Second Part Of Yesterday's Lengthy Post

This post (just like all of the posts from the last while) was written before I left for Burning Man.

This post was also written in a pretty emotional state. 

But this post, weirdly enough, was written after all the other posts.  Or maybe not weirdly enough, except that I just mean that, well, it probably doesn't matter.  It's just another post.

One of the things I kept trying to explain to my brother was that while all this was going on, Jay would have no idea.

And sure enough, sometime near 11, Jay texted.  He was nearly done.

And then he texted half an hour later, he was leaving.

I didn't know how to respond.

He texted a minute later.  "Am I coming to get you? "

I said I didn't know anymore.

So he said he'd just go home.

Which set off another round of tears.

Because I wanted to be with him.  I still do, even now, and I wanted to be with him and talk to him and see if I could explain, again, how this all hurt me.

And I knew, as I said to my brother, that Jay would have no idea of what was going on with me, what I was thinking or feeling, how any of this would have been affecting me.

Wouldn't, genuinely, or perhaps by choice, I don't know.  And I told my brother that maybe I was in the wrong.  Maybe I was over-reacting, and upset over nothing because (insert list here of all the things I'd said just a few minutes earlier) and my brother didn't really say much, just pulled me close for a hug while I cried.

Jay texted when he got home, "made it home *smiley face* goodnight" and I'm 99% sure that he had no clue of the upset I was feeling.  Maybe he's never experienced these things himself or maybe he just doesn't understand how other people work.  Or, how I work.  Or maybe he does and doesn't care.  I don't know.

But when I'm sitting there, wanting so much to spend another night with him, and he is content to just not see me?

It makes me so sad that that's the situation, and it makes me so sad that I'm ok with it.

Even though I'm not completely ok with it, I'm ok with it enough that this is where I ended up three Saturday nights ago.  Crying on my brother's couch because Jay didn't care enough to see me when I was right there.  And Jay never really cared enough, except for what pleased him, what worked for him.

And yet, as I explained to my brother, Jay is lovely.  He is very loving and caring, and he is a gentle soul.  Jay is wounded, as we all are, but in ways that make me just want to hold him.   In ways he perhaps doesn't recognize, but he is not a bad person.

He just doesn't like me all that much.  Even though he loves me.  Tells me so, still.  I think Jay is wonderful.  Most especially when we're lying close and quiet, or laughing with each other, or just being, just us, with nothing else to get in the way.

But the battle I keep fighting is this same one, over and over.  The battle between my head (I am worth so much more than this) and my heart (I love being with him so much.)  And when you add that to all the rest of the regular layers... (I've been single for so long.  Maybe no one else will love me.  It's better to be with someone in a crappy relationship than alone.  I'm not worth anything better anyway.  Etc.  Etc.) it just gets messy.

Before this weekend happened, when I talked to Jay about seeing him at Burning Man, I wanted us to have moments together there.  And, like I said in a post at some point, going in to Burning Man, I needed the thought of seeing him there as a security blanket.  And after the weekend, I just let it go.

I still, for my mental sanity, am telling myself that I will see him there and we will be happy and in love and maybe will spend a night together or may cuddle somewhere, and maybe that all will happen.

But there is also now a seed planted that knows that this has to end.  And that it does not seem that he is going to change, and so then it goes back to being on me.

I tried to explain to my brother that I wanted to talk all this over with Jay.  To make him understand.

My brother told me that it's not my job to make sure he's happy in the future, but I still want that.  Want to tell him that if he wants to be happy and in love and in a long term, meaningful relationship there are things that he needs to look at, and change.  I want that for him.  And, perhaps, for me.  Like if I can make him understand, and he changes, then we really could and would be perfect.  If he loved me and loved me the way I want to be loved?  We really would be amazing.

Because we were.  Before he decided he might have to live somewhere else.  And before he decided to apply for the job in Vancouver, we were amazing.  He was amazing.  Loving, supportive, open, kind, strong, caring, gentle, sensitive.  Amazing.

But then that...well, anyway.

The first night I stayed at Jay's, I told him that sometimes (lately) I had wondered if maybe we should get back together, but that after he introduced me to his roommate like that, I really only wanted parts of him as a boyfriend, and certainly not his heart.

I think he thinks I was joking.

I think I wasn't.

But still.  Am I done with Jay?  I don't know.  I think I won't be done with him until I am.

But that weekend, something in me broke open.  And so I found myself, a week before leaving for Burning Man wounded, raw and emotional.

Which may just be perfect.






Added on later:

And then this happens, which is typical Jay, and typical of why I get so...confused.

When I got back home,  I sent Jay the pictures I'd taken of his airplane and him working on it.  I didn't want the pictures and it seemed mean and bitter to delete them, so I sent them to him, no subject, no comments, just the pictures.  The first contact we'd had since he'd sent me the text saying he was going to bed, and I sent a text back saying I wish he understood.

He emailed back.  Thanking me so much, calling me sweet names, asking if I got home safely, and signing off with a hug and a kiss.

And this is the whole thing.  He is sweet.  He is loving.

Or you can take my brother's interpretation.  He knows how to charm, and uses his charm when it works for him.

I don't feel ready to buy that, exactly.

But no matter.  I'll be angry with Jay, hurt that he let me down, disappointed that he didn't want to see me, or didn't make the time or didn't... whatever.  That, for example, he chose to spend his last day on the Island, way back in June, out with his friends at the airport, rather than with me.  So I'll be disappointed, and hurt, and even angry with myself for letting him treat me so, and sticking around for more, and then he'll say something sweet, and loving and I go... see?  He does care.  He does love me.  He's just... distracted.  Busy.  Has other things going on.

To which my brother responded, "you sound just like all those other women who stay in abusive relationships."

And as I write that, I'm remembering back to my first boyfriend.  And how after we'd been together and were living together a dear friend of mine asked me to meet for coffee, caught up with me, concerned that no one had seen me in ages, and when I told her how things were going she paused, and said "it sounds to me like you're in an abusive relationship."




Why?

Why do I keep being ok with this?

Now, I've never been hit.  I've never been called horrible things.

But I've given myself completely to men who did not give themselves back to me.

And I've given my love to men who took it and felt there was nothing more they needed to do.

Jay is nothing like my first boyfriend.  Except, perhaps with the certain charm, and the woundedness just seeping through the cracks, almost invisible if you didn't read between the lines.  Jay has a conscience, where I'm not sure my first boyfriend did.  Jay just.  Well, it doesn't matter.

Jay is Jay.

I just need to get through Burning Man, and then through whatever it is that comes after that.

And I guess I also think that Burning Man is not the place to have a "I never want to see you again" moment with Jay.

Unless it is.

But I think I'd rather not.  (Because now I'm panicking again and need to go breathe.)