I think that people, at least sometimes, think that I am an unflinching bitch. But it isn’t that at all, not really. My behaviour has nothing to do with being mean, tendentious or quarrelsome. There are simply (I mean simply as in irrefutably) some things I can’t avoid or change; some reactions that are so longstanding they feel inherent.
When you learn as a young child that every day could be your last; when you (therefore) learn to celebrate each day that you survive…there is a corollary (hyper-vigilant) development that centres around issues of safety.
Or, as the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy.
It isn’t that I don’t want to know you anymore, or that I cannot see all that makes you lovely. It is just (and this is a big just for me) that you are no longer safe for me. You are not someone around whom I can be comfortable because you have taken me back into territory so fraught with danger I am no longer capable of moving forward.
More, I am okay – or I learn to be okay – with this separation; relieved, in fact, to know where the landmines lie. And it isn’t as if I leap to these conclusions, either (which is part of my problem. I would be better off trusting my initial instincts and not getting involved in the first place).
Generally, I can and will and do accept a modicum of dissembling and deceit (for example) if I understand the core of the behaviour and if I believe a person is willing to change.
But one of the other things I have learned is that change is next to impossible, no matter how much we hanker after it.
So it’s a bit of a mixed bag. While I don’t want to, as Don used to say, throw the baby out with the bathwater, I know when I have reached my limit. Alarm bells go off in my head and rusty little springs coil tightly in the pit of my stomach. And when that happens, I have to be done, at least for a while. And when it happens again (and again) (and sometimes even again), I have to be done permanently.
I have no choice. There isn’t time to look over my shoulder and wave. I have to walk away. (Don’s version of “bag them,” I suppose.) I cannot risk thinking about it or second-guessing my choice (which isn’t really necessary anyway, because I have by this point bored the people closest to me to tedium with questions, ruminations, anxiety…until I am sure).
What keeps me walking, too, are not only the people who have been in my life for years and years (some since I was a young girl, which is astounding, given my history), but the fact of those people: that we have managed to muddle our way through, some of us even having had the occasional disagreement (gotcha!), but with whom there has always been trust by way of honesty, courtesy, generosity, integrity, humour and a magnificent kindness.
I am not saying that I have entirely earned these people, either, but I am more than grateful that we are in each other’s lives and that I finally know the difference between what sorts of relationships and behaviours work for me, and what sorts don’t.
And if that sounds calloused, so be it. I feel I have earned this much.
In the end, it’s all about trust.
