If you can’t live it, you don’t deserve it.
Posted by: Rich | Championable in Life, LoveI just had a delightful Facebook conversation with an ex-girlfriend. Back then, she was a wonderful, somewhat troubled girl with great smarts and a fabulous heart. She’s happily married, living in CA, and designed the interface for two of the greatest applications of the internet age. If I told you which ones they were, you’d both plotz and be able to identify her. So, alas.
If it weren’t for this woman, I wouldn’t be with Maggie today. Strange but true. She was integral to the process. And me? If we didn’t have this brief ricochet in just the manner we did, she might still be in Jersey, instead of riding an unbelievable wave of fabulous success in CA. Thank you, God, for important interludes.
This post isn’t about her.
This post is about Elizabeth. She was 8 years older than me, and I was madly in love with her. I’ve never mentioned her on this blog before. Probably, it’s 98% because “My present life has enough to talk about” and 2% shame.
Back then, I had no boundaries.
Back then, I believed that not telling everything was a sign of betrayal.
Back then, if you didn’t agree with me, EVERYONE ELSE HAD TO. Which meant, of course, that everyone knew everything about our business.
Our problems were very different, and utterly contradictory. She had incredible intimacy issues, and I took those issues personally. I had commitment-phobia in the first place, and her problems would combine with mine to result in frequent breakups, a 1-month relationship with another woman, then an inescapable desire to be with her again.
Repeat x 10. I believe, in the end, I broke up with her 8 times and she broke up with me 3 times.
I was 21 when we started dating. She was 29.
There are things I have not talked about on this blog, and probably won’t. Things from decades ago that shaped who I was, and influence who I am now. With Maggie, and my children, I have overcome the worst of these events to the point that they don’t do much damage to anyone. I have my negative quirks, that’s for sure, but they aren’t, God willing, going to blow anything up. I wouldn’t trade the life I have now for anything, which means I have to accept the past.
But I can’t always do that so easily.
There are two things from my past that still make me ashamed, that make me feel decayed, that make me flash to a state of Less Than. One of them is how I couldn’t respect the sanctity of the relationship I had with this woman.
I was madly in love with her. But I failed to live that love. And if you can’t live it, you don’t deserve it.
I had what she needed. I had the spirit that could have helped her. I had a perspective she couldn’t see, and positive energy she could feed off of to pull her through some very dark tunnels. I could bring her into the light.
If I was in a crowded room with my back to the door and she walked in, I could immediately feel her. Not just feel her, but know what mood she was in. I could literally feel what she felt from about fifty feet away. It scared her sometimes. Me, too.
It was like we were wired together.
But I wasn’t strong enough, man enough, grown up enough, or de-fucked-up enough to understand how to have a real, respectful relationship. Through my inability to stand on my own two feet, I hurt her desperately.
She offered me a lot, as well. She saw what my Father was, and was capable of doing. She taught me how to be a boyfriend. How to date. How to have dinner. How to do things together. And, most of the time, she was a beautiful, gentle, and artistic spirit with a flair for the short phrase.
I left her a message a few years back, as part of the 9th-Step amends process. I was going to tell her what I did wrong. She never returned my call, and it’s not my place to follow up.
As my old sponsor told me, “Usually, the best amend you can make to an ex-girlfriend is to never talk to her again.”
So, Elizabeth. I’m sorry I wasn’t ready for you, but I’m so glad that I knew you. I owe you so many thanks for getting me ready for Maggie. You primed me for my future, and you started me on the long, painful road to freedom.
I can only hope that I helped you, too
I am forever in your debt.
Love to all. Even you.
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“thanks for getting me ready for Maggie”
Ouch. I was with you… all the way up to there. And then I felt this searing pain rip through my chest all of a sudden. I imagined someone saying that to me and… damn. Ouch.
It’s tempting to think we can save someone else. “Bring them to the light.” I don’t know. You may be right. Show them a light maybe, but don’t they have to walk to it themselves?
Anyway. Hi!
Maybe what you take away from some relationships is the whole point. That connection you spoke of is very powerful and scary when you’re young. If you’re not ready for it, it can be like a noose, if you are ready for it, it can seem magical. Come to think of it, even at my age, it’s scary.
nice!
Rich,
This post allowed me to see something I’d been missing about something in my own history, and how to leave it in the past.
Cheers
Aurelius
It irks me that usually the people we can feel like that aren’t the people we end up with. I don’t know why but man it just kills me. We’re lucky to have people like that who whack us into a vague shape that we can work to perfect. Good thing to think about. Thanks.
Incredible, intense post. Tough to read in some spots but all the more valuable because of it.
You were young, and had suffered a lot, and that shaped who you were and what you did. You’re probably never going to get completely over it, because for the really intense, fucked up endings, there’s never total closure. You go about your life, which is happy and fulfilling and just what you’d want it to be, and then that cloud comes back down and that hand squeezes around your heart, and you can’t breathe for a second. And it wouldn’t really matter if she had replied to you and you had gotten to ask her for her forgiveness, because you can never change the past. You might have both felt more peaceful, and that would have been great, but I can almost guarantee that you’d still feel intermittent regret.
And Kizz, the reason we usually don’t end up with the people we are like is because we’d probably kill them or they would kill us. You start out saying, “Oh, you’re JUST like me! (swoon)” and then it turns it to, “Oh FUCK, you are JUST like me! (grimace)” You’re attracted to people who reflect yourself back to you, because you feel that they understand you, but the people who complement each other are the ones who usually stay together.
I battle with my own past and I really related to your ‘Less Than’ comment. This was powerful, Rich.
Just catching up. Read back through some of your entries, and you seriously rock.
Take care and thanks for asking after me. Lit the proverbial fire under my blogging ass and I’m grateful.
Oh Rich I have someone in my past too that I could feel - in fact just in the last week he sent me a text message from someone else’s phone, after not having talked to him in soooo long, a one word message “Talk” and I KNEW it was him because i could FEEL him.
My dear friend, it’s truly truly not that you were not anything enough to “save” her. That was HER place at HER time in HER life. Perhaps it wasn’t meant that she would be “saved” or “pilled through” at that time. When it IS her time, the right Savior will appear.
What a lovely person you are.
Oops - I mean “pulled through”. Hope you could get that. (laughing at myself)
Everything that happens to us, every relationship, encounter, and experience, is an opportunity to learn something. The way I see it, we can either learn or choose not to, and that’s no one’s responsibility but ours. I think we all have “right person, wrong time” stories - you met Elizabeth just when you needed to, and that relationship was integral to your growth. How wonderful of you to recognize that gift.
I strongly believe that we ALL have times in our past that we are ashamed of.
You’re right; experiences from our past - both good and bad - shape us into what we are today.
To paraphrase Richard Bach: What we DO with those experiences is completely up to us.
An experience to relish and remember..very cathartic.
“Usually, the best amend you can make to an ex-girlfriend is to never talk to her again.”
Tough to argue with that.
There’s a reason hard-earned wisdom is hard to earn, huh?
Thanks, Rich.
Rich,
This was just what I needed to read tonight. You don’t frequently post about deeply personal topics on here, but when you do, I feel that it is always more than worth it.
Thank you very much for sharing on a topic that I wish I could not relate to as well as I can. Maybe someday I’ll be able to make a post like this…
-Chaim