Friday, May 4, 2012

One Love

He wasn't the first, nor was he the worst. He certainly wasn't the last.
He just... was.
He was neither good looking, nor smart. He was a tedious and dull conversationalist. He didn't have any passions, to speak of. He didn't believe anything. He wasn't a very hard worker, but he wasn't spectacularly lazy, either. He wasn't particularly good-hearted, but he wasn't evil. He didn't seek any kind of greater good; he didn't really seek anything at all.
He just kind of... was.

He was a friend of friends. We ran loosely in the same circles. He was always just kind of... there. He wasn't particularly outgoing or funny. In fact, the only reason I noticed him at all was because I found him vaguely repellent. He had bad skin. Not acne, per se. Not the sort of grotesque acne that, when outgrown, would give him a certain pockmarked ruggedness. He just had random pustules. Mammoth whiteheads in odd places that would stay around for days. I couldn't talk to him without wanting to reach out and pop them. His chin was minimal and it seemed like all of his teeth grew in on top of each other right in the front. He was a little bit shorter than I am, and a little bit pigeon-toed. He laughed at his own jokes and did Beavis and Butt-Head impersonations. We had nothing in common. Except Bob Marley. We dated for six months.

He bought me a One Love bumper sticker for my car, which pretty much guaranteed my getting pulled over all the time. He said we had that One Love. That universal, all encompassing, gather up the world in a happy ganja haze kind of love. I nodded and averted my eyes. I am not a Rastafarian, but I do understand One Love. It's the kind of love that sees a boy whose parents are in the midst of a messy divorce, whose lifelong friend and older brother-figure is dying of AIDS. A boy who dropped out of college because it was just too hard and it made no sense to him. A boy who loved a girl who was maddening and foreign to him. A boy who was trying to be a man and had no idea how. A boy whose heart had been broken by people he loved the most; a boy who needed love. It's the kind of love that sees through the pimples and the pigeon toes and commits to six months of excruciating boredom and squalor because she wants to help this boy.

But people are not puppies or kittens. They cannot be gathered and cared for and fed and then released back into the wilds of their own lives. I mistook my compassion for humanity in general for commitment to this one particular person. For six months he tried so hard to be someone he wasn't, could never be, for me. He hurled himself against the wall of my expectations over and over, always coming up short. Even worse, I degraded him with my loving efforts: I paid his rent, I gave him rides to work when his own car got repossessed, I tried to dress him and feed him and convince him to read. I didn't let him be who he was, find his own way, make his own mistakes because I was so intent on improving him. I am ashamed by the sheer hubris of this notion as I write.

I was young, inexperienced, reeling from my own broken heart. Rather than face my own mess, I went about trying to keep someone else's house. In my effort to hide from myself, I coated my intentions with love, with generosity, with compassion. When he asked me to marry him, I almost threw up. I told him no, that couldn't possibly happen. When he sobbed and said "Where am I supposed to go?" the ornate Emperor's clothing I had constructed fell away. I stood there in my naked cruelty and had no answer for him. He wasn't an intellectual, but even he could see that I had never really loved him. I was in love with the idea of transformation. I was in love with myself. I had been using him for half a year to tell me the things I didn't believe about myself: that I was beautiful, that I was good, that I was lovable, that I was loving. I told myself I was helping him.

I shared this story with a friend who said I made my ex-boyfriend sound pathetic. "I think you should talk more about his good qualities, in more detail. The way you've described him, nobody would want to date or be him." I didn't disagree with this critique. In fact, I spent several hours trying to think of good qualities to balance out the portrait I'd painted. I couldn't think of a single one. Not because they weren't there, but because I had never bothered to see them. I spent six months of my life in a relationship with someone I found repellent, someone I didn't see except for his flaws. I spent six months of my life looking into the mirror his adoration held up for me, admiring nothing but my own warped reflection. I never looked around the jagged edges of myself to see the person who stood before me. No, he was not the pathetic one in our scenario.

He moved across the country after we broke up. I have no idea what happened to him. I haven't thought about him in years. As I remember him now, this half a person I dated but never really knew, I wish him well. I hope he found someone who, unlike me, treated him well. Someone who appreciates him for who he is. I hope that he continued to believe what we used to sing along with Bob Marley: "Every little thing will be all right."

19 comments:

  1. This was beautiful, TangledLou. So open, raw, and honest.

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    1. Thank you, Larissa. Let it be a cautionary tale, no? ;)

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  2. Ouch. My cheeks are burning with humiliating understanding. I too did this to a boy. Man, really. A nice man who just kind of...was.

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    1. On the one hand, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has acted thus, but on the other hand... so many broken hearts, no?

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  3. I did this to a boy but, when he asked me to marry him, I said yes and then broke of the engagement. I left him and his parents stopped speaking to him and he lost his self-respect. It is a wonder I didn't lose mine because I should have. I have carried several men along tied by their ankles to a rope of cruel hope that they will improve. I even do it now to my husband, who is actually just fine and who I married because we are well matched. This brokenness that is inflicted on other people–you write it so, so beautifully. I wrote your first love piece, and I wondered why I wrote it for the crazy, broken boy that I did. Now I know. It is because I loved HIM instead of doing this. He was different, the only one besides my now husband who ever was. Thank you for sharing this. It is the best thing I think you have ever written.

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    1. Wow. Thanks. You know, when I hit publish on this, I did not think to myself "This is the best thing I've ever written." I thought "Wow, I am so shallow and now everyone will know and they will stop reading me."

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  4. I agree with Tara. Best ever.
    When we open ourselves and reveal the raw truth inside, writing becomes so profound and poetic. It's because we reveal the weak and human side of us that most everyone can relate to.

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    1. Thank you so much, Jewels. I'm flabbergasted.

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  5. I have been the hurter and the hurtee. Neither one is easy. I find that there are left over feelings with both relationships that continue to haunt me every now and then.
    I'm curious to know what made you recall and reflect on your relationship with this man at this time.
    Is it something that will always be with you, also?

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    1. These things stick with us, don't they?
      I wrote this as part of a larger project I'm working on and sent it out here into the blogosphere as sort of a test balloon. I'm rather surprised at the response it's getting.

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  6. It takes a very self-aware and intuitive person to write what you did. I am far too chicken to go there. Bravo!

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    1. Thank you, Marianne. You say "chicken", I say "sane".

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  7. I'm glad you wrote the truth and didn't dress it up to make it more palatable. That is your job. You did it beautifully.

    I like the idea that certain people come into our lives, and us into theirs, to fulfill a purpose. And then we depart from one another. We might never know fully what the purpose was, but we know it's been served.

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    1. I like that idea, too.

      I thought I was writing something different when I started. A kind of funny story about a near miss, right? Funny how the fingers take over like that when we let them and they just pound out the ugly honest truth.

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  8. Um, I think you just held up a mirror for me. My relationship that just was lasted 2 years and I wound up blaming him for pretty much all of it. Ouch.

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    1. We do that, don't we? It's a wonder anyone likes anyone at all, ever.

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  9. I've had a relationship like that as well. This stung a bit, made me feel ashamed. I hadn't thought of that relationship in more than a decade, and now it's brought up all sorts of shaming feelings I need to go deal with. Excuse me.

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    1. It's all part of the service here on the Periphery.
      I am finding it interesting how many people are owning up to a similar experience.

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  10. I have read this through four or five times now and each time have been struck by the insight and courage you've shown in this post. I am in awe of both your writing ability and your willingness to lay it all out there. Thanks.

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