartbreak is such a big focus in people's lives. I hate how this diminishes the importance of what's happened to me in everybody else's eyes

"Oh, she broke up with her boyfriend. I've divorced my husband/broken up five times before now/my lover died"

This is why I have kept this entirely to myself. It doesn't matter to you, my reader, but I've realised that this really has affected me more than I thought it had. I don't bitch or whine or do spiteful things to get back at my ex, but while I'm a much stronger person for having ended this relationships, in some ways I am very, very broken. And that's what hurts the most. The fact I'm damaged property now. Above all else,

I hate how he damaged me.

So basically the TL;DR version of this is that, while I've gotten over *him*, I don't miss him, or want him back in my life, and I haven't since day 1 post breakup, I haven't gotten over the damage that relationship has done to me emotionally and I don't think I ever will. In the real world people expect prospective partners to be 'just right' and not have any emotional baggage, and if they do, you keep it to yourself, thanks. Everyone has gone through it, or gone through worse, and if you can't handle what's happened to you, tough shit, you're in the reject pile sweetheart 'cos the real world doesn't care. Excuse me, I'm fragile and I got broken and there isn't any glue that can fix that. Normal people pick themselves up and get on with it. Drama-seeking attention whores go on about it indefinitely. I'll bury this piece of me and I won't say a word on it, hell, I'll forget it's even there most of the time, but just remember that beneath every smile, every gesture I give to another person, every laugh, there's a great deal of damage that's been set aside.

Friends, family, curiosity at the world and self-betterment are what make my life rich and I can bury this broken part of myself away and pretend it isn't there. This entry was just to highlight and work through what it feels like to bring it to the surface and I hate how much it hurts, I really do. I hate how much my frustration at my inability to fix myself makes me cry so hard.

They say the average grieving period of a relationship is half the time the relationship lasted, and if that's the case I'd say I've technically got another seven months before I'm ready to try again. Right now I honestly don't think I'm cut out for another relationship for as long as I live. I hope I live a long time and this may be a foolish and youthful thing to say, but I don't think I've got it in me for another one.

Sorry.