2006-01-16
Double D
Breaking up is just never easy, is it?
Even when it's blindingly clear that things are not meant to be, more often than not one party freaks the hell out and things devolve into furious emails and desperate phone-calls.
I mean, that's usually how I act, anyway.
Especially when I have only been dating someone, exclusively, for a month and a half; the shorter the relationship, the harder I snap.
But this time, the tables have turned. And just to make my perspective on all of this clear, I am seriously not a stranger to either side of a break-up. When Rakers and I used to break up all the time, in the beginning, it was him with the crazy act and then it was me, and finally it was so refined that it was simultaneous.
It was awesome in its retarded perfection.
Anyways, heaven forbid you are reading along thinking, "Wow. Sarah is really dealing with something NEW and HARD."
That's just not true.
I know Double D - coming and going.
Dumb and Desperate, or Double D if you will, is how at least one party in a dissolving relationship inevitably acts. Now that I think of it, having been the Double D so many times myself, I think I'm that much more of an expert in identifying and shutting down a Double D before it can have it�s way with me to get back together with me, so that it can break up with me thus feeling better and more in control than the Double D actually ever was.
I can spot a Double D a mile away�. thank god I was such an idiot in my late twenties. Had I not paid attention to my disturbing tendencies and those exhibited by a number of boyfriends, I would never be able to make judgement calls like the ones I�m making here.
The things to watch for include:
1. Irrational apology. There is no apology for things that were done with the intention of hurting the other person. Things that hurt someone and you didn�t know they would hurt � sure. Purposeful debasement � no way! No way will I compromise myself so that someone can feel better about himself for INTENTIONALLY trying to hurt me. Duh. I actually care about myself, you know? And I learned to do so. I�m currently doing a fucking touch-down dance in the end zone of my heart over the fact that it seems like I finally, actually LEARNED to care about myself enough to not feel partially responsible when a boyfriend hurts me on purpose.
2. Pleading for help. Your ex is the last person who can help you. Just think about it and ask yourself why you would want help from someone who left you. And what kind of help do you want, anyway?
3. Declarations of clarity and understanding. Nobody feels a sense of clear-thinking when they have been dumped. If you do, it�s the same sense of clarity that you feel when you are really super-drunk and the dawn is breaking and you feel like you are CONNECTED, man, you are a PART of the WHOLE and you GET IT. So�. Ummmm� I always call bullshit when someone tells me that they understand why things aren�t working out right after they've been dumped. I don�t understand when someone tells me that I am too much of a loser to sleep with and I�m pretty fucking smart. Like most people, I do not like to be dumped and when it happens, my feelings and my pride are hurt. I act out.
So do you all of you. If you don�t, I bet you�re lying to yourself. You might want to consider a little alone-time with a mirror and lots of tissues so you can look deep inside yourself and face all of the ugly crap that some people insist they don�t have inside themselves.
Yeah you do.
You, too.
Uh huh, even you.
And now for specifics.
Yay! Gossip!
This breaking up is going on an awfully long time for something that was only an exclusive relationship for short amount of time. I keep getting these text messages and I don�t like the way they read at all.
There�s something that, as time moves on and the messages don�t, makes me really, really uncomfortable. Probably what�s making me uncomfortable is the fact that they just keep coming, despite my responding once-in-awhile and telling him to leave me alone. I�ve done it nicely, I�ve done it meanly, and I�ve ignored items that begged for response. I don�t think he even knows what he wants to hear but he�s got his Double D on, for sure.
He doesn�t want me and even if he did, he doesn�t know how to be a healthy partner for me.
I�ve made it clear I don�t want him.
Repeatedly.
�You should get an order of protection or something.�
For what? For the look in his eyes the night he turned on the over-head light while I was sleeping? I had moved into a back bedroom when I couldn�t sleep. I was tossing and turning and he was complaining, fairly, so I moved. The next thing I knew, the over-head light was on and he was standing over me, yelling about meeting him halfway. It made no sense outside of the context of an Anger Management class. It told me everything I needed to know and it allowed a volatile nature to be finally, fully revealed.
I should get an order of protection for the way he�s tried to manipulate an emotional response beyond �Good luck but get out�? I�ve heard it all from him at this point. Via text message. If I were a younger or less-grounded woman, I would be very worried for me. I would be worried that I would get sucked into believing that I owe him something and that I would return to a situation that wasn't bad but that was headed in the direction of Due Bad.
Does an order of protection work to protect you from the distress response that you have when you hear your cellular phone BEEEEEEP, indicating that you have a new text message?
Can you get one against someone because your good friend says she noticed that he was way too pushy with you the night you all went out together? She was worried because he seemed to try to control what and how much I was drinking. When he realized I was no longer drinking and had switched to water, he began to push water on me like it had been his idea and like he was taking care of me. I observed this because� hello? I switched to water. He didn�t. Sobriety is a seriously under-estimated weapon in the War Against Bad Relationships. She wasn't the only one who was worried.
But I was talking about orders of protection and how much they do not apply to every scary situation involving a formerly romantic entanglement. I mean, after all, an order of protection does not protect you from the nightmares that you�ve begun to have because you've realized that you still haven�t gotten rid of this guy whose �emotional bond� makes NO sense to you, all things considered.
Last night, I had horrible nightmares � in one, Rosie barked in the middle of the night but she didn�t lose it, or go crazy, so I calmed her down and then suddenly I was walking out of the door to go to work. Grace was gutted and hanging by her tail on the post outside my house. I can't get the image out of my head... it's there every second that my mind wanders away form the task at hand. Every second.
I woke up afraid to go look and afraid to just go back to sleep because if I just went back to sleep, the dream might not really be a dream and I might really be getting up to find my most beloved animal to have have murdered, filleted, and displayed.
In the next dream, things started off the same way. Rosie barked in the middle of the night but again, she didn�t get crazy so I didn�t get worried. I got up to go to the bathroom and when I got in the bathroom, I noticed that the toilet seat was up and there was pee in the toilet but no toilet paper. In the same moment that I KNEW he was there to hurt me, that he had hidden behind the door, and he revealed himself as he shut he shut the door. He attacked me and I couldn�t make a sound but I was fighting back when I woke up, really sweaty and truly terrified. It was a visceral dream and I am sore from it.
Now, I know there�s nothing to worry about and I am probably embracing my stereotypically ethnic princess tendencies by voicing any concern. It�s my birth rite, after all. I could make an arrogant list of why I don�t worry but I�m not going to do that. First of all, it would be arrogant and duh � like I�m going to give away my secrets.
While I�m selfishly glad that I�m not Double D this time, I wish for everyone that there was never a Double D, or at least that there was never one after your thirtieth birthday.
Double D is an irrational demon with unclear intent and devastating effect when he gets his or her way.
Double D should stick to teaching the kids things about themselves and leave the adults to our own relationship demon, whom I will name once I am finally in a relationship with an adult.
arizonasarah at 10:47 a.m.