I have a new therapist
She told me to start journaling again.
It’s weird, journaling sober. The words don’t spill out as easily – guess that’s to be expected.
Today I decided I have to fire my boss. My best friend. Someone I considered a lover less than two weeks ago. Basically, he’s lost and I can’t find him. I can’t save him. He’s drowning inherently. How are you supposed to save somebody who had water in his lungs when you met him three years ago?
The person I considered my best friend is dying of spiritual pneumonia. And he wanted my help. He wanted every help but the kind he needed – professional help.
What do you do at that point?
He’s damaged, and somewhat a terrible person as a result. He’s a manipulative asshole with a martyr complex and substance abuse issues. Somewhere in that damaged body is a sweet, sensitive person. However, it’s like anything involving intentions. From an objective standpoint, it doesn’t matter why you do the things you do or whose fault or responsibility they are: you’re hurting people. You’re pitting them against each other and martyring yourself. He storms into the office in a self-important fashion and tells his employees that his suffering is all for them. But there’s no need for suffering – nobody asked him to suffer. Nobody asked for his help solving their problems. The self-sabotaging codependent trying to fix everybody else’s problems except his, while the only problems anybody asked him to fix – begged him to fix, even – are his own.
At his core, I think he believes he’s doing the right thing. In his mind, he really is suffering for everybody else. Unimportant, insignificant little office Christ. He’s been belittled and teased his entire life, and now he’s been given power over others: he has to exploit it. And how he’s crucified himself. And for what?
The morning everything exploded, I stared up at the moon, and it stared back at me from the West. It wasn’t full. You would have thought so looking at it, but the full moon was a couple nights prior. Insignificant am I. Nothing we do truly matters in the grand scheme of things, so why stay unhappy? Why play that martyr role? Why destroy yourself? Furthermore, why destroy yourself over a fledgling profession?
When I met him, I thought we were similar. Sensitive, anxious, and self-conscious. And we were similar. But now? Not in the slightest. Sure, I’m still anxious – but I can compartmentalize that and save it for later. And later, I talk it over with someone and everything melts away into nothingness. Catharsis. With my network of support, I don’t carry my own pain. Without them, I’d be alone: not by myself. Without my friends and family, I would be a mess of raw nerves and hopelessness. Which I suppose is what he was, despite my help.
Was I really helping, though? Am I codependent? Sure, a little bit. At first, I wanted to fix him. I’m not sure when the transformation occurred and I started wanting to fix myself. We started out as commiserating addicts – many of our conversations in a sense never really happened. If you delete a text-based conversation that takes place during a blackout, did it really occur? Sometimes I wonder if any of the content of those conversations are curled up somewhere in my skull.
Without a doubt, he helped shape me into what I am today. Whether through the encouragement that he used to provide, or through tempering me through the disgustingly obvious manipulation that I went with despite knowing exactly what I was signing up for. I’m disappointed in myself, but it’s a learning experience. I’ll never let anybody treat me like that again; I’ll never let anybody talk to me like that again.
He wasn’t there for it, but that deathly stare he left the office with: the red, swollen eyes and hateful expression will stick with me forever. Just like the time he called me a stupid cunt and a dumb bitch. Just like the time Maitland called me “nothing spectacular.” Well fuck both of you, because you’re both wrong. After years, I’ll accept that I’m spectacular. I’m not garbage; I’m not even an object. I’m kind, funny, intelligent, beautiful, and horribly flawed – just like everyone else. Perfection is asymptotic, and we all need to accept that none of us will ever touch it.
There’s frustration in being upset with someone for what they did while blacked out. they weren’t there, but you were. And it affected you. Hateful words, hateful looks. It made me even sorrier for all the times I’ve done terrible things while blacked out. And he probably expects to come back to Us. What Us? There is no longer an Us. Us is dead. We are dead. I’ll never waste my time on someone like that again. Which brings up the question: is it cruel to call what we had a waste of time? I don’t think so. Like I said, it turned me into who I am today. I never regret anything: that would mean I regret the person I am now. It means regretting the life I lead. But was it a waste of time? Nothing was ever going to come to fruition. I broke my own rule: “never be with someone with flaws you see will end a relationship.” I was never going to fix him. Perhaps I shaped and changed him as well, but he broke himself. Why would I put the energy into putting him back together again?
My therapist asked me, “what were you getting out of that relationship?” And to be entirely honest, I gained plenty out of that relationship. But everything I said about the future was a pipe dream. It doesn’t matter how much I meant it. Did I love him? At one point. And then he turned into a monster who made my life a living hell.
To put it in simplistic, crass terms: falling out of love sucks. Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde really do exist, and sometimes the Mr. Hyde that comes out during blackouts just... stays.
I have to fire him. I know he’s not a bad person on purpose, and I know it’s the Mr. Hyde addict persona he’s wrapped in – but he’s objectively a bad person. And I’m not. And perhaps I have him to thank for it.
