betrayal is a funny thing. a sentence or revelation feels world-altering despite not having much power on its own. your view on a person shifts in a second and things that you felt were given feel like naive childish thoughts.
i don’t feel i even know how to process being lied to for the last few months, constantly reframing it in my mind to be either worse or better than the truth. even before then, months of intimacy and affection and care hidden from me without apparently ever wondering what the fall out would be. how i would feel. me who lives in the same city and reaches out practically daily and hangs out with his family and shares a bed with him and shares some semblance of my life with him. i don’t get as much consideration as her.
and yet, at a time when i was already deeply struggling, trying to protect me by not telling me is the only thing he knows how to do. the truth is that he’s bad at hurting me on purpose, despite doing it accidentally often.
i was lied to about the entire dynamic between them for our entire ‘relationship’, and even more since august until now. what was supposed to be a fresh start for us just set the scene for him to lie in a different way.
i’m so glad i went through the messages myself, because he would not have told me the full truth about them. he would have stuck to the story that he had been trying to cut her off but struggling. which is still the narrative he’s running now. i have no clue if it’s the truth.
i don’t have to put myself through this. i don’t have to go through this emotional work to ‘forgive’ him or try to decipher the truth in his words, i can just move on. i can condemn him a liar and cheat and move on with my life. romantic interest is not hard to find in men. i don’t know why i’m holding on so hard. dylan and aj and magnus and matthew and dan and everybody else who has shown interest in me in the last two years are proof that i have other options. it’s just a matter of wanting them.
i have not decided what i want to do yet. as i promised myself i’d give myself time to make a decision. nor do i particularly want to talk about this situation with anyone. briefly telling sam was surprisingly helpful as while he thinks i should just leave the situation be, he praised the fact i was actually giving myself time.
i meant it when i told a.b.s. in the early hours of the morning that if he didn’t want to talk about it or fix it in any way then he could leave the house immediately. as i sit on my bed now i remember how much i genuinely meant it. i think it remains that i’m open to seeing how he plans on making it up to me with no promise that any of it will work as i do not feel he can be trusted.
i feel like that decision leaves me in a limbo about what to think about him. but i wonder if that might actually be a good thing for me. i put too much focus on making a solid decision and plan based on how i feel rather than going with whatever comes my way. i claim to trust the universe or whatever god to guide me to what is best but never let it happen. i never truly trust it to work. it’s time for that to change.
there are only a number of things i can control: what i do and say, what i think and preach, and what i feel. i have to let go of trying to control situations that involve other people so much. people are unpredictable agents with whole worlds inside of them they do not share. it’s important to know when to walk away. (it doesn’t feel like i should without offering some grace first, for some reason (the reason has a name: love, that i do not feel like honoring in my rage right now))
there are things in my life that i deeply desire and am terrified of acting on. a clean house (routine? order? sterilisation of my space?), healthy weight loss (i use my body to explain why people might not be interested romantically and i’m terrified to find that maybe even skinny, people would not like me more (although that is almost entirely proven incorrect by how small i was when i started university and the amount of attention i got), what if i’m not happy even then?), making new friends (i’m scared of how good i am at letting go sometimes while simultaneously being afraid to lose people). the fear is being alone. or feeling alone at least.
i was going to ask what in my past made me worried about it in the future but i immediately knew the answer. i’ve always felt alone. i’ve always felt like i live on the sidelines of other people and that nobody really understands me. i think that’s why i search so desperately for an equal. i hate when somebody idolises me because it feels false as i do have flaws, but i desperately want someone to see them and choose me anyway. i want someone to choose me.
(why? i need to prove i’m lovable.
why? because i’ve been made to feel like i’m not.
by who? my dad. who makes me feel like nothing i do is ever enough.
why does his opinion matter? because i love him and want to make him proud.
as a person, is his opinion of you worthwhile? he’s made a lot of choices in his life that i don’t agree with, for various reasons. i of course love him. i don’t know that the quality of being my father automatically bypasses his flaws as a person to the point of making his opinion of me worthwhile when he also makes little to no attempts to understand me as a person.
why doesn’t he? because he doesn’t think i’m worth the effort, even as his daughter.
does him thinking that make it the truth? family is supposed to mean unconditional love. i don’t know if it ever has from him and his side of the family.
is that not a shortcoming from them as people and nothing to do with you? it is. they don’t have the capacity or will for that type of love. not even with each other.
so why does their opinion matter so much? it’s easy to say it doesn’t but that doesn’t change the fact that i want to make my family proud.
what does their ideal version of your life look like? i’m thin, successful in a career that they deem of good quality, married to someone they consider worthy, living my life in a perfectly suitable way according to them.
do you want that for yourself? i don’t want to live my life by someone else’s standards.
if you have different views of idea life standards and success, why does their opinion hold so much worth? i guess it doesn’t. i don’t want the same things that they want for me. i don’t want to judge and live my life according to whether or not they like it. i don’t like people having that level of control over me. )
so it’s time to let go of the value i put in their opinions to such a degree. that doesn’t mean entirely abandon their version of success (a good career and husband sound pretty good :p), but root my self-worth in my own opinion of myself instead.
that was a tiring self-therapy talk and i am now tired 😀 i don’t know if i particularly feel any better (i say as i use lil emojis instead of run-on dramatic sentences). i need to refocus my goals starting tomorrow and stick to them. i need to define my personal goals to actually fulfill them.
goodnight ariana. a.b.s.’ opinion of your worth doesn’t define you either (i do already know that and i think that’s why i was able to stay so calm and mean it when i said i was happy for him to walk out of my front door). unless he drastically proves me wrong about how much he cares for me, i’m better off without him in my life. that will be seen in the near present i guess.
i’m going to try not to replay the conversations i saw too much in my head, it does nothing but hurt me again and question my worth when it really has nothing to do with that.
goodnight lil ari (did james use to call me that? or patrick? probably patrick. i may reminisce but i wasn’t happy then either. i’m glad he’s doing well)
i don’t think a man has ever made me satisfyingly happy which i’ve always translated to the quality of romantic relationships rather than the fact i’ve probably been approaching them slightly wrong (then again though, i’ve dated some straight up losers). both things can be true. it’s not for my partner to make me feel fulfilled (a weight i put on patrick, and a.b.s at the moment i suppose). i need to be doing that myself. i need to define what i find fulfilling (volunteer work actually) and incorporate that into my daily routine (something i’ve been wanting to do but for some reason anxious).
i need to have a real sit down with myself tomorrow 🙂 i’m actually quite looking forward to it. i’m a very interesting person. i love you ariana. i need to hear it right now, even from myself. goodnight ❤
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