The big, black hole.
07/04/2008 12:45 a.m.

Well, after processing the last several days, in light of my failed relationships, and all the years it's taken me to get here, I think that what I've discovered is significant.

It all revolves around the big black hole inside me. We all have one. Dark, and seemingly bottomless, it's usually a deficit of some sort that each of us knows we possess. And, we all have to fall in to reach the center of who we are. My deep, dark, black hole is about feeling unwanted, not feeling worthy enough for anyone to want me.

In my last marriage, John wanted to know what my part was. We were constantly talking about his character defects, his gambling/drinking/anger issues. Those issues were so threatening, that we seemed to forever be focusing on them and not much else. But I KNEW he was right. I knew I had my part in our failure, too. I just couldn't figure it out. Well, I finally have. My part is the big, black, "no one really wants you" hole that lives inside me, that I've spent my whole life expecting someone else to "fill" for me.

Well, Miah doesn't have those issues. But the ones he does have, plus my own, fit right into the deepest part of my own inner dialogue. His inability to make the ultimate commitment; me being convinced that he couldn't possibly be happy with someone my age; the lack of all the little "signs" that I interpret as someone showing they love/want me(i.e., cards, flowers, comments on my poetry, all those token gestures); him being physically attracted to girls that are nothing like me. It's not his fault. It's no one's "job" to make me feel wanted. But I've spent the last year and a half subconciously gathering the "evidence" that feeds my black hole, the one that says, "See? No one wants you." I've also spent the entire last year and a half either trying to show Miah that HE was wanted (in the same ways I would want him to make me feel wanted) or retaliating when he didn't reciprocate by trying to make him feel unwanted back.

Each of my relationships has taken me to the very edge of this big, black hole. But each of them ended long before I had the chance to actually fall in, so that I could get to the bottom of my part of the failures. Miah is the only one who has stayed, the only one who stayed open, who didn't say, "Oh, you think this is all about MY issues? Well, F**k you. I am SO out of here!!!" All through this, even when our difficulties were so intense that he considered going off by himself to figure out his own part, he ALWAYS maintained his desire to work through it, to not break up, to figure everything out so that we could be together in the end.

And knowing this feels, finally, really really good. I understand, now, that my reason for wanting Miah to ask me to marry him was just more of me needing to feel wanted. But, what do I do with it? Now that I've fallen in and seen what is at the center of my dysfunction, how do I get back out and deal with real life in a healthier way?

Maybe it's as easy as licking to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop!! As long as I don't crunch...


I am currently Exhausted
I am listening to the heat