Dress Rehearsal

Dear Friends,
I struggled with if I was actually going to post the following. I realized that my problem was that I was afraid to bear my heart. I've found strength and answers in the last few days, therefore, I will go ahead with the post as promised. I hope that someone can find light in it.
Cassadee

Life does not start out as a journey, but instead as a path. It’s one that we can follow within the lines, or we can build our own, stone by stone, and then choose how we navigate it. As we are building, or embarking on that path, others’ will rise or fall to meet our own, and that’s where things begin to get out of place. All those perfect pictures and high expectations begin to crumble and take new forms, and that’s when life becomes the true journey.

Nothing is clear cut and dry, and people will always be people, which may be unfortunate, because this means they are still animals to a certain extent. Some are more civilized than others, but one thing is always true; claws will come out when one feels threatened, or vulnerable. Some animals learn to live with their vulnerability, some own it, but others never do and they continue to bite until every path they met has been carefully removed and rebuilt to bypass theirs by the owner.

I have personally found that biting is my forte. I grew up an only child with an absent father and a mother who often relied on me to fill his place. My life was about school and helping my mom, not about me. This was okay, because I was needed. Then I got older, got sick, and needed someone, only my mom didn’t know how to stop needing me and things changed for me very quickly. I began to feel trapped and enclosed, and instead of reaching out to others, I shut down and tried to handle everything on my own, because it’s what I had gotten used to doing.

I didn’t fathom this would become the problem that it did later in life, because I always dreamed of the white horse, the white dress, and the white picket fence. What I didn’t dream about was the reality. I skipped the feelings, the vulnerability, and the fact that, in order to make a relationship work, surrender has to happen. When I was never allowed to surrender, because it was fight or die, and I was never able to fall back on someone completely, this concept was foreign to me. I didn’t actually believe in it, and people kept proving to me that I would always, always have to take care of myself, because no one else ever would.

In so many ways this is true, and always will be. You must be your best friend to survive life. You must look out for yourself first, while keeping others’ feelings in the back of your mind. You must take care of yourself, confide in yourself and the spiritual leader of your religion or choosing, and you must protect yourself. But you have to let people in, too, and sometimes, as long as you don’t let it go so far that you stop caring for yourself and only rely on someone else to do so, it’s okay to let down your guard and allow someone to care for you, too.

I learned this at an early age from my grandfather, and forgot it instantly after he died when I was literally forced into a struggle for my life, and told I had two years to live in the current condition of my health. Obviously, I fought hard, because I am still here. In order to be able to keep money coming in, my mom worked a lot and it became up to me, no matter how sick or weak, to one hundred percent take care of myself. Often, by no fault of her own, she was too tired during nights and weekends, from her days at work, to take care of me. She also still expected me to fill my father’s place. I could barely move and could barely say no all the same, because I was needed.

This is why I simply stopped believing. I would never say my mother was a bad mother. She honestly did the best she could, when she could, how she could. My father was a bad father, didn’t help, walked out instead of helping to take care of me, and can basically get lost and never come around here again and I would be the happiest girl in the world. We made do, and I took care of number one...and two...and the rest of this crazy household and mantra of ridiculous family members, and still continue to do so.

Then Friend came along. He was kind, gentle and sweet. He would sit with me and discuss my problems.

No one else did that.

He looked at me like I was the only person on the planet, and the most important.

No one else did that.

He would tell me that he felt I would be better for him than his own girlfriend. He told me a lot of things, and I fell into a complete trust pattern with him before I had even realized it. I had never met anyone like him, and because of that, my guard was down. But by the time things developed between us and he found himself full out willing to be there for me no matter what, no questions asked, I found myself running, afraid of being trapped in a fairy tale that didn’t actually exist beyond my dreams.

It took me years to realize I was afraid I would fall for him so hard that I could never get back up, and that I’d lose the ability to say no; to push people away. It only took me the last year to realize that would have never been a problem with Friend. So regretfully, I realize my mistake and I resign from blaming him, or being angry with him for caring about me, and making me feel something. I let go of blaming myself, but simply because I am left with no other choice, and surrendering to anything was never my style.

Instead, I am grateful and still very scared. I’ve learned from him and I’ve found solace in the fact that the right person will accept you for you. They won’t expect total surrender, but instead they will demand compromise, and they will challenge you. Boy, will they challenge you.

The right person will sometimes be the person who lives a lifestyle completely different from yours; the person you would never see yourself with, yet someone you have this undeniable bond and it just works, and everyone can see, but only you can feel. You can hold it in your heart, and them in your arms, and that’s how you know the dream has passed and met reality somewhere along the journey; the path.

So it is tonight that I proclaim my decision on how to handle the situation with Friend; the situation Friend is not even aware of, and can not be made aware of. Plain and simple, Friend has a girlfriend. Friend is, for all assumption intents and purposes, and until I hear otherwise, happy, and I would never do anything to bust that up.

My initial thought was to walk away from the relationship, but that would leave us where it left us a year ago, which is right back to me apologizing to him for being a general jackass. Let me make this clear, I do not regret my situation to walk away, because it was something I still know to this day that needed done, and I think he can agree with me on this, because I had become a crutch to his bad behavior, without immediate knowledge to myself. I do, however, regret not telling him why I walked away, not giving him the letter I had written him, and in turn, being an ignorant bitch about it. It was immature.

To combat that situation from happening again, I could give him an explanation for why I was walking away, but nothing but the truth would be good enough. He knows me well enough to not believe any bullshit I could come up with, so it’s not even worth a try unless I sincerely enjoy humiliating myself and wasting my own time. However, if I write a letter to explain him why I’m leaving, I am ultimately doing no good.

All I can think about is his girlfriend, his poor girlfriend, who will one day, with the luck we both have, find the letter and it will hurt her. No matter the outcome, it will still hurt her. What gives me the right to tell her boyfriend that I am in love with him and always have been, even if I do explain that I do not intend to interrupt the relationship?

Nothing.

Not even the three and a half years of knowing him that I have on her. Thinking time is an excuse makes me a moron comparable to the likes of the guy who was dumb enough to spend hours pretending his son was in a weather balloon for media attention. If it came to that, I would encourage no one to put up with me any longer.

It can be argued that the choice of who he wants to be with is his to make, but the choice of who I hurt and do not hurt, is mine. I would rather hurt myself than someone else. I am responsible for only the decisions I made and continue to make, and I will lie in this bed, but not lay down and die over them.

I will accept them, and accept that Friend and I are friends, and there’s nothing worth letting that go. I don't want to live without him in my life, and I learned this over the past year. The future and time can change everything, but I can not wish, hope, or wait for it to. Instead, I will be a friend with my head held high, an appropriate and well mannered friend, and if by chance the situation changes, I will reevaluate it and then choose another route to take.

Besides that, I’ve seen too much to believe that things don’t truly work out how they are meant to. There’s a balance I am not meant to understand, so I will let it ride. There’s nothing saying Friend and I would ever work out had we had a chance to try, and if we are meant to try, the opportunity will become available, if I stop waiting for it or expecting it.

Please don’t think that I say this with any grandeur, or don’t still find a place in my heart that hurts, but ultimately it will repair itself until it beats harder and faster, and everything finds its place. I am saddened, yet find strength in this decision, which is how I know that, for now, it is the right one. Eventually time will change that, as time always does, and life always does. One day I will find myself rethinking the situation. It may be tomorrow and it may be five years from now, but what I can count on, is that things will always change. That’s all one can ever count on.

And I am ready.

Until that day comes, however, I find that I am going to bare my heart to all of you, drop my guard, and my vulnerability and share a piece of me that will connect with a piece of every girl who has wanted someone that they can not have, and any girl who has had someone they can not want.

I had decided to write the letter to Friend just as I would if I were to send it. It was something I needed to do for myself, but when I finished, I found myself distraught. I had written one letter that I kept to myself, only to later incorporate it into my novel. I can not write something and not find use, or a reason to share it. With that in mind, I have decided to post the most recent letter I have written.

Also, I do not believe Friend reads the blog, because he would have mentioned it. I also do not believe he even knows about it, and I do not mention to him. However, if he does and he comes across the letter, he will know it’s for him, and will be the only one who knows that. I will not tell him about this letter, or mention my blog; I will just let it be. If he does find that it and it is for him, this blog lays out all the reasons why I did not ever tell him what this letter has. And if he finds it, there is no reason his girlfriend ever has to know that it was written for him, or meant for him, so this will also protect her.

I am banking on him not finding this, because it isn’t about him. It’s about me, and getting out what I need to, and sharing with other girls who need this as well, because sometimes, as women, we forget to take care of ourselves. We forget to be a little selfish, so that is what I am choosing to do now...for all of us.

Please forgive me if this is wrong, but it is, after all, my space to share my story, and this is the best way to reflect that.

Dear You,

Four years ago you came into my life on Halloween. We worked together, but the few “heys” we said here and there never warranted me remembering your name. After that night, I couldn’t forget it. We became fast friends, all because of you. You talked to me at work, took time for me, and made me feel like I mattered. I thought of you as only a friend and tried to give you the same. I soon realized we were in the same boat, both without much of a family, or much emotional support, and both looking for something we didn’t even know truly existed.

You fell for me before I fell for you. I was hesitant and never thought of you in any other way than a friend. You had a girlfriend, one of which I respected...and then all of that changed. I found myself alone with you and we found ourselves in a situation we had never been in before. Feelings flew, and over the next few years we took our respective turns running, not talking, and then finding each other again a few months later, only to do it all again.

It’s now that I realize you found me first. You always did. When I was looking to the sky, you were looking at me. When I was talking to myself, because I had eliminated a use for anyone else in my own crazy conversations, you were talking to me. When I was figuring out how I felt, you were feeling for me.

And I never appreciated that enough until it was gone. There is no way to say I am sorry for that, because I am feeling sorry for myself, and sorry for you all the same, because you put up with me no matter what. And I know I put you through hell. It was never too much for you. I was too dead set on running to accept that, and although it isn’t enough, I am sorry.

I hope over the years you found me to be a good friend, and you understood why I did what I did. You once told me that I always knew what you wanted. You always knew what I wanted, but I was too afraid to tell you, because sometimes, it was I who didn’t even know what I wanted. I know you knew that, and I know I would have been better off trusting in that, but I couldn’t until I found myself. Because of you, I ultimately have. If that’s the only reason you were put into my life, that will still make you one of the most important and special people I have ever, and will ever know.

When I finally set aside my fears, my pride and my anger, and apologized to you, I didn’t expect you to ever respond to me. Then you did, and you told me to put it all in the past and forget about it. It was then I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t think we would continue to talk, but then we did, mostly because of you, always because of you; and I realized what I had missed out on, and that it was you I’ve been waiting to be with in the past three years that I failed to manage a date. I could get them, I just didn’t want them. I wanted you, and was too foolish to admit that to myself.

If I had known I would feel this way, I don’t know if I would have ever apologized. I may have gone about life living with the guilt of never doing so, and letting you forget about me and think that I was a bad person, because my reasons for doing so were never about me at all. It was about what you deserved out of me, and I guess if I knew this was going to happen, then I would have slighted you again, and eventually the guilt of that would kill me, but at least it would be what I deserved. What I’m saying is, there are sometimes reasons why we don’t know things before we dive in head first and hope for the best.

In all the years, and all the times I’ve had my heart broken, I now know they were just dress rehearsals for this moment. No one ever truly had the power to break my heart, but you. But since you didn’t do anything to actually cause me the pain; I did it to myself, it is only fractured and it will recover. It will take awhile, it will not be easy, but it will teach me a lesson and a lot about myself. It will make me a better person, and yet again I find another thing to credit you with.

As many times as our relationship has been healthy, it’s been unhealthy, too, but it was what it was and there was love there in some capacity, in its own way, in the way we knew how to love. Maybe we’re both a little crazy, but we understood that in each other, and took it for what it was, even though we never moved past the title of “just friends.”

I am not asking anything of you, nor did I write you for that reason, now or when I apologized. Things are what they are and I accept that, but I needed to put this on paper, because one day, with or without you, this will all be a distant memory that I may want to remember in some way, in some place, in some time. Not to mention, when I feel trapped, I write, and right now I am caged, but it’s my own fault.

You are with someone and you are happy. I am happy for you, because I do truly love you, and I want what is best. I would never, in a million years, do anything to interrupt or displace that. I would never do anything to hurt your girlfriend, because she is with you. You picked her. You care for her, as she cares for you, and that is a good enough reason for me.

If we can continue in friendship, I would like that, but I find that I will be limiting myself to certain situations, in certain places, and certain conversations, because I need to emotionally stay comforted, or I will find myself in a very broken place, and no one wants to see that. You have fought too hard to get me out of that place; you’re the only one who fought for me, and I have fought too hard to stay there, often carrying a slight dignity, or over aggression about that with me.

I drop that, and my pride, and leave myself with only trust and the ability to know that I’ve held onto you for far too long. My feelings may never change, but my idiosyncrasy of confusing the hell out of your life for all its worth, will. And, if someday, we both find a change that lands us in the same situation, with the same feelings, I won’t be afraid to try and see what can come out of it.

And so it is...