i will stop talking about this soon, promise.

i'm vascillating a lot. i keep skipping back and forth between moments of perspective and moments of intense upset. in my less lucid moments, all i can do is berate myself, examine every angle from which i must have made a misstep to make this happen, come up with everything that is, or was, wrong with me. how i wasn't enough. how i was too much. not interesting enough, pretty enough, just enough.

and then i start thinking about other men's girlfriends and the stories i've heard. the women who threaten to kill themselves if their men leave. the women who berate, who tear down their lovers in some strange drive to destroy everything around them. the women who cheat, the women who never let on how much they care, the women who never even try to be their friends, the women who never expend any effort to make them feel good, the women who play head games. (before anyone jumps down my throat, men pull this shit, too. women do not have the franchise on emotional manipulation and horridness. but they sure as hell can be guilty of it, too.)

and then i think, "wow, did boy have it good. and the second he realizes this, he's going to be terribly, terribly upset." and that makes me feel better. not because i want him to suffer or i want vindication, but because it makes me understand that there is nobody, nobody who could have given him more than i did in the support stakes. no girl who would have worked so hard to make sure he knew how much she cared, and how great she thought he was. no girl could ever have loved him enough to win out over his intense desire to be miserable. and i tried. and he tried to let me, for a while. and if he'd had enough sense, or just the capacity to open his eyes and acknowledge that there's a world outside his head, he would have been able to cope with the fact that he struck gold with me. and this is not my problem.

but the thing is, much like overnight celebrity, getting what you want at the wrong time, such as a girl who will love you until it breaks her in two, when you're not ready for it is worse than not getting it at all. because once you've got it, you've got to do something with it or risk losing it. and when you just can't, you have to live forever with the knowledge that you fucked it up. possibly irrevocably. and that's sad. and that makes me pity him a lot. it doesn't change the fact that i hate my empty bed and my clean sheets, but at least i know that in the long run, i'm going to be okay. i'm going to sleep with a clear conscience because I am not the one who fucked up something great. because I am the one with the support network that would never, ever let me get away with the kind of crap he's pulling here. because i am the one that, eventually, will be able to love again without feeling guilty about it.

i think the biscuit summed it up best of all: "the thing is, all he wants right now is to go run off and be selfish and miserable, he wants people to say 'oh, poor boy, he's so SAD. oh, he's so BRAVE for getting up in the morning' and he can't let you be a part of that because the people who he wants to pity him would take one look at you and say 'why the HELL are you so miserable? you've got HER.'"

and to close, "Personally I'd view it as a great compliment that I was a HINDRANCE to someone being able to SQUIRM AROUND in ABJECT SELF-INFLICTED MISERY."

so i'm working on that.