Real Life: Diary of An Addict: Detox Week #1

March 24, 2006 by Pocahantas

toxic sign I must admit that when I read this I was riveted and holding my breath throughout. Pocahantas, our author behind this real life experience described this as ‘hilariously pathetic’. She gives a mental insight into what is running through a woman’s mind when she realises that things aren’t working, he’s clearly unavailable and she needs to make a massive change and ditch him. The yo-yoing of feeling is eerily familiar and if you’ve ever been indecisive about what to do, this fantastic post will make you cringe, make you giggle nervously and feel strangely sad. We’re rooting for you Pocahantas! Stay off the
relationship crack!

I’m hurting right now. Hurting for you. I’ve lost any semblance of pride that I might have once held and the tattered scraps of my long-discarded dignity are nothing but a hindrance to me in the pursuit of my goals. The goal of leaving you.

This is like an abusive relationship. You know where you want me and you know exactly
what to say to get me there and keep me there. You know what to do. You know that my love for you extends far deeper than the physical and that my loyalty to you is nearly unbounded.

The reason you’re here like this is because I let you be.
The reason that you treat me like this is because I allow you to.

I try to run, but the futility of this gesture quickly dawns as I find you, always, two steps ahead of me.

Maybe this is punishment for a past life.

Perhaps karma is paying me my dues. If this is the case then I suppose I have no choice but to accept the heartache. Each and every agonising moment.

I like writing these things to you. Mainly because I know that you can’t understand. You will feel momentarily saddened, then justifiably angry, then immediately defensive because you’ll be sure I’ve just had a flash of temporary insanity. This couldn’t be you of which I speak. You. Mr. Nice Guy. Mr. All-Around Good Person. Always doing good for others. The one who is perpetually taken advantage of, never appreciated, and generally overlooked. NO. I couldn’t be talking about you!

This place in which you live, this happy-shiny-people land, in which you have convinced yourself of your mettle, your desserts, and your thoroughly admirable character, is an alien nation to the rest of the world, a foreign and yet undiscovered wasteland wrought with treachery, lies, and deceit.

I know because I’ve been there with you, in your dreams. I helped create it by allowing it to exist, unchallenged, for so long.

So now as I sit here crying once again (as I do every night) for something that was DOA so long ago, I remember something my mother once told me. Long ago before the stings of rejection, failure, disappointment and defeat became my daily bread. She said that if ever there was a time when I was unsure. A time when I couldn’t tell one way or the other which course was the wisest, to just sit down, clear my mind, and give myself a choice. Not just any choice but I must consider the thing that I want or want to do, be or feel, in relation to something that can be construed as a much greater good. You. This. Us. A future. Or anything that I’d ever wanted to do, be, or feel. Whichever choice gave me the lesser panic attack, that should be, at least temporarily, my path.

My mother’s never been the best with advice, I will admit. And I love her for it as she does not press her opinions on anyone. But this was, quite possibly, the best advice I never knew how to take until today.

I got a call with a job offer a thousand miles away. I didn’t know what to do. My life is finally seeming to make progress here, I’ve got a job with potential, and I’m getting to a ’settled’ place.

I was exhilarated, thrilled, and, all at once, petrified. What if it doesn’t work out? What if I fail there? Surely failing in New York is a much bigger deal then failing in Atlanta…What if I get there absolutely love it, have a fabulous career in which I become mayor, then governor, then president? My thoughts raced, my imagination awoke to the endless fabulous possibilities, then my what ifs turned in another direction.
What if there will never be another you? What if you actually do love me underneath it all? What if you are working for us?

I was baffled, bewildered. What if I make the wrong choice? What if. It seems I do so every time.

After work, I went to the book store, you know, the one next to the movie theatre where, oh, I’m sorry, I digress…and I just sat there. For four hours. Not particularly interested in reading anything, just browsing, people watching, and thinking. I thought so hard my heart started to skip beats, my throat tightened, and my migraine intensified from a dull erratic thump, to the persistent patter of many militant, maniacal midgets’ iron-soled heeled shoes on the tender nerve endings of my cranial membranes.

Finally, I thought, “well, if I’m going to be so stressed about it, I might as well stop consciously avoiding thinking about it.” So I did. I got myself a paper bag–to control my panic attacks you remember–and sat down to weigh the pros and cons of this decision.

My mother was right, it’s hard. Plus I have the attention span of a crack-addicted cockroach and kept getting distracted. In the end I just had to make a list like I normally do, and, while reading the list, time the length and intensity of the panic attacks that I was sure to get.

On List 1

You
Us
You fighting against us

Me making a fool of myself for an us that may never be
Leaving behind my brothers
Job security

Minimal Salary (that has resigned me to a second job)
Cost of Living/PRO
You

On list 2
New York
New place I’ve never lived
Salary bump of $17,000
Paid for graduate school education
Getting out of Atlanta

New pool of un-gay, but slightly more insane, guys
Cost of Living/CON
Culture, history, Broadway

The COLD. I hate the cold. But I do like snow. But I hate slush. (This one’s a toss up)
Good friends.

Leaving Atlanta, hopefully for good. I hate Atlanta.
New York

What looks like an easy choice (to the untrained eye) is, in all actuality, deceptively difficult.

The things that I wanted were simple, but you needn’t worry I’ve remembered that everything I’ve ever asked is the “last thing you want to do.”
Truth is, all I wanted was a little reciprocity–remember, my word of the week. All I wanted was a little understanding, honesty, commitment. All I wanted was for you to say “I love you” and “I want to be with you” and stop trying to relegate our relationship to some unknown date in the future. All I wanted was for you to love me in deed and not in word. All I wanted was for you to spend time with me and stop relegating me to those moments in which you were either physically or financially unfit to hang out with your “friends.” All I wanted was for you to STOP telling me what a good wife I would make and START telling me what a good girlfriend I was/am. All I wanted. All. I. Wanted. Was. Your.Time. Your. Affection. Your. Love.

But it was too much. Far too much for your delicate male sensibility.

So this is goodbye and, though I hate to say it, good riddance. I’m sick of your indecision, your assumptions that I’m always going to be there, and your taking my love for granted. I’m fed up with your lies, your misrepresentations, and your using me for what you can get while you try to forge a “better choice” for your future. Truth is, I’m sick of you, I just don’t know how to get rid of you.

I figure this is my best option. My only chance for finding the life that I was meant to live because unlike you, I’ve been certain of what I wanted for over a year. It’s you. As jacked up as you are, I love you. And I’m not saying that I’m perfect. Never. I’m saying that we accepted and loved each other at one point in our relationship and in our lives and I sometimes wonder if that point is too far gone for recovery. I’m saying that you look at me, at your life, and you think that it’d be funny, while stringing me along with promises of life after “we’re 30″ to screw as many women as you can find and to forge tentative relationships with others on the premise that “if it doesn’t work out, silly old [me] will be there to get you off and lift your spirits.”

Well not anymore.
Screw you.
And everything we ever “had”.
I don’t want you back.
I don’t love you anymore. and this time I’m not giving you my new number.

p.s. I’ll be at your grandmother’s if you need to reach me.

Pocahantas is a 23 year old fiesty female with loads of common sense and yet an unstintingly healthy dose of cynicism when it comes to men and relationships. Tune in weekly for her reality check on single living in the great US of A.

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