Mystery

To Mary: Late night venting

I've been torturing myself tonight by reading messages Brian and I exchanged when things were good. I used to write him a lot. And even though he wasn't good about writing back or even talking to me to follow up, I still wrote him. I trusted that our feelings were mutual. Writing to him - that was how I communicated to him.

When did I stop writing? I think it was half way through the relationship, when I decided to take a break from school.

His feelings for me started to change then. His respect for me started to dwindle. Without respect, there can't be love. It's just not sustainable without respect. Sure enough, several months after, especially after February, things really started to change in very subtle ways. I believe that he still really tried to stay in love with me during those months, but he had a hard time dealing with staying connected with me. He had a hard time understanding what I was going through. He was also wrapped up with the idea that it "wasn't in the deal" for him to "support me" financially -- aka. to live with him rent free until I found a job (which I did), aka. to help me out. The "perfect girlfriend" suddenly became a liability.

And because I was depressed about my own situation to begin with (school problems were caused by old problems, starting with the rape), I was ultra sensitive to his how he was judging me, which made me feel even worse. In the end, I just stopped telling him anything about me. It wasn't because I didn't have anything more interesting going on in my life anymore since I stopped school (he mistook this as me starting to become uninteresting); I just ... got tired and gave up on trying to tell him, and decided to wait for "better days" instead.

But the depression sank in. I stopped wanting to do anything, stopped being active in my body and mind, ... but started being grumpy and uncomfortable. All of this, he mistook as me being lazy and content with my life living at his house - yet, I was anything BUT content. I just lost interest in living my own life because I ceased to see light in it and I could solicit not enough support from him, my then closest ally. Our fights became more intense. Our relationship experienced a continental drift.

And because he didn't understand what was going on with me and had made assumptions about who I was (that I have changed and have become lazy), he decided that this relationship wasn't for him, that it's "not supposed to be this hard".

Well, but if he had asked, or wondered about the situation from a different perspective or point of view, he would have (obviously) found a different way to negotiate our "relationship crisis". I feel that this had been a giant misunderstanding.

But of course, it takes a certain type of person who has a certain type of life experience to look at things from a different perspective to begin with. He wasn't someone like that, so I guess things wouldn't have worked out anyway.

I just wish that he could have looked at it - and me - differently. Now, I find that I have to fight to stay positive about myself because of how much (or how little, rather) he valued me. Can't help it, no matter how well I know how much I value. The price we all pay for love, ... right?

But think: just a small "what if I thought about things differently" at the beginning could have made all the difference! Just a "what if". We had a lot of potential. Now they're all gone because of just those two little words. Wow.

Still, today, no matter how resentful I am towards him, I continue to yearn for the one day when we can resolve this misunderstanding. I still hope that one day, we can finally come to an understanding, an "OH, so THAT'S what really happened!" He is a good person who made some bad decisions (of recklessly hurting me). I also feel like we've been victims to being "lost in translations". I still love and admire those things that I loved and admired about him - I guess at least my heart was pure when I fell in love with him. I still secretly hope that we can be friends.

To me, the mystery really is: what could happen to a person to make them want to be mean to someone else? What could have been going through is mind, what could have influenced him to turn on my like that?

I guess I'll have to wait and see. Maybe I'll understand better as I go through with life.