Why, oh why, oh WHY did I commit to Sue to do everything in this Self Hell book? I'd tell her I'd finished it already and that it was a great help in finding my soul mate if I didn't think I would kick myself for the guilt and shame of lying so horrendously to her. Damn and blast these scruples of mine! (Okay, thtat was sort of funny.)

Now, this sonofabitch author wants me to write an essay. Write an essay. Do you believe this shit? A look back at past relationships, so that I can see patterns and acknowledge them (Hey, pattern, how ya doin'?), and start to stop repeating them. I went to grad school for this shit, and I do it very well with others when they're the person doing the examining. Forcing myself to do it is another story, but fuck it, I committed to getting through this fucking book, so here goes:

First, I need to identify all the important relationships in my past (sticking to just four or five, he says). By this he means those relationships that were emotionally powerful, regardless of the romance level or lack thereof. They are as follows:

Iran: Whom I dated in high school and whom I dumped when it got to be too much to be the high school President and the lead in the school play and the closeted girl-dater simultaneously. She was also really clingy and I couldn't deal with it after a while.

Zulu: Whom I dated in college for a little over a year and a half. We lived together in an apartment the size of half of this kitchen in Manhattan Beach, where he verbally abused me and isolated me from damned near all my friends and contributed to one of the larger emotional breakdowns of my life to date. Peach of a guy. He left me for a girl named Chloe...sad to have to admit that HE left ME, but it's true. I was that messed up.

Adam: My friend since junior high, then my best friend, then my boyfriend who would not call me girlfriend nor allow me to call him boyfriend even after a year of dating, albeit cross-country dating. I left him after a year and a half because he still couldn't tell me he loved me, and I figured that if he couldn't tell me then, then he didn't actually love me, and it was time for us to move on.

Jenny: We met and became instant friends in grad school. She was the most insightful, intelligent, emotionally intense person I had ever met, and the friendship was equally as charged. The intensity grew to a point that neither of us knew how to handle, and it was all downhill from there. We didn't know what to do with our emotions anymore, and they manifested themselves in all sorts of unhealthy manners, to the point where I stopped speaking to her completely and sought help with a therapist.

So, there you have it, diary, the cast list. A long list of good people (except for Zulu, he's just a bastard) who I just couldn't deal with for one reason or another. I'll address them all in the following entry/essay.

Posted by twids at 10:03 am