Picking up the Pieces
- 1 year ago
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Loved In Pieces free porn video
Love is illogical. It’s often found in the small moments where you are hit with the realization that the person in front of you matters more to you than anyone else. When they walk in from work and brush their lips to your forehead and pull you close. When you get in an argument and you realize you don’t want to fight, you just want to make up. The fleeting seconds during the most mundane activities, when you look up and smile knowing this person, this unique and complex person, loves you for all your quirks and complexity, and wouldn’t change a thing about you because then you wouldn’t be the person they fell in love with.
The more experience I gain in life, the more I’ve come to appreciate the beautiful fragility of love. We choose, each and every day, to wake up next to the person we love. Even when we’re angry with them, we know we would never want to trade them. I don’t think a pair of lovers has ever existed that didn’t at some point say they would like to kill the other – not really, but in that ‘I’m going to kill him!’ sense. Or those moments where you say ‘It’s over! I can’t take this anymore!’ – knowing full well that you’re just angry, and you’ll be sorry you said it later. When it comes down to it, it’s never meant.
Until it is.
Love requires priority, time, and kindness. You don’t always like the person you love, but you love them, and that transcends the petty nonsense of daily life. But love is often unequal. I’ve been told two things about love that really stuck. One is that the secret to keeping love alive is for both people to always believe that they got better than they deserved and to treat their partner as a gift. The second is that there is always one person who loves more and one person who loves less.
The first I agree with. Appreciating the person and genuinely being thankful to have them in your life ensures you always treat them with just a little more kindness, a little more love.
The second, experience has taught me is true. Though I hate to admit it, and I refuse to believe it has to be that way in every case. Most times I’ve been the one who loved less. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I looked back I could see it. But not this last time, perhaps it was karma finally giving me my turn. I think about that sometimes – did I deserve this?
The more distance I get from it the more I realize that no, I did not deserve it. There is no karmic scale up in the sky dictating that for all the times I was the one to realize I didn’t love the person as much as I should, that it was time to give me a full measure of that same pain from the other perspective.
Most days I don’t think about it anymore, and when I do it doesn’t make me sob uncontrollably or feel terrible. But sometimes, on those days that aren’t so great, I think about all the years wasted, all the energy spent building a life, and all the times I could have woken up to the reality of the relationship but instead chose to keep the blinders on.
Love is blind. Not because you truly don’t see the warnings, but because you get so wrapped up in how much you adore this person, that you tell yourself stories to excuse their behavior. Especially when that behavior comes out after you’re already all in. Inequality in care and treatment is easy to explain away – he just doesn’t show affection easily, he’s just been hurt so much in the past that he’s scared, if I just give it more time he’ll show the feelings I know are really there.
Sometimes those stories may be true. But for me, it doesn’t work out that way. The warning signs I see and ignore I live to regret.
I try to live a life free from regret. I look at everything I experience as a lesson, or an opportunity to learn more about people and emotions and how the mind works. I find it very hard to say I regret anything in my life, even the things that no one should ever experience.
Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of those things. From early childhood on into adulthood. I think I got used to always being the strong one, always being the one who saves others pain even if it means I take it myself, always the one that everyone goes to for help and advice, but with no one to go to myself. Partly by my own doing, because I feel I can handle anything life throws at me. I remind myself what I’ve already come through, and try to be mindful that if I could survive that, I can literally survive anything.
But I’m tired. I’m so tired. My soul is drained, and there’s nothing left to give. Nothing left to bolster my spirits but sheer will alone.
I have the undesirable ability to shut down emotions. I try not to flip that switch, because it can’t be turned back on. I will take so much punishment before I do it, because if there’s any chance, any tiny .000001% of a chance that it will get better, I want to hang on. I’m tenacious. I don’t know how to give up. I refuse to believe I can’t fix things no matter how bad they get. But I’m learning that I can’t fix people. I can’t make someone feel things, or make them want to provide what I need. They either will, or they won’t.
People are drawn to me. Men especially. But I’ve only met two people in my life who just did not like me, and that was okay, because I found them despicable anyway. They were not good people. They were not kind people, or even honest people. If a person has redeeming qualities, or is trying to become better, I respect that, and I give them credit for it.
After my childhood, I didn’t speak to my father for over 7 years. When I finally felt ready to forgive him, and had seen that he had been trying to fix the things that made him so terrible, I opened that communication again. Guardedly, and frankly it’s still guardedly after over a decade. But we have a good relationship now. I respect where he was coming from, and his intentions were always good, even if his actions were far from it.
It also doesn’t affect me tangibly anymore – he has no control over my life. I have built the life I wanted. Step by painful step. I’ve been hugely successful because I will not give up, and I will not back down from any challenge. I’m willing to work as hard as it takes to get where I want to go.
But one piece has eluded me, the one piece I want more than anything: Love.
True, I am a loner for the most part. I’m truly an introvert, pretending to be an extrovert because my goals and career demand it. I’ve learned how to do it very well. But I would be happier tucked away in my perfect place in the world, secluded from everything, with mountains of books and gorgeous forest and ocean out my door, and just one person who I wanted by my side.
I signed up for eHarmony once. It told me it could not match me with anyone in the entire U.S. and that I should check back later. It never did come up with any matches before I cancelled it. Am I really that difficult? That different?
Perhaps. But I won’t allow my ego to convince me that’s true. In a world of over 6 billion people, I cannot believe there isn’t one who would love every part of me. My kindness, and need to stand up for what I believe is right, my tenacity, my strength, my quirks, my stubbornness, my desire to be in control, my love of small things, my wonder at the miracle that is life itself, my dark fantasies, and my trust of intuition. The list could go on for many more pages, but the end result is this: I want to be loved for all of what makes me who I am. From my singing in the shower to my dancing in the rain. I don’t want someone who says ‘I love this and this, but could you not have that anymore?’
Unfortunately, that is what I get. To the point I’ve taken to warning people about my character and personality from the get-go, and the fact that the very things that attract people initially are the things they will grow to resent over time.
Part of it is my fault too. I give chances where I should not. I fall in love with the person I see someone can become, not who t
hey are. But people do not change unless they want to. I love to see people reach their potential, I am always pushing myself to reach mine, and then reach further still. That serves me well in business, I am a fantastic developer and motivator. At work though, if someone doesn’t reach their potential, it only hinders them. It does not personally harm me. If it harms the business, I can manage them out. Relationships don’t work that way.
I had found someone who I thought was it for me. Someone who had all the qualities I wanted: Intelligence, wit, charm, problem-solving skills, common sense, the ability to fix things, generosity, kindness… I was convinced I was done searching. We settled down. We bought a home. We had a child. We went along in our life the way any happy couple should.
And I was happy, sure we had fights, lots of them, and sure I found his volatility and moodiness to be painful, and his critical nature and judgment stung regularly. But I convinced myself it was all a defense mechanism. That eventually he’d wake up and realize I was still there. I still wanted him as my partner in life. And I still loved him and cherished him. I believed over time he would be able to show me the love and affection I wanted, stop the threats and coercion, and stop getting so violently angry for no good reason.
But he didn’t. And still I stayed. Finally resigning myself to the fact that this was the life I had chosen, and it was too late to get out.
But after a long and painful drag through an affair, I finally flipped that switch. Not because of the other woman, but because of how he treated me throughout the process. He finally decided he wanted his life with me. I realized he made my life worse. He pulled me down. He hurt my feelings. He starved me for affection. He broke my heart over and over again.
Yet, he was able to give all the things I’d begged for to this other woman with no hesitation, no reservation. He said it was different with her. They had a connection that he and I just didn’t have. That I should look at her as an addition to our life, and not as a threat. That I was the problem for being upset about it. That we could all be friends if I would just stop being upset and find someone else to fill the gaps for me too. That people aren’t meant to be monogamous. That he didn’t believe any one person could be everything you need.
To my shame, I tried. I tried to live with it. I tried to be happy with what I got. I don’t know how at this point. But I did. For seven long months.
The most painful issue was that throughout the process, every time I would stand up for what I needed, he would emotionally blackmail me into some new agreement. Always putting her feelings first. Never mine. While still claiming he loved me and wanted his life with me. Using our child as leverage, using our finances and the fact that he could walk away and leave me hanging with everything as leverage, telling me I was being cruel and taking away the one thing that made him happy.
After a while I couldn’t make excuses for his behavior anymore. I couldn’t tell myself he didn’t mean it. He showed over and over again that he did not love me, despite what he said. I was the practical choice. I could provide a lifestyle for him that he could never have with her. I had invested heavily in a business venture that he worked in, I had bought a house and warehouse, I had provided stability to make sure the lights never went out and the bills never went unpaid despite the sporadic business income as it got on its feet. All these things she was in no position to do.
He saw my career trajectory, and my methodical way of achieving every goal I set for myself, and the things we could buy and places we could go if he and I were together. But none of that truly matters to me. Sure, it’s nice. But I can get it all back. I’ve started from ground zero multiple times in my life. And I always come back stronger and better off than I was before. I can do it again. Somewhere in there, I forgot that.
As much as love may take work, love shouldn’t be hard. You shouldn’t have to convince yourself every moment to love the person. You should just love them. Completely. Without reservation. With full vulnerability. Knowing they could rip your heart from your chest and shatter it at any moment, and trusting that they never will – because they love you just as much.
I am done being loved in pieces.
Marisol
- 03.08.2021
- 9
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