atdawn

Still sporadically online - Just wanted to share something positive about my life these days, 8 months after leaving AH. I found love in my heart for a man, true love I think, for the first time ever. As for the object of my love, he does not love me back, but it’s ok.

This is an old school friend I had not seen for many years. He happened to come to my city for a month. We spent a lot of time together, eating lunch together most days, going for walks at the week end. I had such a wonderful time. I had never connected with anyone like I connected with him. Ever. He has a beautiful mind and soul. I could just talk with him for hours. Just easy, happy, intellectually stimulating times. By the end of his stay, I felt this is it, this is what love has to be like. Just easy, natural, and liking everything about someone like that, body and soul, and accepting the differences, and not wanting to change anything about him – not a single teeny tiny bit. Feeling deeply about him in a simple non-obsessive way – it just IS love.

I did not say anything to him about my feelings because I did not want to risk things being awkward for the rest of his visit (we had to see each other professionally, too), and I did not inquire about whether he had someone in his life or not (he never told me he did). After he left, I wrote to him to let him know how I felt. This is the first time ever in my whole life that I had the guts to do this. Most of my life I have been scared of rejection. But this time I felt, it is ok to risk rejection, because there is so much more to win than to loose. And rejection does not make me any less intelligent, kind or beautiful, it just means what I feel is not reciprocated, for whatever reason that might be, and it is OK.

He wrote me back with a long, very kind message. The feeling is not mutual, and he has someone. This makes me sad but in a way it also makes me happy, to realize that I can actually love. What I had before was never love, it was obsession, obsession with trying to be the best I could to fit whatever mold the guy would think I should fit into, instead of just being me and waiting for the right person to come along.

Well, the right person has not come along yet, but hopefully, he will. And if not, this is OK too, I am doing great on my own, I do not want to be married ever again, I don’t even want a man to live in my house at this point in time – The family unit is me and the kids. I would like a happy, healthy loving relationship with a kind lover. And - I – will - not - settle - for - less – ever – again!

PS: about fear of rejection. This I believe started in kindergarten, when I was bullied for not wearing skirts like the other girls. Anyways. In my teens I would not go out with anyone by fear of getting my heart broken, and the few times I considered going out with someone I had to list all the reasons why it would probably at some point end up not working – I was essentially writing the end of my stories before they even begun. Then a few years later I started thinking I would not find anyone, and I lowered my standards way too much. The boyfriend before my AH, I told him I loved him after 3 days of dating him – needless to say, he treated me like s**t after that and ditched me after 3 months on the grounds that I was too fat (and I am not even fat, and even if I was, did you not see me for 3 months?!). Then came in AH, who treated me nicely, but dumped me after a month. I could not let rejection happen again, something had to be wrong with me, maybe I was not nice enough to those guys… I did all I could to get him back, and I did, by going out to bars with him and other students, being the perfect party girl for him - even though I never actually really liked drinking and partying …. The rest I already talked about in other posts…. years of progressively increasing misery, until he became abusive and I got the guts to leave. I am not scared of rejection anymore – rejection is part of life, too.

Wow – that was a long one. I feel much lighter. Thanks for reading.