I am tired tonight. It was a long day.
I was repeating to someone tonight the quote from that bear hunt book: “Can’t go over it, Can’t go under it. Can’t go around it. Have to go through it.”
It’s something I said to myself a lot as I went through my divorce and tough moves and watching my Mom decline and all that. We tell ourselves that because it’s supposed to make us better to face things and experience them.
It probably does, to a point. Certainly when we’re younger, it’s good for us to learn how do deal with hard stuff. We’re not supposed to run away from our problems. So we learn to deal with hard stuff, and then we go through years and years of dealing with hard stuff.
What happens to the people who run away from their problems, though? Do they really end up having to deal with everything later, or does it get dealt with by the people who face problems and deal with hard stuff? Do the people who run away just run away again?
It’s just that dealing with hard stuff is really exhausting, so I’m wondering if running away from it is really such a bad choice for the people who run away. Not dealing with hard stuff sounds really great, actually.
When I was in London, I would get sad and overwhelmed at night by the things I wasn't thinking about during the day, the sad things back home. It seemed like proof that you can’t run away from your problems.
Back home, though, I’m still sad, but I’m not also occasionally distracted by being in London. Imagine how much more distracted I would be if I went to Tahiti or joined the circus.
There are people here who would miss me, but they’d get over it.
I get trapped in feeling obligated. In my romantic relationships, I put effort into being a good girlfriend/wife, compromising when I don’t want to, respecting his needs, all that blah blah blah relationship stuff. Then it ends and they move on and it didn't really matter that I did all that. I’m left wondering why I bothered sitting through the stupid movies they like and going to the boring events they wanted me to attend with them.
That guy who I paged in 1998 who hadn't called, the one I wrote about in that email to Kerry, here’s what I wrote about him the next day:
Okay, I think _____’s dreamy again. He fell asleep at ten last night, waiting for the [band ____ was in] guys to call him and tell him when rehearsal was today. He needed to know, because he wanted to spend part of the day with me. Aaaaahhh. And, that sneaky rat bastard, when he left a message at 10:30 this morning, he did not use the apologetic- boyfriend-speaking-to-the-disappointed-girlfriend voice. Damn, but he’s good. When he found out I was leaving tomorrow afternoon, he arranged to drive up here for breakfast, and then drive me to the airport. That freak! I was completely unable to retain the anger that I had so carefully cultivated, coiling it tighter and tighter, until three-thirty in the morning. Oh, man, do I ever hate wasting rage. Now it’s just all gone. Maybe I’ll try yelling at some squirrels.
I thought I had wasted my rage! But I know now that a few week’s after that, he would tell me he didn’t have feelings “like that” for me. Which he clearly did, but whatever. He’s married to someone else now. She’s great. It’s all for the best.
I don’t actually have any memory of him driving me to the airport, but that was nice.
I guess it’s just that I was doing that in 1998, figuring out what the hell was going on with that guy, raging, insecure. Going through it. So, if that whole thing about facing your problems is right, shouldn’t relationships with guys be easy-peasy now? Shouldn’t I be really good at it?
But nothing is easy-peasy and there are a limited number of things I’m really good at.
Maybe it’s time to give running away a shot.