There are many people who see to think I've no idea of any complexity in human relations ... I cannot, and will not, necessarily let myself be pushed into feeling compelled to reply in the definitive.

I apologize for having to keep reiterating, but I cannot repeat enough that I have never wanted to sensationalize the nature of the following. The situation was once a big deal to me, and just flowed out in all sorts of ways again-and-again. Writing helped and if it yields any insight at all, I hope my presentation of this material only serves to make clear whatever can possibly be gleamed from it - all my faults by the very virtue of how I rave-on included.

The swansong custom credit I wanted to leave on the internet support group I used to frequent :

An exlover in her own healing process. She hopes that whatever is still evident from this in Apr06 really only belies middle-age... Has spoken of turning her back on people only in reference to not being able to be as readily online for others as she would like to be. She is just like any other pedantic old fart.

Antecedents in conversational terms ...
(I'd be one of the first to concur that this page will sound enauseatingly repetitive especially if you've already read various other pages of mine first and have become impatient with the overall theme - thanks to those who have visited and have stuck around so far. I want each visitor to only read as much as they want, and nothing more) ...

Click here to escape to the illustrated menu instead ...

In numerous off-and-on periods spanning over ten years alluded to above with my "quasi-partner", i let not knowing what i kept doing so wrong eat away at me slowly, until, although never deliberate, i really could not function. by opening up in order to see if one can share life alongside another, one takes considerations not taken when it is just by oneself. i was building on so many strengths before we met, but obviously i was still naive and fragile enough to be let down over-and-over after getting back up from recurring obstacles.

 

Another related page that I wrote, Nearly Over Narcissism, at least starts off being a much more disciplined and well-written account than this shocking piece here, but does get repetitive and like I'm living in the past. I did condition myself into a crisis mode. My page on Krishnamurti and "postsecularism" (I'm an atheist interested in intersubjectivity and science while still trying my best to honour the deep emotions of others towards their faiths) may be more palatable still.

This still had to first surface to finally be thrown away

 

What became complete confusion and disorientation set in, unintentionally, ever so subtly at first when everything I did was apparently slightly wrong. More-and-more I started to question my understandings of so much in my interactions and just of whatever I did in my daily life. This was so gradual that it is only in retrospect that I can see how, at a time there was plenty of room indeed for my confidence and abilities to grow and be built upon, these were eroded clear away due to associating with someone who left then saying a relationship with me would be impossible because he would always be looking after me as if I were dependent.

I agree, I still need a lot of skills to acquire, but did he know how much it was agonizing me to put all that aside and live seemingly like an absolute incapable dumbshit in my parental home in order to get my life back on the rails from an awful lot on top of the usual hassles we all expected me to have completing research for postgraduate study? I'm referring here to struggles that, never in my life and in our wildest dreams, anyone ever thought I would ever have to account for.

I don't mind that he had to get on with his own demanding life, but he did not have to insist that my difficulties were a croc to be dealt with as he has dealt with all else. Of course I would have lived like he did at the age I was if I didn't experience such clinically severe consequences of how I once approached life. These have been really hell and I would have felt much more supported if I got some respect for this in a way that had meaning for me. I know now that this was just beyond what could be given, even just as an nod as he left.

There have been many reasons why I think a lot of what I was facing in my own life had nothing to do with usual cripshit, and part of my trouble was untangling this enough when others just assumed to know what would be the quick answer and solution. It would have never been solved in those ways for long.

Looking back with the knowledge I have now, I probably would have had to be hospitalised as I was at some stage at any rate. He had known me before then and gave no credence to the extra strength it all must have required from me, and the tremendous upheaval I, and my family, went through during and after quite a health crisis.

I'm thankful in retrospect that I realised how much I had to rethink and restock.

In what was our final argument, he exclaimed to me in rage exactly what I had been longing to discuss with him in warmth :
That one does not know what life is until one cares dearly for another.

I've experienced at least a form of that love all my life, but know that he is only just finding what that is. The rest usually develops when those younger attachments can make way to balance adult strengths and vulnerabilities. I had once been well on the way to that, I thought.

I've also been surrounded with trust all my life, and have never known what it is to grow up without it. Ironically, I think I would have tried to stay and persevered and wasted away had I not received these last outbursts at a time when it was so clearly a very twisted situation.

I had so much to learn and relearn. Intellectually, I now know better, but there are times I still hurt - for both of us.

It is crucially important to realise that my friend could have been in so much historically built up pain and fear, that he just said what he did much more so to protect himself from whatever he himself was feeling. I'm human too, and cannot escape how much pain surfaced.

I can't completely deny my own rage. It ashames me that it can still recur after so long in rare moments: -

It's way in the distance now, but along the way i think we forgot that the hospitalisation and what happened around it wasn't me just growing up with social problems due to cerebral palsy, and it was a hell of a lot more than just "simple" depression. I don't want to run roughshod over my problems and collect applause while leaving others to pick up the continual and ongoing carnage.

Still, shit, of course I do believe in the personal responsibility of everyone to solve their own problems. With normal maturity, it does start to become easier and easier to see ways of both forging connections and being independent. It was what he was trying so hard to grapple with. It was what he thought I hadn't even started on.

And yes, I was painfully aware of how it still seems to date. Why did he point that out so cruelly? What good did that do apart from making bad news that had to be, pretty much kill me inside, with no acknowledgment nor respect for how much I dropped everything and gave and supported him through considerable shit? Whether he needed it is not the point. I really do forgive with some more understanding now - but I also take advice not to whitewash as I naturally forget - since flashbacks used to come and I couldn't function through these for a long time.

Acknowledging all sorts - on my side too - dissipates the energy that I used to put into avoidance. I've accepted that there are truths in what he said too. I was then unaware of the need to care for my emotional wellbeing as I do now.

There were human reactions all around. We've both been through a lot in life, and I've read conflicting reports on how much to be upfront about difficulties described here. I want to be honest with what still has me down in the mouth at times, but I know the wounds of the other person here go right back to early childhood.

Maybe I did experience a fraction of that socially, and read now that I may have a lower propensity to stress through birth trauma - but not greatly so in the sense that I have managed quite a lot before - I'll keep giving it due consideration as I did while going through this situation. There was a lot of damage and courage there in my friend, given his family background. I respect that, and should have a bit of a better understanding of by now.

Maybe I was just a right pain in the arse.

During all that time I knew him, and afterwards, I could not help but eventually have such a narrow focus trying to figure him out.

Did I also incidentally end up treating people who got close to me as badly? If that was a consequential result of what I had to do, I'd rather waste away. But then I had to assert myself to get anywhere so that I could at least carry my own weight. Was that all he was doing, and I, of all people, couldn't even have understanding for him towards that? Was I a fraud?

My internal defences felt like they were firing off each other. These notions reflect what I was feeling. My more rational side was drowned out in feeling. I let myself become a shell. In that state, I didn't have to wonder why no one wanted me. If a man who says he believes so much in 'people like us' says so...

In my weak moments, this has still largely enforced a deepseated fear of mine. But at 33 and as the mornings come around, I become OK again and so many other things matter.

Despite my incantations of what I have deemed to be significant, facing my own narcissism did occur and does still.

Again, the other page of the same theme, Nearly Over Narcissism, at least starts off being a much more disciplined and well-written account than this shocking piece here. It does become repetitive. Overall, it seems I've found too much security in clinging to what I know as a way to brace myself against pain. This is pain that can subside given the processing I hope I've now done.

i think this was in part from constantly working towards forgiveness and maintaining contact with a man who says his whole life is geared up to advance independent living for everyone. then in the end, after he was said to be believing in and supporting so many others that no one else would, to a great effect, he tells me that he wouldn't want to be around someone like me who can't seem to prove she could cope with anything.

He was only doing what he could given the way he grew up. I did not understand nearly as well as I thought.

I wondered why he would suddenly stop laughing with me and suddenly tell me my life was a hopeless sham and that i was angry and effectively said that i didn't know shit about what mattered, when i thought we were just getting around to having so much hard earned fun together at last. I could not grow anymore into such a position where i could "cope" after a prolonged period of this seesaw which i kept subjecting myself to.

i initially thought he was so full of life, and could understand me so well.

i loved the great times we had together, but became frightened not knowing when things would turn and what to do to stop that. my startle responses really started to act up. i kept thinking i wasn't trying enough and was just a spoilt brat for not accepting things. i thought i was hopeless.

earlier on, he stopped me at the last minute from jumping on a plane to see him twice. initially, he encouraged me to do this and at certain times when I asked, I was eager to think he conveyed to me that he had all the empathy in the world for the situation I was in at home. I was trying to be conducive to creating understanding all 'round ; these trips were to be the first time i really took off from home and family. these were steeped in as much meaning for me as my anxious family worried about, but accepted. yeah, of course back then, i was young. shit happened.

with the first year, it felt like he had known me all my life. i can't put into words how that felt. I was 23 and still feeling as though i had the world in front of me. in other words, i was pretty vulnerable, and my experiences that i think were alarming, are diffuse among the usual hassles and disappointments expected. i had led a pretty lonely life in some regards, and now here was another person who, it seemed, experienced much the same. no matter how much my own head alerted me, i wanted to think there was a valid reason he had for things suddenly going awry when these did. i know what it's like to have others not believe how much you care and think about them, and that's the only rationale people used when they warned me off such a relationship. I had known such misgivings over my own intentions to be so inaccurate whenever I had been criticised myself. others apparently didn't see how thoughtful I believed my friend to be.

a break of years past before we met again, just as i had an inkling that we would. during that break, i was told he was doing pretty well, although deep down i knew it was hard for anyone to really know. i never stopped caring. i was wishing that he knew that i loved him. i wanted to tell him, but knew he would have hated that. i would have hated that in his position too. jesus christ, what was wrong with me ... ? My inability to cope for a while, and lack of proportion and perspective, may have been in the realms to expect from someone as young, but other features of what was happening, made the situation so much harder to resolve. It took years, and the solutions to some of the problems seemed so damned simple. With lifelong communicative problems due to my physical disability, I wondered how much that was a reason why I couldn't express how much I thought I could understand my friend. I wanted to impart that I had already gone through some of what he seemed to struggle with. I remember wanting so much to reach out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

( ~~~ Today I'm humbled in retrospect by being able to say that I have had such feelings - no matter how goofy it sounds and how much I am at risk of making the credibility of what I write here more questionable - I shudder at the thought now of pretending that I could turn feelings off and on in order to get through life "unaffected" and in seeming so strong - the capacity to feel is also something to behold in others - and I have allowed myself what I think is really a damn honour, that is, I hope I've gathered a bit more from intricate glimpses at the human condition ~~~ )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though i didn't want to admit it, my head was ridden with 'what ifs' and 'if onlys' all through this, wondering over how i much i couldn't cope with such mixed signals, and wondering if that was just how life was. god, i thought it all meant i was such a weakling. i was just muddling through forever wondering about what had been happening. my coping strategies were strewn amuck. what used to work, didn't. my second guessing took up all my time. if others saw me how i did, i was just dumb. depression and pity are so damn ugly. the condition was indeed down to me, no one else.

When he returned much later on, to my mind, he kept building up a mountain of reasons to think he never realised what he asked of me to overlook his casualness towards the past - and then complained that i never take risks because i've never known what it is like to take my own life in hand. i was all so very keen about doing all sorts of things on my own steam, much more than i was already, until the faith i put in him was my undoing among others whose trust i had won, valued supremely, and had worked at all my life - at home, and then at varsity.

i forgave for the earlier events long ago as i know i always contribruted to situations with my own perceptions, but the pattern of emotional turmoil was always brought back to life and reinforced. i thought i must have been missing something, as he kept achieving and giving so much in the public eye. i should have left all this hurt and pain and addressed other areas and pressing needs in my life.

there were all the times i feel he caused me havoc, all the times he said he needed my company, cherished the times we had and said that i pulled him through a lot, and then other times he never turned up and saying that he didn't care what i thought. there were all the times he wondered why i put up with my mother being suspicious of him and implied that i was thus pretty helpless and useless and never knew what freedom was nor could be responsible.

i also sat there at other times listening to how he thought his life was screwed, how he didn't know what love was, the ways he thought he could commit suicide, how he always had felt used like a toy, how he never belonged. he told others too, as if it was a badge of bravery. i still think it was about being brave at the time. i tried to accept that as normal for the timebeing - it seemed that was what he wanted and what he could cope with.

he publicly exclaimed yearningly that he wanted someone to share his life with, while 600km away, he mentioned how he liked us being no-pressure fuck-buddies. that was how we originally forged a "friendship" ten years before. he left for the last time saying that i would never know what it was like to care for another person, disgusted at me because i wouldn't even leave home. i was once very eager to. after all that time, all i felt was dead.

fuck, i still feel so incredibly stupid.

his passion was to teach kids to dream while I couldn't concentrate enough to hold on to my love for academia and interests in the natural sciences. I felt silly with all that I held dear, as he "fought for justice for his people". I can't believe now how i ever became so gullible with respect to what i let myself think. the man himself, i felt, had far more going for him to be discounted just because of a few things he seemed to still put forward in lacksidaisial ways. i've seen him capable of great feeling and insight for what others need. i related to what seemed his massive zest for life when he was happy, and i wanted to share mine - but that went away for me.

there were lotsa other problems i feel i could have addressed in my own life if i had the naus to stop myself from being so undermind in confusion with someone who has so proudly proclaimed that they have made a career for themselves continually espousing the value of people such as myself and the value of respect and self-determination. to do what i needed in life required a lot of strength, and perhaps i would have failed anyway had we not met. i ask if this situation should therefore be excused. yes, it should ; but i do want to explain to the extent that i know that i became a real pathetic shell and feel i've let down many who have put so much faith in me.

I wanted it down in words a bit more about how I was feeling so hurt too.

We said vehemently that we didn't want to hurt each other, but our basic standards for interacting as human beings did not agree. We just assumed that these did.

the discrepencies at the time became so hard to get my head around, absolutely nothing in my world made sense any longer, my thoughts and feelings were adrift in a haze of thorough mistrust that i tried and tried to accept as normal. Even I could not stand, nor live, with what I had let myself become at the time.

Then I suppose I allowed pity to overtake me. Others who I had just met, I believe, took my wrecked state as normal for me. All that I had tried to show about loving life had gone. I physically felt and visibly looked like a flop on wheels - just like people I knew at school. Some were sent away to institutions for their adult life. Everyone once said that would never be me. But eventually I didn't even want to fight back if it was. "So what?", I'd ask myself. I was too tired.

I can never let myself get into such a state that I fall so short of my own potential again, and have taught myself the joy of figuring out how to manage all sorts of complexity again. Two years later and finally I have understood that I really get excited about how aspects of life can fit together. I guess my work on questioning what adaptation was, and my work on the limitations of pragmatism, didn't help me personally at all! Motivation towards some single goal in isolation towards all else just didn't help me, and neither did trying to achieve a better understanding of my world. I was too scared to love anything in case I got too attached again. I tried both - goals and studying. Depression made me too scared to feel for ages.

i didn't want to bounce back into my own life with an excessive and unrelenting self-esteem of my own. Nor did i want to insist on creating a rigid reality to impinge on others. The emotional implications entailed by this confusion of having so many unknowns, I think, had a detrimental effect akin to the more common personal stresses known in life. it wasn't just a fling gone bad that I could not handle, it contributed to a very severe loss of trust in most of the world around me - and it saddens me to think that maybe this man has had that all his life.

An independence that stems out of a deep mistrust of everyone is suggestive of unhealthy levels of narcissism, as i write about on another page (Nearly Over Narcissism). it is indicative of a lot of pain experienced in childhood years. my only thought at the time was how people have to look past a lot to see me too, and that is why i kept thinking that i must be patient with this situation.

it also has lapses, but for the best part of that other page (Nearly Over Narcissism), I allude to how this situation was not helped by me at all either - i'm wary that i'm being one-sided. a read of both should make it clear that ultimately I don't impart blame for what transpired, but have been desperately trying to make sense of it.

This current page, for most, will be pretty much enough.

Neither of us could flourish in the climate of fear set up between us for reasons I now believe were way beyond the scope of what could be seen. in short, i had to guess the covert rules suddenly expounded at whim, had always got them wrong, it was decided for me that there were never going to be ways to negotiate what became more and more severe shortfalls. he was indeed unbelievably busy and had undeniably important demands upon him. i could no longer address exactly the kinds of things which i could clearly see were looming up ahead for me too as an individual. but, god, this cripshit, which was actually covering up a whole lot more, should not have to be anyone's whole life.

i wish i could have reached out a whole lot more amidst all that hurt and pain to someone who never realised how very, very deeply i loved him beyond what i could ever say. I hope that he feels worthy when another tries to do the same. Behind all the affronts lies someone I have only seen glimpses of, and of who I know can genuinely grow to eventually soar in a place he already belongs. those glimpses were enough to see what really is there.

nah, i'm not talking about the bank teller discussed at the top of Overdrawn, the fuller version of this page...!

... and, good grief, i had a lot of growing to do myself.

I learnt then through the patience of my family, how love requires sustenance and a safe place to grow healthily - more than just a seemingly intellectual backing. An emotional warmth sounds corney in writing about it. I've thought about all those people who surrounded me with it right throughout my life, and I once thought it more brave and professional for all our sakes to pretty much neglect that. I'm glad I've come around. The journey this required was an extremely slow one, and I must bore everyone silly when trying to convey what I gained. It would be a task to impress upon anyone how impoverished my life was heading with some notions I held before.

 (See the fuller version of this page and how this manifested in an everyday setting at Overdrawn to figure out the strange reference to some bank teller - these are silly little details that I forget about all the time 'til some seemingly stupid little upstart comes along and says my relaxed demeanour is due to being spoilt, naive and very ignorant. If they only knew how much I think I actually understand. Different approaches could be made complimentary and mutually augmenting much depth)

Click on this text to link to my first step back to mucking around with science and philosophy, ecology and behaviour - which entailed a personal look at seemingly removed things. It is perhaps about living and working with intersubjectivity.

Folded with due contributing personal reference
Broader contributing explanations

There'll be others who read this and have fought so hard to reach another kind of understanding of their own past detrimental intimate relationships such that I might sound alarmingly naive and blase as to the kind of beliefs concerning the other party that it seems I still have - if so, I'd guide them towards the margins of a later page, "integral", and suggest that a humaneness doesn't mean continuing with an unquestioning complicitness. Regardless though, I do not want someone else who has struggled in their own way, to feel threatened or with a need to help me, in light of what I've been asked to notice is so different on the surface.