What Dating Has Taught Me About Myself

People always talk about how you learn so much about yourself through dating.  I guess I never realized until now that they're right, but in reality how it is so harmful.  See, the men I've dated have taught me that I'm wonderful, "enchanting", amazing, kind, intelligent, sexy, - but not worth it.  "It" being effort, communication, honesty, time, respect, self-reflection, being heard, buying a drink, leaving a prime parking spot...you name it.  I'm great – but not worthy.

Don't get me wrong, as I've had to tell my therapist many times, I don't believe this at all – but they all seem to.  So I keep getting my hopes up and dashed, whether a shallow or deep encounter.  Each and every time, I can think back and find somewhere he didn't want to put the work in.  Now, I'm not demanding backflips through crazy hoops, or asking for anything unreasonable, by any means.  In fact I think I'm asking for what I deserve, as a human being offering my time and heart.  Somehow I haven't met a man that is willing to put in the effort where it's needed.

It's exhausting and discouraging. I know I don't deserve to be treated this way, but I find myself questioning if there's anyone out there who will treat me as though all the things they think are attractive about me, actually make me deserving of their effort.  That anyone will treat me as if once found, I'm someone unquestioningly worth effort to keep around.  I find myself taking what I can get, until I am frustrated that I have to tolerate these things – because even confronting is too much. 

Dating has taught me that I'm both too much and not worth it.  Can you blame me if I feel completely closed off to admiration always intermixed with rejection?

Love and the Grief of Vacancy

I miss him in such a deep way, it's almost become subtle. It's not in my face every day anymore, it's just down in my gut, just there. It's something I live with now, a perpetual sense of loss. My new companion is the void left by my old one. Yet, I can't count how many times lately that I've felt happy or okay and then felt guilty, realizing it feels like continuing on after someone's died. It feels truly like that kind of grief. And sometimes still like I'm crazy and the whole thing probably never happened. That seems more like my mind still trying to make sense of it, whereas my body, my gut knows that I had someone close and I lost them. 

I've had and lost love before, and that hurt, but not like this. The love wasn't like this, neither was the pain. At first, in the weeks following the end of the relationship, I had the sense that it had changed me and that it was in a way that no loss had before. It broke me down to a degree I can only remember one other time in my life coming close but it still misses. More stable now but still living with it all in my gut, I know that it changed me. 

For a while in the relationship I'd get flashes of anxiety about losing him someday, to the end of life – I was that kind of in love. I was already predicting how painful it would be to have loved long and deep, then lose. And I experienced that, yet, I don't regret it. I thought I did, in the heaviest of the pain. But when you do love long and deep, it's not something that can simply be undone. Even after incomprehensible hurt, it did not go away. Days, weeks, and months have passed without a word, since we last touched, since I said goodbye not even knowing it was going to be the last goodbye; he chose to die to me, and still love persists in me. I suppose that's why I also felt anger: in spite of it all, I longed for him.

The strange thing is that lately I feel mostly okay. I also often feel a pit in my stomach and heavy tears overtake me. But a lot of my life feels okay. Only there's this big, vacant space in it, where something is undoubtedly missing. It's as if standing in your home, but there's no furniture or belongings. Everything sounds different and you feel peculiar wandering about in it. It's both foreign and familiar; it's a little normal and yet completely wrong. Disorienting. Yet it's reality.

It wasn't my choice, this reality, but I've survived it by a strand of hope I somehow had for not ending up alone. The tiniest belief that maybe someday when I choose someone, they will also choose me back; someday, when someone really sees me, they will value what they see. They will be scared to lose it – not scared to accept it. I've been sustained by the littlest, faintest hope that the ability to see and connect and put in the work will be recognized for its value and held onto with a grip both fierce and tender. That I'll be loved with the same unrelenting love that I can't help but have for the ones who take up space in my life. That someone will lay their head next to mine at the end of the day and feel awe and gratitude that I'm sharing this life with them.

Taking Me Back

I love the visceral way that music can take me back to some moment of significance it played to in my life. I'm revisiting an album that's been with me in many parts of my life, but I haven't listened to in a while. The single from that album stopped me from what I was doing.

Immediately I'm transported back to being 19 and feeling youthful and hungry for life's adventure – alive. So alive. But it goes further back with me. 

17 years old, it was one of the lucky CDs on rotation in my 6-disc-changer, which was housed in the trunk of my car. I remember the car seemed so nice in comparison to my first one which had crank windows, no AC, and a loud muffler. This car had a 6-disc-changer and a stereo with great bass. Fake walnut accents on the dash. Most importantly: a moonroof. I felt like I was taking on the world, so independent and cruising around with the windows down, singing along. 

When the single came out, I was 15. I thought it was longer ago than that because that oldest memory, that version of me in my memory seems so young, so little just yet of who I am now. The single came on the radio as I was dropped off at the bus to go on my youth group's service project trip. Then it played over the headphones connected to my discman probably a hundred times on the long drive to West Virginia. On the bus ride home I sat beside my classmate since first grade who then became my lifelong best friend. 

All from one song, in a split second, the images and feelings from these different times in my life, really my adolescence came rushing in.  

The Strange Monster

Depression is a strange monster. 

There are things you can do to weaken it, but they're hard to do because of it. There are pills you can take to make you stronger than it, but just enough to survive. There are days you feel like it's finally gone, only for it to show up the next day, rearing its ugly head. And there are whole days lost to laying underneath its full weight. 

I don't have bad days all that often; depression hasn't been with me my whole life. In the pandemic my depression has felt more like an ever-present companion – at times it's more in my face than others. Perhaps there's some rhythm to the worst of it that I just haven't hacked yet. Today was one of those days. And sometimes it's kind to me and lines up with days I have nothing to do, maybe more the nothing to do invites it in, but today was not that day. 

Today was a draw a bath (well, that's every day in my house), bring the coffee up, and pour some salts in kind of depression day. Write some things, cry a bit, write some things, cry a bit... Sometimes I almost believe the monster needs to be tended to. It needs attention to stay away for a little while after. Which is what struck me today. I actually knew what to do when I realized it was not going to be a good day but that I didn't want to surrender to the monster's heaviness. 

I decided to drop the dog at daycare. I finished my long bath after really shaving my legs, and we got in the car. I had one of my favorite albums playing while I drove, and I didn't try but just thought, even though there are days like this when everything big feels hopeless, there's always this music. And I felt just a little better. When I got home, I thought since it was a balmy 10 degrees today, I should finally change the engine air filter in my car. I've never done it before, turns out it's insanely easy. Great! I got one little something done. Next, I made myself a delicious, quality meal and enjoyed it without anyone whining at me. Just before my first session, I put on some makeup to brighten up my not-so-cheerful face. And wouldn't you know: my last session of the night was a home run. 

When the dust settled, it's still one of those days; no simple magic had slain the dragon. But I found a little relief that if you care for the monster and meet its needs, it isn't quite as treacherous to have in your company. 

Worth & Hurt

I do want it again. The head over heels love. Gratefulness just to be near them in the day-to-day. The inability to imagine life without them. But I find myself wondering, do you get that more than once?

I know I can open my heart again, but won't anything else feel a little less sparkly? Or will my heart be resistant to feeling head over heels, grateful, and like something could possibly be forever? Logically, I think it's the latter, as I know my wary heart is fearful in resisting hope that there can be something sparkly again. I sit with a mixture of longing and fear; daunted and yet unable to let fear keep me from being seen. 

After my last relationship, I kept hearing this thing to me that drove me nuts: "it's not a reflection of your worth." I know rejection isn't a reflection of my worth, though it is my painful and perplexing reality nonetheless. When what you really want is to be seen for who you are and found captivating, inspiring to gratitude, and an undeniable fixture in one's life; for someone to recognize your worth and grab hold of the chance to share in life with you? Yeah, rejection of that very idea is painful. It feeds hopelessness. It bolsters fear. 

Yet the only reason I can dare to try to open my heart is because I know my worth. I value sharing life with others and find that the most fulfilling relationships are the most intimate ones, in which full selves commune. I know that what I have to bring to a relationship, especially a partnership is something worth having and being grateful for, committing to. But all of that doesn't mean I'm not scared to offer it because the last time I did it was rejected, and that hurt. I am not concerned that I'm unworthy, I am afraid of ever knowing that pain again.

May Take to Another

Not too long ago, I "got back out there".  Initially I told myself, I was going to date the old-fashioned way, picturing casually getting malts in an ankle length skirt without all this pressure of will we be together forever, or is he just trying to sleep with me? But really, I set out that way because I was downright terrified of the prospect of letting someone in my heart again. And I fully doubted anyone else could get there.

It's still a bit surreal sometimes that it hasn't just been a long week since I've seen him, or even that I didn't dream the whole thing up, start to finish. So when it came to accepting that he had run away for good, I thought maybe my way forward was just to try. Ground myself in reality by moving forward in some way. So...

Swipe left, swipe right. Swipe on your ex to find out he swiped right (interested) on you...? Never mind that confusing nonsense. Then another right swipe, SUPER right swipe on a joyful, handsome hottie that to be honest I thought to myself was out of my league. There's no way he'll be into me, so what does it hurt? *swipe* But in real life leagues do not exist, which I keep forgetting. Simultaneously, I still told myself – and this guy – I was not ready to put my heart out there, but wanted to connect with someone again. 

Independent of starting to chat with a new man, I realized something else that I've realized before but had since forgotten. See, I thought about my closest friends. My best friend I've known since we were in first grade, I love her dearly. Another friend I've known for several years, she too has claim of significant space in my heart. Yet another I've only grown close to in the past couple years, but I can be fully honest with her and admire her greatly. All are very different people that I deeply love and no one love supersedes or negates another. So then, no matter how significant my love for my last partner was, it doesn't mean that there isn't more available for someone new. 

Now, don't get ahead of me, I am not saying I've found love. Rather that I was pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely intrigued by someone new. And a little less afraid – and maybe even a little excited – of the possibility that my heart may take to another. 

What Reverence

What reverence I have for big, deep, vulnerable, altering love. I'm not eager to find it again, I have a healthy respect for the risk that it is. I see it as a far off, distant future that could be. No imaginations of what it will look like and who it will be - only haze, and a sense of openness but not quite desire. A quiet longing, but a knowing fear. A caution to do everything I can to not have it only to lose it again. A hidden, buried thought that if I don't want for it, I will be okay. I tell myself I have safety within myself; I can be okay no matter what...but love had me awestruck at its heaviness, its weight. Losing love makes you sure you'll never want for it again, build around you a fortress, impenetrable and therefore unaffected by comings and goings. Yet appreciating love, even that which is lost, makes one long to know it again someday.