Amore like burning: What I have learned in eight years of love

Amore like burning: What I have learned in eight years of love

This is a graphic and unmitigated look at my failed love life over the last eight years. It's not here for you to judge, though I'm sure many of you will. This is merely a tool to help me accept the mistakes I have made and learn from them. None of us are perfect. There is no guide on how to love and no authority on earth that could write one. All we can do is lick our wounds and remember the bitter taste. The pain is obviously not enough to transform me, therefore I am reduced to written expression as a fighting chance at personal objectivity. I place it here in hopes that you may get something from it.

1. I don't know myself.

After two years of slowly deteriorating the six year relationship we had built, Jessi and I separated. The pain at the time was soothed with a newfound interest in Allie. But what I have come to understand now is that I was worse to Jessi than I will ever allow myself to feel. There were a few times that I strayed and even more when I flirted publicly. This was in no way with malice toward her, I was merely attempting to maintain an image I created in art. By acting this way, I felt as if I would receive the same response socially as I did on stage. With a low self-confidence and constantly in search of new affection, I forgot what was most important to me. She was the woman I loved and wanted to spend my life with, and you would have never known it from my actions or my words. I lived with one foot out of the door, always looking for something new. I was never fully comfortable with myself. I took for granted the woman who loved me for who I was and professed her undying love for me. Young and stupid, in retrospect, I gutted our love with incendiary flames, like falling asleep with a lit cigarette in my mouth.

2. My heart heals slower than it seems.

I honestly had no idea that Allie was even remotely a rebound until I finally understood my deep restlessness concerning the unfinished business between Jessi and I. Sparked by this inspiration I paraded my happy facade before my friends and family thinking that it will never hurt me if I didn't let it. In essence, I wasn't ready for a relationship and I put Allie in the awkward role of my escape when I was oppressed by what I felt at the time was an overall hatred for me by my peers. She became my shield, my refuge and my antidepressant. She should have been none of these, just my love. Everyone, including her, from day one told me to be alone. They said I needed it to be exorcised and complete. But I couldn't let go of Allie, no matter the trials, because once more I was afraid to be alone, and I didn't want to lose her in the event no one would ever love me again. I clung tight and squeezed the life from her. I had exhausted one of my few remaining friends, all in the name of fear.

3. My lack of self-confidence has destroyed the majority of my relationships.

During a conversation with my friend Joe, I came to the realization that I hated myself so much that I unknowingly pushed everyone away. Since I have been obese, beginning in the tumultuous middle school years, I have been sensitive of my weight. Unable to take my shirt off in public and distrusting of my average penis, I covered it by taking on a suave persona to sway anyone from imagining that I could be as fragmentary as I was on the inside. I separated sex from love so as not to allow anyone close enough to judge me.

Many years ago I had an ex-girlfriend that, after a misunderstanding ended us, began telling everyone that I was a bad lover and had a small penis. She and I never had sex and I believe she never even saw my penis, but nonetheless I was devastated that people may look at me through that mirage. When Jessi finally gave me the time of day I yearned for, I let go the facade, but not enough to allow true happiness. I felt even uglier and much fatter than the years before. Jessi rarely went out to have fun without me, and I would say the most awful things in an unnecessary attempt to make sure she returned to me that evening. I would ask her not to sleep with everybody while she was out because I thought that it would secure the chances, when in actuality I was destroying her trust for me. Saying this filth in jest was probably just salt to her already aching wound. I philandered so that my friends didn't think I was weak, another meaningless venture. I couldn't be happy with her because I was unhappy with me. She was the first one who ever made me truly happy, which is where the pain I felt later on rooted from.

I found someone else in the middle of Jessi and I's time together, but fear made me walk off of that also. I left Jessi for eight months to be with Amy B. I was in college away from Jessi. Amy B. was that someone who could physically be there, not be three hours north. I needed her to keep me sane and she did. I was at a very low point in my life and she saved me. I have always been indebted to her for that. But after just a month of being together she found out that she was heading to Japan for school. I pushed her away and fell into the dark again. After leaving school I headed out to Palau to clear my head of woman and find my roots. I couldn't relax though, because thoughts of both Jessi and Amy B. danced though my head nightly. I drank them away accordingly but it proved futile. I chose to fly to Japan and decide once and for all who to be with. After the most amazing week of my overseas life, I knew Amy B. was to be the one. That was when the fear set in: How do I love across an ocean, where should I live and wait, what about her staunch Christian family, etc. On the bus to the airport she laid in my lap and cried deeply. I stared out the window and wished I had enough moxie to blindly launch into the unknown with true love. But instead I relegated myself to feeling like uneducated street trash that had no place being with a woman that good. Within weeks I was back to Jessi and comfortable again. Complacent, but comfortable.

4. My need for attention is a poison to my partners.

I was given another chance at love soon after Allie. Amy W. was far and away the partner I'd been looking for all of those years. Someone who understood my humor, and this is no easy task. She was someone who had flaws too, which allowed me the opportunity to forgive someone else instead of always being the forgiven. We had many common interests, thoughts and bonds. But again, my appetite for the attention of others proved fatal to my relationship. I began spending more and more nights out on the town. She was welcome to join but was not interested in partying at the volume that I did. There was no straying, just more intoxicated flirting and long nights away from her. She couldn't understand why I didn't want to spend time with her. I didn't see it in that way, but my explanation that it wasn't me avoiding her but me needing to hang out fell upon deaf ears. She just wanted me home. Luckily I walked away before hurting her any more than I already had. I heard the cries but still couldn't see how I was hurt her. At the time, the idea of changing that part of my life for her was unacceptable. A fool and his addictions do not part easily.

5. I am the reason that I am here; it is my fault.

Micki pretty much sums up all that I could ever want out of life. I stumbled into her arms soon after Amy W. She encompassed every wonderful aspect her predecessors held, as well as offered a future that would have been paradisaical. She was positive, sincere, and most importantly, supportive. I could spend eternity relating the hundreds of hours spent together in bliss, but it will suffice for me to simply say that she was my best friend ever. But being older than me, she possessed insight about my issues that I could not garner myself, nor could anyone my age or younger.

Fate had it that our time together was amidst turmoil in both our lives separately. This meant that I rarely could spend overnights with her. So I defaulted to my usual routine of late nights and sore mornings to fill the time we couldn't be together. This brought about an environment of distrust. I walked into this relationship with the preexisting stigma that my persona created, but it didn't help that I consistently placed myself in questionable situations and never connected the dots to how it might have potentially affected my relationship. As her heart sunk deeper every night I ran with the wolves, that insight she had of me rose closer to the top. She began calling them like she saw them, every last relationship faux pas I committed. Unfortunately, a man of pride as foolish as mine would never recant. But instead of sheepishly burying my chin in my chest and kicking my feet, I turned it around on her. Not intentionally meaning harm, I saw what seemed like her flaws for not understanding and flung them back at her. I didn't realize I was doing it. I just thought that I had insight too or that maybe my lifestyle was justified considering the situation. But all the rational in the world couldn't replace my poor choices and inability to be alone. I made one mistake too many and found myself escorted to the door.

These words and actions now bounce around inside my head, tearing me apart with wicked remorse. It may only subside when I prove to myself that I am better than this and will never do it again. But this is a goal not easily achieved. If life affords me eight more years, I just may overcome my issues and began again.