maybe i'm a sociopath
Tonight I was thinking about things from C.B.'s perspective, which can be dangerous. It's a giant mind-fuck and if I engage in it too long I end up feeling guilty and awful.
She sobered up. She got a job. She's waiting for me to come home. I *married* her, for christ's sake, for whatever that's worth considering it wasn't legal. But I meant it when I did it. I wanted to be with her, I was committed to being in a partnership, to the house and the life and the whole thing. And I just completely jumped tracks. And it's more than just her drinking. Her drinking was the catalyst, but if the drinking problem was solved, really solved for once and for all, would I go back? No. That's basically what I said on the phone tonight. I said, in better words, I'm done, I don't care what you're doing, how you're changing, none of it matters because I'm done.
And deeper, the subtext (that I feel) is: I was never the person you thought I was, I never meant any of it, I was a wolf in sheep's clothing, I've been waiting to leave you from the moment I met you. This is the baggage I bring to relationship. This is the reason the counselor I saw at the end of November said "Until I see you again, I want you to reflect on your patterns in relationship and why you feel you always fuck them up." Maybe she didn't say "fuck" but I'm paraphrasing. What is wrong with me?
Compartmentalization. It's such a blessing, the ability to cordon off different parts of your life. To leave work at work and school at school, etc. I'm great at compartmentalization. I'm the master. It helps me study the complicated, substantive law of four different, difficult subjects and take four different exams without feeling completely overwhelmed and confused. It allowed me to cry on the phone with C.B. today then hang up, blow my nose, and go to class. It allows me to function.
But... I don't know... am I too good at it? Is it pathological? Have compartmentalized C.B., filed her away and closed the drawer? Do I do that in all partnerships? Isn't it troubling that I'm 31 and have been in five (count em, FIVE) live-in relationships? Maybe it's not the compartmentalizing, maybe I'm just an emotional parasite? Maybe I don't really care about other people, maybe I just use them, cleverly manipulate them to meet my emotional needs then drop them and move on without a second thought? Fuck.
Or maybe I never really, truly share myself? Maybe I never really engage my deepest self in relationship, so it is easy to walk away. I sit with a computer in my lap seeming to pour my most intimate thoughts and feelings out into this public forum where not just strangers but people I know and care about will be able to read these things and think they know me. But really, I am just a person alone in a room with a computer. If you read this you're looking into my most intimate spaces through some kind of plexiglass window. You're not in there. Has anyone else ever been in there? Is it even possible for other people to get in there?
I have no idea. I think I need to make a follow up appointment with that counselor, maybe she knows.
She sobered up. She got a job. She's waiting for me to come home. I *married* her, for christ's sake, for whatever that's worth considering it wasn't legal. But I meant it when I did it. I wanted to be with her, I was committed to being in a partnership, to the house and the life and the whole thing. And I just completely jumped tracks. And it's more than just her drinking. Her drinking was the catalyst, but if the drinking problem was solved, really solved for once and for all, would I go back? No. That's basically what I said on the phone tonight. I said, in better words, I'm done, I don't care what you're doing, how you're changing, none of it matters because I'm done.
And deeper, the subtext (that I feel) is: I was never the person you thought I was, I never meant any of it, I was a wolf in sheep's clothing, I've been waiting to leave you from the moment I met you. This is the baggage I bring to relationship. This is the reason the counselor I saw at the end of November said "Until I see you again, I want you to reflect on your patterns in relationship and why you feel you always fuck them up." Maybe she didn't say "fuck" but I'm paraphrasing. What is wrong with me?
Compartmentalization. It's such a blessing, the ability to cordon off different parts of your life. To leave work at work and school at school, etc. I'm great at compartmentalization. I'm the master. It helps me study the complicated, substantive law of four different, difficult subjects and take four different exams without feeling completely overwhelmed and confused. It allowed me to cry on the phone with C.B. today then hang up, blow my nose, and go to class. It allows me to function.
But... I don't know... am I too good at it? Is it pathological? Have compartmentalized C.B., filed her away and closed the drawer? Do I do that in all partnerships? Isn't it troubling that I'm 31 and have been in five (count em, FIVE) live-in relationships? Maybe it's not the compartmentalizing, maybe I'm just an emotional parasite? Maybe I don't really care about other people, maybe I just use them, cleverly manipulate them to meet my emotional needs then drop them and move on without a second thought? Fuck.
Or maybe I never really, truly share myself? Maybe I never really engage my deepest self in relationship, so it is easy to walk away. I sit with a computer in my lap seeming to pour my most intimate thoughts and feelings out into this public forum where not just strangers but people I know and care about will be able to read these things and think they know me. But really, I am just a person alone in a room with a computer. If you read this you're looking into my most intimate spaces through some kind of plexiglass window. You're not in there. Has anyone else ever been in there? Is it even possible for other people to get in there?
I have no idea. I think I need to make a follow up appointment with that counselor, maybe she knows.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 8:51 PM
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