Not dying, sorting things out, and other necessary tasks

Well, it just gets weirder. And as Dr. Hunter Thompson used to say, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

So far no dying. This is good.

Additional conversations with Utterly Inappropriate Woman #1 have ensued since she's been in the in-patient unit, but I remain fully aware of the idiocy of anything beyond support here. And it hasn't been limited to her.

But there is also necessary sorting out to be done. Last weekend, there were some unfortunate events that had to do with:

• my forgetting that I'm not really a normal person; and
• my forgetting that my ex isn't really a normal person either
• my forgetting that the particular combination of mental illnesses, while fine and even supportive when love was the predominating mode between us, is not so good when she's at pains to expiate or suppress guilt at her behavior at the end of the relationship, and the love has been replaced by this guilt, the resultant resentment, projection, and the rest of the ugly panoply of defenses.
• my cascading emotions around all of this: loss of idealized image of ex, which was crushing if a little late in coming, all things considered; renewed sense of betrayal; sense of shame at being emotionally labile in the first place and at all susceptible to this sort of horseshit; sense of hopelessness at ever being able to find my way out of the morass. Hence the need for the Happy Face Optimism Mantra to be found one post previous.

Now before all this, which all took place Sunday, I had been doing well. I'd thought that she and I had reached a pretty happy and tender equilibrium with each other - I felt reassured that she was not doing what I most feared, she seemed reassured that I wasn't interested in continuing bitter recriminations, and we had a meeting that seemed to remind both of us how very much we care/cared about each other. It felt sad, but OK-sad, not awful-sad.

Anyway, it had made my 2nd week in my outpatient program much, much better. Knowing that she was out there and didn't suddenly just hate me or not care whether I lived or died was comforting - it reaffirmed the emotional reality of the preceding 2 1/2 years. Sometimes two people can love each other a lot and just not have conditions be quite right, and it's OK. I always loved and trusted her, and it was very important to me to feel that I'd not been wrong to trust her that way. The death of that trust...it would have been awful, like the death of something inside me. Or worse, the death of part of me.

So I'd made quite a bit of progress during that 2nd week (last week), and was even reaching out to other patients, both in group and out of group. One young guy, previously alluded to, needed to hear that nobody hates him, so I made sure to let him know in a couple of different ways on a couple of different days how much I enjoy him (nothing cheesily obvious - I'm capable of greater subtlety than the flat description given here would indicate). Another guy was all alone in the city, having come out of inpatient after all his friends had moved out of the city. So I gave him a call on the weekend, just so his phone would ring and someone would ask him how he was. I expressed to the group as a whole how valuable I'd found our discussions and common work and initiated a phone & email list so we could contact each other in crisis. Little stuff like this. And of course, sure, another call to the Utterly Inappropriate Woman.

So yesterday what happens? Utterly Inappropriate Woman's inpatient roommate joins our group, and at lunch, gets a bit flirtatious with me. Worse, she's insanely, ridiculously, achingly, just stupid attractive. Dark, dark eyes, indeterminately exotic background, multiple visible piercings that suggest others...hugely alluring, in a word. Physically, pretty much everything my little heart could desire. Considering that she'd been on the inside for a few weeks, who knows what her particular emotional/mental state was/is, though. Probably suicidal depressive from the look of things.

So say hello to Utterly Inappropriate Woman #2. This is going to drive me mad. Oh, and I came home yesterday from all this to a phone message from UIW#1, who had phone privileges.

I am catnip to the mentally/emotionally fragile. Sadly, they're always at least slightly more fragile/complicated/screwed up than I am. Obviously, there's an inherent self-bias here, but testimony from several friends, including during the present breakup, confirms this general impression. To be sure, the ex was by _far_ the most sane of my recent girlfriends, but she has plenty of problems and perhaps the biggest is her inability/refusal to admit that these problems might be playing a part in her problems with relationships. Everything wrong in our relationship was, you see, basically my fault, at least according to her.

Now, how often is that really true? It's not like she had a brilliant track record either prior to me. For example: two successive and totally different partners basically lost interest in having sex with her after a great beginning - coincidence? I'd say no, but I'd also never broach a topic that brutal, that potentially destructive, with her. Hence the "cowardice" theme of this blog. Her selfishness during sex. The odd, passive, nearly dissociative quality alluded to in a different post. Other, more intimate, if prosaic problems. Things I never said to her that I should have at least brought up. Too late now, obviously. A catalogue of cowardice, compiled too late.

So now what?

Well, clearly, #1 is don't die.

#2 is don't try to enter into relationships because they're there right now. In other words, don't be as desperate as my ex. And especially don't do this with UIW.

#3...I've got to somehow move beyond this past weekend with the ex. It really hurt, albeit not in the typical ways (jealousy, rage, etc). It's hard to explain, particularly in brief, but I think/thought very, very highly of this woman. I respected her, thought she was morally highly evolved & conscious, unlike a few of the women I'd been most recently involved with before her. She cared about how people felt, she thought about how her actions would affect others, she was thoughtful: she was fully human, in other words, something so rare, when you think about it.

That she now doesn't seem quite so ennobled is unfortunate, but has little to do with me. She has her needs, and I have mine. I simply have to concentrate on retaining the strength I need to not fall into the bad patterns (see: UIWs). Whether or not she has the strength of insight or character to see into herself that deeply can't occupy me, however fervently I want to believe in that vision of her.