Making things worse

Sorry about this. Something appears to have gone very wrong since my last post. I think I am having some kind of breakdown that started approximately two hours after my last post (or perhaps that post was a way of me trying to talk myself out of the breakdown as it was breaking), and seems to have spun off on its own trajectory of crapness since then.

The whole story (which would involve me going back in time several months and relating a tale that would probably have you shutting your browser and reopening only once you were sure it was safe) is not for now. But it can be summarised in that age-old formula: Girl meets Boy, Girl and Boy break up, Boy has royally fucked up,  nevertheless Girl and Boy can’t stay broken up, Girl and Boy make up, Girl fucks up, Boy doesn’t break up with her, Boy fucks up, Girl does break up with him, which in and of itself is a fuck up. I concede that.

Still with me?

The point of this back story is this: Why can’t I just leave it? Why do I have to keep poking and prodding to see if this thing is still alive when I dealt the possibly fatal blow? I’ve never been able to cope with leaving things. It’s torture for me. I get that other people have to back off and calm down or figure things out or whatever and I can see why that’s probably a good idea but I just can’t do it. And it feels completely beyond me to do anything about it because even when told, repeatedly, that I am making things worse, I just keep trying to fix it. Nobody likes being unhappy, I’m not saying I have some extra-low tolerance for unhappiness, but when something is wrong with one part of my life, it consumes all of it. Compartmentalising is as alien to me as living underwater. Or putting things away when I’ve used them. I just can’t do it. Sticking with the compartmentalising metaphor, I want my life and mind to be made up of a series of secure chambers or boxes, all sealed off from one another so if the iceberg hits one, the vessel stays afloat. But I just don’t work that way. If one box springs a leak then we’re all going to fucking drown. That’s what’s happening now, with the hurt, but that’s also what happened on Friday with the anger. It sprung a leak and I just couldn’t stem the flood so I sunk the whole thing (apologies for this, I can hear how I sound, I just can’t help it).

And what do you do when you feel unhappiness so intensely? I can’t work, I can’t write, I can’t even put myself to bed, even though being awake is too painful. So I do anything I can to try to make it feel just a little bit better, promising myself that this will fix it, just hoping that I can get through and that the other person will see this pain and have enough compassion to let me mend it. And all I’m doing is making it worse. I’m trying to patch up all the leaks but using the wrong tools, axes and knives rather than …..whatever it is you’re supposed to use to mend leaks, something less sharp, I suppose.

I’m sorry that I go about clumsily trying to mend it. I’m sorry am making it worse. I am human, I am flawed. Some of those flaws are irritating, some are self-destructive, and some make me difficult to be with. There was a time I thought we were impossible, that it could never work, that you were too flawed for me to trust you with my feelings. You hurt me badly once and it felt like I would never get over it but I chose to believe in the person I knew you could be, and in everything I knew we could be together. And so yes, there’s that bit of me always waiting to get hurt again, and so when the red lights started flashing I shut down the system in a panic. And I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t take the risk again, but you have better insight that I did then because you know how good it can be, you know that there’s something worth saving. All I ask is that you choose to believe in that, and in the person you know I can be.

Even writing this, I know I’m running the risk of making things worse. But no more now. I really will leave it here. I’m putting all the sharp objects away, and keeping my hands in my pockets. That’s it. No more.

I just hope it’s enough.