From Karma, with love

Two months later, I find myself still asking why it ended? What went wrong? Did I mean anything to him? Why the sudden games and inability to come at me with the honesty that was one of the things that I cherished most in him? Was it all just a game from the get-go? Riddled with all these questions and being driven to a point where I am unable to let go and just move on, I opted to search for closure - well, answers that I hoped would give me the closure I needed to be able to move on. So I reached out and asked for a meet-up, to which he agreed and he gave me answers. It's painful to realise that I may not have meant anything to him and was no more than a much needed stepping stone to a place where he finally realised that he had things in his life that he needed to urgently sort out. But it doesn't hurt as much as I would have imagined it would. Maybe I'm still flooded with a sense of relief to all my before unanswered questions and will be hit by the hurt that I somehow believe should come with the knowledge that I was a past-time. Or, as I had feared throughout our involvement with each other, just a buffer to soften his blow from his just ended relationship and something to keep him busy until he moved to his next relationship. But maybe it really is something I can deal with. When our involvement with each other started, and throughout its short-lived life, I held the belief that I was nothing more than a rebound that catered to his sexual urges. And I was fine with it. When things changed and he made more of our arrangement, well, yes, my feelings changed and  a misguided wish that I was indeed more than a transitional quenching of his sexual thirst was born inside of me. When again things changed I was left wondering what I had done. I was left trying to figure out what we were all about in the first place. What had I done wrong? He had thrown accusations at me that I just could not accept responsibility for because they were simply far-fetched and at the time, and thereafter as well, felt as if he had just desperately grasped at anything he could find to fling at me. Now I am not saying that I was Ms. Perfect, but as I did not assume responsibility for his randomly crafted accusations, I needed to know what I had done to make him come at me with such accusations and what had driven us apart. Well after our conversation, where he echoed the words of a friend's theory on what had happened and said that it wasn't about me but him (yes, the whole "it's not you, it's me") I felt a peace from all the question-rich turmoil that has gripped my every waking thought these past two months. Contrary to him, though, I do regret our involvement with each other. There were wonderful moments, some of which I had longed for for the longest time, but I would honestly give them all away if I could go back to the time where we occasionally met at friends' parties and said not much more than hallo to each other. I understand that he needed to have gone through everything he went through to get to this path of self-discovery that led to self-repair, but as much as he claims it had nothing to do with me, I was involved and I did get hurt and I'm the only one who seems to still be having a rather difficult time getting over what we had and the moments we shared. So I do wish I could turn back time's hands and not have developed the feelings for him that I did and not have shared all those moments we shared. Even though I am unable to go back in time, I do feel a little more at ease. Mostly because, I guess, I see this as Karma paying me back for once upon a time being him and this guy being me in that situation.

A few years back I was walking around holding the pieces of my heart, trying desperately to glue them back together. I decided to one-night-stand away my pain and went home with a guy I met at a club. Well it didn't quite work out as a one-night-stand as he laid out his wishes to see me again. I don't know why I complied, but we met again, and again, and again. I did make it clear that I was not interested in a relationship and he said he was fine with that. But I could tell from his actions that he wasn't. We had sex and we hang out but for me he was just a way to distract me from my now-no-longer-boyfriend. I found it sickening whenever he looked at me with expressions that showed feelings for me and would inwardly shiver in disgust whenever he held my hand. A couple of times after we'd just had sex he'd smile at me and stroke my cheek and I just wanted to wash myself clean of all the vomit I had just thrown up inside. At a certain point my ex contacted me and asked me back. I was torn apart trying to decide what to do. I found myself at a forked-road with one path leading to a life where I'd never find a love like I was now considering giving up, a life where the sex would always leave me wishing I had gone back to him because it would never measure up to the sex we had. The other path led to a magical kind of sex, but a life where we would constantly argue about everything from finances to raising kids to breast-feeding in public because I was too equality-aware a woman in contrast to his club wielding caveman of a man that he was. Being the kind of person that believes in being honest with a partner and giving them the choice to staying or leaving after telling them I want nothing more than sex, I told my back-fired one-night-stand that my ex wanted me back and I didn't know whether or not I would go back. This made him shower me with more goo-goo eyedness and it was simply revolting. He told me he wanted me. He looked like I had just crushed his heart. His pain felt tangible. So I took the cowards' train and simply started to ignore his calls and txts. Pretty immature. And that was that. I felt guilty about it after some time and foolishly believed that that was all the punishment for my behaviour that I was going to receive.

Well, that's not quite how Karma works, is it? No, instead she waited and gift-wrapped my punishment when I least expected it. She made sure I liked him so much that this hope was rekindled; a hope that the road I had opted for when standing where they forked wouldn't lead to bad sex for the rest of my life after all, that I would once again have the opportunity to find the kind of love I had lost. And then when that hope had found sure footing, it would be snatched away from me, leaving me feeling like I had left my attempted one-night stand feeling. And in the way I had used this man to satisfy my sexual needs and as some sort of healing balm for my broken heart, I found myself too, amounting to nothing more than the sexual quenching of a sexual thirst and a healing balm for a man's broken heart.

And that I am able to deal with. That I can accept because I got exactly what I deserved.

Imperfectly perfectly imperfect

I watched a show where relationships were compared to drugs in one episode. Take the drug away and on come the withdrawal symptoms. Post-break-up feelings were equated to drug withdrawal. Makes sense, right?

Talking to a friend about a guy I was in a situationship with, I compared him to a flame. He was my flame. I was drawn to him but felt like it wouldn't end without pain, but I kept not pulling away. So yeah, lame as it sounds, he was my flame. And it ended in pain.

I wasn't in love with him (though I probably could be, and really deeply, at some point) but I fell deep in like with him. As with every situationship, it was complicated and confusing and exciting and held promise for so much good. It moved a way too fast but it felt so damn good. And then this and that happened and then it was over and there was pain and anger and frustration and blame and anger and sadness and anger and thinking it all through which brought with it doubt and anger and relief and then more anger and not to mention the countless tear drops; the silent ones that trickle down the cheek in single file, the really strong ones that come out with this great force, causing your entire body to tremble and all you can do is hug yourself and wait for it to stop, the phantom tears that get stuck inside your eyes but other than that every other action says you're crying. Then you have all these questions you ask yourself and you try and make sense of everything but you just find yourself going round and round in circles none the wiser. First hours, then days, then weeks and then over a month of all this cursed feeling and you wonder how? How are you exposed to such an array of emotions when you weren't even that deeply involved? You'd know if you were, right? You just want it to end. And you want him back. But then again you go back to a certain question; how?

How do you go back to before? Before where there was honesty and a clear communication line? Before where it was real and there were no games? Before where you believed in what he showed you he felt? Before where you were trying to look past your general doubts and overcome your trust issues? Before where you wanted nothing more than his perfect imperfections? How do you go back to before he opened a gate of half truths and outright lies? How do you go back to before he showed you that there is a dodgy side to him that justified your initial misgivings about him? How do you restore your admiration for his depth and honesty when it has been tarnished by his shallowness and deception? How do you go back to not just seeing his imperfectly perfect imperfections? So you want him back more than anything in the world right now but then what? Because he took what was good and made it dirty. So how do you look at him the same? How do you even feel the same about him? But there is just that chance that what he felt was real. There is that chance that you would be able to give it all a fresh start. There is the chance that you both have a chance, or rather a second chance, that could work. But, what are the odds of that happening?

Where once I had an ex who during the relationship and after felt like a whirlwind, he felt and feels like a drop of ink spreading out on blotting paper. Whatever feelings inside of me that were inspired by him started small but quite fast they spread and consumed me and after we were done, just like the positive feelings, the post-break-up feelings started small and now I'm consumed.

I didn't believe I was hooked, but he was my drug and now that I can't get my high I'm having a hard time dealing.

And just the way a moth can't resist a flame, I'm still drawn to mine. Despite the burn, there's a part of me that still holds admiration for him. That part still wants to be wrapped in his arms. That part wants to find comfort from all this pain in his embrace. But it's all just deranged, wishful thinking. Or maybe not?