Personal

My mother once told me, “You don’t have to tell your lover everything about you”. When she said this, she kept it general. It has many meanings to me, but I never really asked her about it. I took it for what it was, and used it whenever I found it useful. I remember a different day, my mother mentioned how she never asked about my father’s sexual history, and how he respectfully, never asked about hers. They were both just aware that... there WERE histories. So, I took her previous advice to this context, same advice you see on every magazine, men’s and women’s – don’t talk about the exes.

I have my curious days, and I have my uncurious days. Sometimes I know how to censor them, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I was glad I asked about some things, and sometimes, I regretted it. There are a few things I regretted doing last night and today. People say you regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did. Looking back now, that was so untrue for me.

I broke a lot of personal rules. In exactly the following order:

1. I didn’t follow the magazines’ advice – I asked about a sexual history.

Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t occur to me what kind of information I was actually asking for. In all honesty, there wasn’t much. But that lead to me breaking the following personal rule,

2. I took a comment personally.

You know you took a comment personally when you continue to think about it for more than a minute. I’m not sure how I felt, I still am not, and I struggle to explain how I felt, but I felt something. Something I feel so uncertain about that I continued to wonder what that was. This is me having a curious day. Combined with a period day. Maybe this was why I took things personally? Who knows, something was triggered in me, and I wanted to know what, and why. As usual, I kept to myself. This was me, trying to understand myself. If it was anger I was experiencing, I wanted to know to calm myself. If it was jealousy I was experiencing, I wanted to know to rationalise. If it was sadness that I was experiencing, I wanted to know to soothe myself. Because the biggest point of it all, was that the comment meant nothing to me. I know if I made a similar comment to Sam he wouldn’t even think twice about it. But me being the ex-psych student, I wanted to know why.

It must be the period right? I don’t know. I don’t wanna use my period as an excuse. It’s so lame. Like I said though, it’s a feeling I just don’t know how to express. Maybe the best word is Weird. Sam uses the word. It’s like when Sam’s dad’s friend got all Weird and stops in a conversation just to compliment me (few days ago). The friend didn’t mean any harm. Sam didn’t feel angry. But it just felt Weird. Even for me. It wasn’t even inappropriate. It was just Weird. And after last night’s comment I felt Weird and I wanted to know why. It’s so silly to take things personally. I want to be able to tell myself stop feeling Weird because it’s silly. Then that’s where I struggle, I don’t know how to stop feeling Weird when I don’t even know what I’m feeling. Then, I didn’t follow my mother’s advice, and

3. I told my lover everything.

To me, mom’s advice about “You don’t have to tell your lover everything about you” actually comes to play for this context. I usually deal with my issues alone. Personal issues. These are the issues I rather not discuss with others. These are personal weaknesses and battles that I rather fight and win alone. I confide in people about other things, like when I get frustrated with my relationship with my brother or mother or friends, my insecurities about the future, my health and the like – the nonpersonal issues. I have learnt this, also through past experience, that my individual self doesn’t benefit from revealing personal issues to another person. No matter how close that person is to me. I did that once, and all it ever resulted was me feeling even more vulnerable, even more scared, and a lot more insecure. But, that was because the ex was incapable of heart to heart communication anyway. Could just be his way of being him, but I learnt through him, that my way of being me, was to deal with my own personal issues alone. Other people may be the complete opposite. Many are very comfortable revealing the deepest darkest issues, and for some, talking about it to someone else really helps. But this is a self-realisation about myself, that I am not one of those people who benefit exposing my issues, and I function best working on them by myself. Maybe in this sense, I am my mother’s daughter. I know she keeps a lot to herself. But to me, that made her the strongest person I know, emotionally. At one point in my life, I thought that keeping to yourself was very oppressive and unhealthy. Sometimes I still believe that, which was why I didn’t follow my mother’s advice TODAY, and spoke to Sam about how I felt.

Sam inspires me to do a lot of things. More importantly Sam inspires me to challenge myself and one of the ways to challenge myself was to take risks. Sam always spoke about being honest with him, and how he really appreciates open communication. When he asked me tonight, what was I thinking about, I thought I could owe it to him to be honest and to take the risk, by telling him everything.

It didn’t turn out as well as it should. For one, I didn’t even know what I was trying to say. But I kept trying. The more I tried the more I wished I didn’t say anything. The more I explained myself, the more I was digging my own hole. He didn’t understand. And I understood that he didn’t understand. He wanted to. And I really am so thankful he wanted to understand and he tried. But he couldn’t.

In the end, what WAS there to say? I couldn’t even explain it. All I know is, the comment meant nothing and that I shouldn’t have dwelled on it like I did.

Sam felt a little uncomfortable that I kept all of this in my mind, and for that long. I dug another hole yet again by trying to explain. I can’t remember what I said to him, but I wanted to let him know that, this whole thing was just a stupid personal battle. I’ve never been so in love in my life, or have ever felt protective of such an amazing and honest relationship, that, I guess I try so hard to never be obsessive or overly sensitive, which happened the last time I was in love. I am naturally easy going. For many reasons I didn’t find my ex to be a very good boyfriend and indirectly this made me a person I couldn’t stand – the obsessive overly sensitive. The fact that I was very aware of who I was becoming, prolly is a huge factor of why I like to be in-tuned to my personal feelings and issues. I like that I could see what was happening to me, and I was able to end the relationship knowing it wasn’t good for me. I guess, that isn’t just a strength, it is also a weakness, to always wanting to be in-tuned to my own inner dialogues. When I am quiet, not every time but most times, this is what I do, I reflect on my emotions. It’s just who I am.

I hated the way my conversation with Sam continued/ended. I was a wreck. My mind was all over the place. I couldn’t express myself and this bothered me badly because I really did want Sam to know this part of me. I just really had no clue where to start and how. Now that I’ve written everything down, not only does it feel like a burden have been lifted, I am more sure of myself than I’d ever been. You know what’s the silliest thing? I’m not even bothered by the comment anymore. I was actually WAY MORE bothered by not being able to explain and express myself to Sam. This post alone took me hours to write up. But it cleared a lot of air to me. It doesn’t matter now what I felt when I heard the comment, I’m just so fucking glad I could leave the feeling as “unknown” and move on. I stay very true to my personal rules, but I believe in growth. I will continue to keep some issues to myself, but, I’m also going to continue to challenge myself. So…. Here’s my big step, I’m going get Sam to read this!

Rereading this all over, let me rephrase about regretting what I did. I don’t regret it anymore : ) if my conversation with Sam didn’t happen, I would never have come to move on this quickly. Mannnn… : ) *phew