Disappointments

Last night, I sort of fell into a very deep, very real, and very emotional conversation with someone I never thought I'd be doing that with.

Caitlin is the sister of the boy that got me pregnant, of the man that chose to stick it out with me and make our mistake into some beautiful, if possible. She has had her reasons for being angry with me-I just didn't understand them until last night, but it has taken her 4 years to feel like she can tell me, like it's important. It turns out that she really was being a bitch after all, but now I can see the why behind it. I can finally empathize with her in knowing her perspective-that I came into her life and took some of it away, only to fail before her eyes. I was causing her pain, yet my presence did not make up for it in her world.

I've come to find that this type of thing always occurs in a relationship. We disappoint each other because we misunderstand each other, and the people who are willing to empathize with you and see your side and discontinue the pain that they've caused you..those are the people you want to spend your time with. If a person fails over and over and over again to understand you, to put themselves aside for you and do everything in their power to stop harming you, then they are not good for you and should be left behind in the search for those who are. There's a distinct point in a relationship when one person is simply giving more than the other, and there is no equality in a relationship that harbors one filled glass and another that has been spilled out and left unfilled.

My dilemma is that I am married to someone who fills me up over and over by doing the right things and by earning my trust, only to sideswipe me every now and then, knocking me over and draining me of everything that made me, me. So my question is, does one remain in a relationship in which, most of the time, they are being filled up, even when they are emptied so suddenly, so shockingly, so violently, and so consistently? Can one continue for a lifetime to be ultimately disappointed, ultimately betrayed, settling only for the temporary contentment provided by shallow things? Can one forget the deep things that matter most, can one put those things aside for the sake of sticking with it? Should one?

I want to believe in someone. I want there to be someone out there who is not going to fail at the important things. I want to be able to lay it out there, put on the table exactly those things they should never do, exactly those lines they should never cross, and I want to be convinced that that particular person is capable of and cares enough to follow the rules, for my sake. I understand that, sometimes, there are unreasonable requests, that people expect things out of others that they shouldn't. I know this so well because I have been in a place where I was pretty unreasonable, where I have asked things out of people that they could never possibly understand, let alone provide. My biggest struggle now, though, is that I have finally gotten to a place where I am asking very little, and even those reasonable, understandable, legitimate requests are not being met.

So I look to the other person to try to empathize, to try to understand why he is incapable of following the simplest of guidelines. Either he is really stupid or really selfish. He is either so dumb that he can never and possibly will never get this concept that I have been wasting years trying to tell him, or he does understand the concept & why it's important, yet ultimately cares more about what he wants than about not hurting me. If the truth is that he is simply unintelligent, is there someone out there who is at my level of intelligence? Someone who can grasp the concepts of me? Should I continue to frustrate myself for the rest of my life re-explaining the same things to someone, knowing they have never, and therefore probably will never, understand? Or, if the truth is that he simply cares more about himself than he does me/understands my needs and yet still chooses not to fill them, does he really love me? Is there someone out there whose requests would be worth it to him? Am I not someone whose requests are justifiable to him? Am I not worth the work? Or is he just a very selfish person? Will he ever be able to love anyone more than he loves himself?

I'm not a big fan of giving up on people. As much as I am a cynic because of what I've learned and know of life, I am a natural optimist in my very depths, and it has always been difficult for me to make a black & white critique of someone and then walk away. I've always believed people can change, that they can be better and stronger, but never have I ever felt so defeated. Never have I ever been so consistently let down. Never have I been at such a place that I feel like there is nothing more I can say, no other way I can explain myself, nothing else I can do to try to make him understand, and yet he still doesn't. Is this what they meant when they said that God had a Someone for each of us? That it simply cannot be, unless it is the he that God made for me?

I used to believe in love, but if it's all a design and there is no hope or happiness in deviating from the path laid out by God, then there is no beauty, we are just robots, and it is all just science.

I don't believe it would be fair for me to stay. And others will look at my leaving and see only the injustice behind it, the things lost in the disconnect, but it is my hope that eventually they might be able to understand and to see that I really did everything I could do, and at some point, you have nothing left to pour out. At some point, the glass cracks enough that it's leaking more than is worth the cleanup, and I feel like Jake's and my relationship is too cracked to continue. There are too many breaks, and maybe the breaks were the only thing that could have come of this. Maybe together we make a substance unfitting for a glass. Maybe our relationship produces something altogether different, something too harsh to be held in something so fragile. Maybe it really was never meant to be, so we can either keep filling a glass that is cracked and leaking, never to stop filling, never to be fullfilled, or we can throw it away, let it go, and move on to a new piece of promise, something that isn't so draining and defeating.

I am also not one to believe in absolutes, so I have never been able to walk away. So what if I really really really feel certain in that moment, or week, or year even that I should leave-what do I know anyway? What if there is a side I'm not seeing. What if I walk away based on what I think is the truth, and only after I'm gone does the real truth reveal itself, and then I'm left with the knowledge that I gave up, I walked away, and I left something of substance and worth behind? Thus, I stay, like I always have, but it's only out of fear. And what is it that they say? That where there is fear, there is Satan trying to destroy what you know, trying to keep you from what will make you whole. If that is the case, couldn't this fear of leaving only be Satan's attempt to hold me back from making a life-changing, life-bettering decision?

I went to Colorado because there was nothing here, in Upland, that my perspective could benefit from. So I went to be fulfilled in ways I could not be fulfilled here, and I came back mended, if you will. I came back with some of my cracks repaired, and when I returned to my life here after that time in Colorado, I could see and others could see that less was leaking out of me. But gradually, I'm being reopened. The wounds are being subtly replaced with others, and I am being consistently weakened, broken down, eventually to shatter. Maybe I will find, in time, that I was the biggest perpetrator, maybe I will find out eventually that I was the one hurting myself most of all. Or maybe I will shatter before I see the real culprit. My fear is that I will either break completely before I am able to find the truth, or I will leave this life behind to seek the truth, only to find it after I've given all that I had away. I can't see that it could be any other way. It has to be one of the other, it seems, and I have to decide.

I've always been a logical person. If a relationship isn't working, it isn't working, and you shouldn't settle for something that isn't what it could be. So what if it hurts to change it or to walk away, because maybe walking away is the only thing that could make it better or the only thing that will lead you to a relationship that will work. If that is the case, if that is what I believe, why am I having such a hard time walking away??

It is because I am conflicted, because 2 things that are so much of me, 2 of the biggest, deepest and most solid things about me do not align in this circumstance, and I don't know how to choose. I don't know which virtue or standard to rely on. So I remain stagnant, fulfilling neither of them. I remain unhappy, discontent, and feeling like I will never be wholly who I should be, who I really am inside.

Can a relationship that conflicts someone so much really be what's best for them?

It's hilarious because I also believe in being challenged. That if you are content, you aren't learning, you aren't being challenged, and therefore you aren't growing or bettering the world. Then why do I so seek contentedness and happiness. Peace?

I seek the kind of peace that comes from knowing that the work you are putting in is getting somewhere. I don't desire not to work, not to put forth effort or not to struggle, I simply want to be able to know and believe that the struggle and the work is worth it. But if I am being emptied and strained and cannot rely of being refilled, there will never be peace. There will only be emptiness.

It's sad, isn't it, that this is what my marriage has become? A knife that cuts me more deeply than any other. A harm and a hindrance rather than a help and a hope.