Processing

A friend of mine said something very helpful. Either Jack will realize that he wants to be with me or he will realize he is fine without me, but either way is a win for me. If the first, then he may ask to try again, and I may be willing to as well (my mind is not made up on that, and it doesn't need to be. For all intents and purposes, we are done, and I'm not going to stop living on the slim chance of a 'maybe.'). If that happens, I could be certain of my place in his life, because he would choose me and be less likely to take me for granted again. If the second, then it's good for me to know now before I get any further invested.

She also mentioned that I know what a respectful, non-abusive relationship is like now and that will help me get out of the patterns that I always seem to be stuck in. I'm not entirely sold on that at this point, though. On one side, he was wonderful and I was happy. But I was happy in my ignorance. By his own admission, he lied on more than one occasion. I never saw this coming, I had no idea that he was thinking about SomeoneElse when we were together. This, of course, makes me feel like an idiot. Apparently there were signs I should have seen. When I told him I had totally missed them he said, "I guess I'm a good liar." No matter how you look at that, it means there were lies, or a lie, in the wonderful relationship I thought I had. That's not respectful. It makes me question the entire relationship. He said it was always there, but I don't know how deep it went - how often or when or how much he was wishing I was SomeoneElse.

I mentioned yesterday that I wish the last 18 months of my life didn't happen at all. I hate feeling this way, but that's why. It's because I don't know if the wonderful relationship I thought I had was really there, or if it was all built on his lie. He said it was really there, but frankly I have no reason to trust his word. After all, he said he is a good liar.

That's probably the hardest part. Did I just manage to get myself into another unhealthy relationship based on a lie that I was too stupid to see? How much of that time was he really with me? Am I doing myself a disservice by clinging to the memory of the thing that I thought was wonderful, and ignoring the fact that there was a lie underneath it? I can't answer those and probably never will. I love him, I suppose I can hold on to my part of that memory at least. He said he loved me. Well, maybe so. I don't know if that's something else he was lying about. I can't even tell you if that's what I felt. I thought I was feeling him express love, but what do I know? Having never been in a loving relationship before him, maybe I just saw what I wanted to see and called it his love for me. After all, there were times when I thought Robin was expressing love, when he was really expressing dominance. What do I know? I'm probably never going to know the answer to that either.

Do I want to think that I just spent the last year and a half not actually being loved by the man who said he loved me? Of course not. I hate that these thoughts are in my head at all. I want to believe that he loved me at least a little like I love him. I want to believe that his mind was with me when we were together (I know this part to not be true, at least not always). I want to believe that we're stronger than this. I still believe that, but a relationship isn't going to work if only one person wants it to.

He did say that sometimes he wondered if the flaw was in our relationship, since he wasn't happy in it. Nothing was missing from my end, except maybe the truth that he withheld, so I really can't help him with an answer to that one.

I have learned something. I've heard people talking about being broken-hearted, or talk about their heartache. I always thought that was a figurative description of an intangible feeling. It's not. My heart literally aches. I didn't know it was possible to feel like that organ, which really is unrelated to the feelings at hand, could just break into bitty bits at any moment. I've been hurt before, I've even been broken (in a very different sense), but nothing has ever felt like this. Add the red, sore eyes and stomach and migraine from crying too much and I'm just a ball of pain. And with the questions that I have about the relationship and what I thought it was, and not knowing if it really was, it's hard to think that it was worth this pain.

Sometimes, I think it was. In the brief moments I have of believing that I actually was in a mutually loving, respectful, non-abusive relationship. Then, yes, the joy of being loved by someone you love- if even for a moment - is worth that literal heartache that has taken me completely by surprise. Those times when I'm unsure of what my relationship really was, and the role that lie played, it wasn't worth it at all.

But I don't know what is true. Everything hurts so much.