It's odd to realize just how much of an effect people can have on you without realizing it. How the smallest moments come to define the greatest portions of our lives. The fact that the people we're closest to were once strangers and some of the people we would have given our lives for in the past...are nothing more than faces in the crowd.
My ex took pieces of me. Not in any literal or physical sense, of course (that would be strange), but in a way that made me really reconsider who I was. And it was a much needed bit of consideration on my part, because I had become quite the asshole. But that's not all that was taken from me.
Mostly, it was self-respect and trust. In that relationship, I'd compromised many of the things I'd once thought I believed in. Maybe for the better, maybe not. The things that were said about me once that relationship was over, though, possibly took as large a chunk out of me as anything that had ever happened between us (and for anyone who knows the history even briefly, you know that there was an awful lot in those four short months).
One of my friends told me that they'd heard x, and y, and z going around, none of which were true. Then his new significant other confronted me about saying shit about both of them. At that point, I almost lost it. Because rumors? Fine. Outright lies? Pissed me off a bit. But going so far as to say that I was spreading bullshit about someone I didn't care about? That was a tipping point.
I know a lot of people who have avoided their exes. Unfortunately, in as small an environment as we were in, avoidance was difficult. It got to the point where I was terrified of seeing this person. It wasn't even conscious (and to be fair, part of it could be explained by...other things that happened while we were together). It wasn't the most pleasant way to spend two years.
The worst of it though, I think, is how much I couldn't trust anyone. I had been so used to putting all of my trust into this one person, that once it was shattered...I didn't know where to go. I put up barriers around myself like crazy. Few of my friends even knew the full extent of my thought process on anything. I still have trouble opening up to my current significant other, despite the trust that is there, for fear of being seen as pathetic. It's not nearly as bad now as it was then, but moments like this it strikes me just how much one imbecile managed to take from me. How easy I was to take apart. How long it's taken me to put myself back together.
This is why it's so hard for me to trust people. This is also why I feel the need to be completely self-sufficient, no matter how close to someone I get.
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I apologize for the disjointed nature of this post, but I wanted to write and wanted to put some of this down while I was thinking on it. I know it's shitty writing. I'm sorry.
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