I had a recent experience. Tends to happen when you’re alive.
It made me think of a note I wrote myself, but eventually threw away because it didn’t seem pertinent anymore. This discarded note was to remind me to write my friend a letter about my ideas on relationships and why some people are so unsuccessful. I have to write everything down due to my terrible memory, but apparently this was more than a fleeting thought.
Anyways, the concept I was dealing with at the time was how I tend to shy away from talking about my feelings. My lady friends may lift their eyebrows bemusedly, thinking, what on earth is this kook saying? She constantly whines my ear off. I do tend to emphasize my ‘sharing is caring’ method. I’ve always had really good girl friends, and I ramble affectionately into their supportive nods.
Not so much with the gentlemen. I can dissect a boy’s text for hours with my girls, but force me to actually say what I’m thinking to the guy and I clam up uselessly. The unwritten letter was to detail this behavior I’d observed and self-diagnosed. If I like someone it’s not as simple as me liking him and knowing that he’ll like me back because I’m so great. If I like him, someone else must also like him, and maybe this someone else has been pining after him for years, just waiting for her opportunity to arise. If I openly declare my undying love I could crush her dreams and step all over any potential feelings he may have been starting to stretch towards her. I’m afraid of getting in the way of someone else’s love story. Why should someone settle for me when the person they might actually be happiest with is still lurking against the back wall, waiting for me to fade away?
Oh, poor little martyr. Not intentional, just irresolvable. Time and again.
Maybe it does all circle back to that thing Margaret Atwood said in “Hair Jewelry:”
Unrequited love was, at that period of my life, the only kind I seemed to be capable of feeling. This caused me much pain, but in retrospect I see it had advantages. It provided all the emotional jolts of the other kind without any of the risks, it did not interfere with my life, which, although meager, was mine and predictable, and it involved no decisions.
My Platonic version of myself resembled an Egyptian mummy, a mysteriously wrapped object that might or might not fall into dust if uncovered. But unrequited love demanded no striptease.
…
I have very low self-esteem, which is ridiculous when you consider how awesome I am.
Laugh it off. Paint a smile. Maybe, baby.
Caity in Vunderland 