Today I had one of those thoughts. I don't know, I think
Auds gets them too. It goes:
Hmmm, I haven't had a really shoddy moment in a while, why don't I go looking for the instruments to put myself through Hell.
And I know just how to do this. A simple recipe. Take one man you love whole-
heartedly, stir in that niggling insecurity. Roll out his blog to the right date, place love and insecurity in dish, cover with blog and bake in many sorrows for half an hour. Or something to that effect.
If you have a brain, that either makes all sense or no sense.
See, I have a boyfriend with a past, not the sort they hint at in movies and novels, nothing dark, just a life before us... OK, let me put it this way. All my life, or at least once I'd figured out most of my faults, I've been very careful about how I chose my boyfriends. I chose guys that had no previous girlfriends, or none that mattered, or none I'd ever have to hear about. It simplified things. I didn't have to deal with niggling doubts, I could train them whatever way I wanted and for the rest of forever, I would be the other girls' greatest insecurity - yes, I have a raging ego... But I'm getting older and my luck was bound to run out sooner or later.
So yes, now my boyfriend has a past, a life before us, one I cannot ignore or pretend isn't real or just not hear about. One I shared with him, one I was there for and one I can easily visit whenever the need to mutilate my peace of mind arises.
Not only did I know him when he was seeing her, I met him through her, just before they started seeing each other. She was my friend, and as such, I lived their relationship with her, from her perspective. I
listened to her gush, I shared her excitement, I worried at her
insistence that she was going to marry this man the moment he returned from the UK. And then I lent my shoulder when she tried to figure out whether and how to dump him.
When he returned, I listened to him deal with it and then sort of lost touch. It was interesting to find myself working down the hall from him a few months later. And then to be the one offering advice and a shoulder/ear from time to time from the safety of my smug, insecurity-less 5 year relationship. And in time I was the one in need of a shoulder, ear and advice. Imagine my consternation upon falling in love with this man! This man who's past was mired in my own, that I couldn't ignore or pretend didn't happen or just not hear about.
Worse yet, I risked everything I could possibly lose to be with him and deal with that past. That very
accessible past.
Today I scrolled down his blog to the time of their break-up. And the weird thing? It hurt like blazes. Because I could tell that he hurt. Not because I wondered whether he feels that passionately about me, but because I can't take that hurt away.
Did I torture myself, yes! One creates one's own hell and all that. But more importantly, I have soothed that hurt. Not with sympathy, but love. The past will never be behind us, it will always be a part of us. It's what brought us together and in some ways, what kept us together.
I love this man. With everything I have to offer. Past and all, because it made him the man he is. Was risking it all worth it? 100% Does this mean I'm not still a little insecure? Hell, no! But no phantom perfect ex can take away what we have. Because she is a phantom. Mostly of my making.
When he stands in front of the woman he loves today, when he smiles down at her, when his eyes twinkle with mirth and happiness, the face reflected in them is mine, not a phantom's. No amount of self-
administered torture can dull that fact.
Imagine that.
--
Stephen Leacock - "I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so."
