The things people can’t say…

I often wonder why we put so much emphasis on failure; or what other’s think of us.  I’m an expert at it.  I feel as though I’ve spent my whole life measuring myself by how others perceive me; mostly, they were ideals by people that had no real concept of who I was.

I don’t want to do that any more.

Last night, I had an epiphany.   A single moment of clarity that I hope can change my psyche.

I have spent five years agonising over why the ex-Squeeze couldn’t see the world through my eyes.  Wondering why he couldn’t ever put me first; love me.  What was I doing wrong?  Why was I always last; continuously on the bottom rung of the totem pole? 

Then, last night, with a simple one line email exchange, I finally figured it out.   He didn’t love me.  He never loved me.  I was his best friend and that morphed into a relationship during a period of loneliness for him.  And once in; he couldn’t figure out how to get out.  At least he couldn’t get out with the friendship intact.

My world changed.  I allowed some psychotic, selfish, velvet wearer and her teenage puppet to manipulate me and change my world.  I sucked in the continuous subliminal message that I didn’t measure up; and the not so subliminal messages, such as “shared” friends that were forced upon me.  Dianne; who when I went to sit down at a restaurant, rudely made me stand and get out of my seat to sit and the end of the table with a “Not you!  I want to sit next to…” so that the Squeeze could sit next to her.

Last night, I woke up thinking about that moment as being the single most defeating fragment of our relationship.  For if anyone in my world had treated him in such a fashion, I’d have grabbed his hand, turned and left.  Instead, he sat in the position I had been pushed from; and I sat for the entire dinner quietly at the end of the table; segregated as the interloper that I always had been.  The interloper I was meant to feel; and as I was left to feel many times throughout our relationship.  A feeling I might add, that he never, ever experienced at the hands of my children, family or friends.

But the truth is, he didn’t love me.  So why did he persevere for five long years; causing us both pain?  That makes him sound selfish; yet I don’t mean it like that.  I know well what he felt; for the ‘my best friend’; that person who knows me inside out… That guy I can talk to about anything with, or hug, or laugh, or tease…  I didn’t want to lose that either.

I guess the difference is that I loved him; and after a life time with the Harridan, pushing his obvious inadequacies down his throat, that love was comforting. 

Sometimes, I wish he could have seen how amazing our lives could have been if he had loved me too.  Instead, we were left with a constant struggle that threatened to sap our sanity.  The only winners were a hidious ex-wife and a manipulated teenager.