#56 CAPTAIN THOR AND MY POST BREAKUP SPIRALLING
#56 CAPTAIN THOR AND MY POST BREAKUP SPIRALLING
Another email to myself (surprise, surprise) and all the ways I need to forgive my past self
After the breakup, I wrote this note to myself. I know for those who have been regular readers the fact that I emailed myself will come as a surprise (jokes). But this time I did try and leave all of the actual back-and-forth wording to the bonus material.
After flying back from New York and presumably having Brittany pick me up from the airport, I came home to the apartment Brittany and I shared and I remember hugging her (as tiny as she is) and crying on her shoulder.
I had a vague sense that I would be okay but it was finally over. The thought spirals that had plagued me for months, the general sense of not feeling or being good enough for someone, of not being loved. I had a small glimmer of hope that I’d eventually create a life I wanted, that I’d be loved for who I was.
Of course, I didn’t know that I’d meet my first husband in a matter of weeks. But I think this relationship (situationship?) with Captain Thor heavily influenced how receptive I was to a ‘rescuer.’ To this person who figuratively swept me off my feet and loved me with gusto (or at least was infatuated in me) was intoxicating. I fell in love too but if I hadn’t spent so long being love-starved would I have approached things differently and more practically? Either way, I had some amazing adventures with my first husband and met some of the greatest friends of my life (my “Germany ladies” as I call them), so I can never regret how things happened.
Here goes. Forgive the American spellings!
September 2012
I'm feeling fairly numb right now. I am sad. I miss him, but I know how important it is for me to be strong and to remain distant. I want to think he loves me and misses me, but he's too broken to realize it, and, as much as it pains me, it is neither my job nor in my ability to fix him. He chooses to hold onto a fabrication of his mind over real and established memories with me.
Clearly, I was just appeasing myself to myself. In that what did I think needed fixing? Because he didn’t love me back? That’s not really a him problem – that was a me problem (as the bonus material discusses).
He once told me that when he met me he was happy, I made him happy, but part of him questioned whether it was okay to be happy.
The truth here lay somewhere in the middle. I tried (very badly) to assert boundaries and establish how I should be treated. I knew I should have been wanted and that whatever middling ground we’d established was not good enough for me. The lack of commitment, the nonchalance of things every going anywhere, of being strung along…
I knew deep down that the answer was no and that he didn’t want me or see a future with me, but I kept hoping, which may be sad and pathetic but I forgive past Lainey because she was lost and working over sixty hours per week on three jobs that would go nowhere with no hope of every getting off that rat wheel to establish the place where she thought she’d be.
I thought I’d graduate and land a dream career (you know, as everyone promised if you went to college/uni) and then I could start my life but instead I was teaching at two establishments (community college and a uni) and I never knew if my contract would be renewed.
The same with the law office where I worked as a legal assistant of sorts. I worked there for x amount of months and he kept increasing my pay, which was great, and then one day he said he didn’t need me anymore and I was let go. I think he gave me a week in lieu which was kind and he didn't have to do that but I had an entire part-time income wiped out in a flash.
That was the landscape in which I was working at the time. Georgia is an “at-will” state for employment (nothing like the UK’s labour laws) and you can be let go at any time with or without reason. The official wording is “employees are presumed to be ‘at-will,’ and their employment may be terminated for any reason, at any time, with or without cause, as long as the reason is not specifically prohibited by law.” So, basically, they can’t fire you for discriminatory reasons – although, we can all guess they do that as well – but that’s about it.
Captain Thor had told me at the time to come up with a ‘5-year plan’ of how I wanted to achieve things in life (see bonus material) but I didn’t even have a stable, single-income, good job and I had no ability to save beyond my living expenses. It’s all well and good making plans if you can realistically start to achieve them.
It frustrated me that he had no understanding of my circumstances and how they differed from his relative position of privilege coupled with the fact that he didn’t and couldn’t love me or care. (And his argument at the time may have been along the lines of I could have joined the military and taken similar career steps, which is technically true but also tosh and would have been a terrible fit for me.)
When I broke things off, I asked him why he said he missed me and he said because he did miss me and did enjoy spending time with me. I think he's uncertain about his own feelings and emotions.
He thinks he's a good judge of people and character, but he is not. If he could read people better, he would know when he was paining me and my friends and his friends by his cruel words. Instead, he thinks everyone would take his cruelty and insults as "jokes" and he remained oblivious to the pain those jokes caused.
I found a note I’d written (or another of my pathetic letters to him maybe – see this bonus material here for the actual wording) where we’d gone out to dinner and I’d mentioned about how some celeb had a prenup and I said casually, “would you have a prenup?” And he said something like, "Are you going to be my wife? If so, yes." I found the whole implication really rude and insensitive. I don’t think it was that I did actually want him to marry me but I also found in that letter that he would mention things as if we were going to have a future together, mentions of children, and the fact that he couldn’t even commit to next month but would mention this imagined future was hurtful.
BUT I came across something recently about things that cut us deeply and it’s this: if someone was making insults about people with rainbow hair with green polka dots and you don’t have rainbow hair with green polka dots, then it wouldn’t hurt you. You’d be like “well, I don’t have rainbow hair with green polka dots” (the example used blue hair but there are people with actual blue hair and that’s okay). The same goes for insults or hurtful words, they only cut deeply if we think that of ourselves.
The fact that Captain Thor could hurt me belied only what I saw as my own failures. Perhaps the projection of those failures revealed what he felt was missing in himself too – or maybe he was a harsh judge. Either way, I didn’t truly want to be with someone capable of saying hurtful things and I didn’t want to feel as if I was not making progress in life when I didn’t see a way to climb out of the valley.
Most people would most likely recognize when someone is being distant and covering his or her tracks, but [Captain Thor] so much wanted to believe that this girl was his "dream girl," that he'd found "the one" that he allowed himself to be duped. I mean, I'd never heard anything quite like having a fiance who got pregnant with your child, disappeared, didn't contact you, claimed to miscarry your child, and then, when you at last resort contacted her father, he was angry and confused, didn't know who you were and said she was married. I can empathize and understand how devastating that must have been, but it's surprising that you didn't see it coming. None of his friends liked her and [Gabriella] told me that [Captain Ivy] once caught her in her lies and basically told [Captain Thor] the whole "I told you so" thing when it ended. I would like to think I would recognize the truth from fiction.
I was naive here. People believe what they want to believe. I stayed in so many heart-wrenching situations hoping they would change. In his case, he wanted to believe this person was real and she loved him. That is intoxicating. Plus, it’s pretty deplorable to create a fictional love story and lead a dual life. I’ll never know what her reasons were (and I’m sure neither will he) but it’s a horrible thing to have happen and I’m sad it did happen to him because that broke him at the time. It was so many years ago now that he is long-healed and has moved on in life but it’s a sad thing to have happen. And I know this was a letter to myself but the fact I was cruel about him getting involved in this situation shows how un-healed I was.
I learn a lot from my relationships; I learn a lot from people. But I think [Captain Thor] is so internal. He can't see outside of himself and his own selfishness. He thinks he is a nice person; he is not. Yet the heart is a mysterious thing. I still loved him. I found him fun to be around – most of the time. I didn't like when he was moody or critical of me, but who does? He was like this with everyone.
But I recall Sundays cuddling in bed and waking up next to him with him holding me. We just seemed happy. Everything was okay when we were together. When we were first dating, we'd wake up and he'd always tell me how beautiful he thought I was. The dinner parties and game nights with friends were fun.
Although, often [Captain Thor] didn't realizes the pressure he put me under for last-minute plans. I helped him and supported him more than he'll probably acknowledge or remember. I helped him with his courses and with preparing for Ranger School twice. I helped him pack his house. I paid for things when I barely had any money. I was generous with what little I had. But he was generous too. He supported me through my thesis and paid for meals, which helped tremendously.
As I said in this bonus post when he got upset because I had frequent lie ins when we had different schedules and activities: ‘Oh boy, when relationships go down the tit-for-tat bullshit route communication has broken down and you should never be with someone who dictates or controls your schedule for you. Treating your partner as if they have to have their actions controlled or it displeases you is not healthy in the least. People should make their own choices for the benefit of each other but not because they feel they have to please the other person.’
But times weren't always cheery. I did learn early on that he was broken, but I didn't want to end it then. He said to me that he thought I liked him more than he liked me when I mentioned pretty early if he wanted me to move to Texas with him. I knew it was too soon, but I felt that our relationship was good – we didn't fight, we had a great time together, we were comfortable, we seemed very happy, all of things that a good relationship should have – and I felt it wasn't going to lose its charm. And in many ways it didn't, but the hurt from that kind of rejection – the I don't like you, I don't love you all the way – always lingered in the background, behind the surface of all the things that "worked." But, little did I know, I could never live up to the girl of his imagination.
I once asked him how he knew it would work with her. I was the first girl he'd lived with. I was the girl he'd spent physically the most time with at once. He only saw her for two weeks at a time; he filled in the blanks the rest of the time, but I guess he wanted to be delusional. He knew that our relationship "worked," that it had its ups and downs, wasn't perfect, but I thought we were happy. He could never know if she would have worked for him. I think she would not have. I mean she's a pretty coldhearted bitch to do that to someone, to manipulate them, get them involved for her own amusement and then to dump them. If she had loved him, she could never have done that. She would have wanted to share him with everyone in her life. Perhaps she would have left her husband, but she did none of those things. She couldn't even give him closure. I think he was under the illusion of what love really is. It's socially constructed. But if you have a two-year relationship broken into two-week segments perhaps the new car smell lasts for two years and that's what he thought of as love – the craving, the missing, the excitement.
But, instead, I think love is more something that is worked on. The new car smell fades and comfort settles in (and being comfortable with someone is important). Then you develop routines and patterns and habits and you do laundry together and cook dinner and you develop a deeper companionship outside of the early feelings of newness. And that's what I thought [Captain Thor] and I had.
Not happy. Tired of being made to feel that I don't make someone happy, that I have to live up to an impossible standard.
Not sure why this thought was incomplete…
Ran across an article about salary increases today. It had both something about Valdosta and Fairbanks and I wanted to share it with [Captain Thor], but I can't. When I saw that there's a trick with some cars ([Captain Thor]’s included) that allows you to roll down the windows from a remote location with the remote, I wanted to share that too.
I began to read for my classes and remembered how I'd read to [Captain Thor] in the bath, in bed, and in the car. We'd alternate between literature and his Norse myths and I read a lot of the Egil's Saga. I wonder if he ever shared that with her, shared that type of memory. I can't not be important when he realizes all this.
I remember how sometimes I'd dip my feet in the bath and wash his head and his body and he seemed so peaceful. Sometimes I'd undress and we'd cuddle in the bath together. It was a tight squeeze. Sometimes we'd share the shower together. Sometimes we'd have great shower sex and then move to the bed and my body would leave a wet imprint and my hair would begin to fall out of the towel in which it was wrapped. Sometimes we'd hold hands at breakfast. He always loved my cooking. I recall times in the park. Exercising at the gym together. Going to many, many dinners. Simply enjoying one another. How can he throw that away?
Time when he told me I was bad at blowjobs. But later I seemed to improve. Not sure how, though. Doctor used to say I gave the best blowjobs. All about preference I guess. I tried to talk about our sex life once or twice or more. We didn't always match up on preferences. It wasn't bad but I've tasted amazing.
I refuse to believe he didn't care at all. As I said before, he's not good at reading how people feel, so I can't imagine he's good at manipulation, and his body language always indicated a preference for me. He constantly touched me, held my hand, positioned himself towards me, called me sweet names, and so on. Someone who has no care does not do these involuntary body actions.
That was the end of the email to myself. Yes, past Lainey was very pathetic and it’s almost sad how much I thought that writing down these words would write it into being. I was processing and making sense of the breakup and trying to let go.
My beautiful Chinese friend Anna told me after the breakup that Captain Thor had told Captain Texas that he was going to propose to me if I hadn’t had student loans. I can’t see that being true but she did say that. Brittany at the time said that he was a jerk, that he wasn’t as nice as he could have been to me, and long-term I’d be better off. She said: “I know that doesn't make it stop hurting, but I think it's true. He dragged things out with you, and he had a lot of expectations, some of them unfair.” Of course, good friends always try to cheer you up post-breakup and generally act like the person you dated was the worst!
Brittany also very wisely said, “It's hard to assess relationships fairly. When we care about people, we ignore a lot. We forgive because the good outweighs whatever bad. That makes it hard to know if something is good enough or not.” So, in a way, she forgave past me at the time for making the choices she did. She understood why I stayed for the glimmer or good sandwiched between some of the bad.
Just like the Adele song was my anthem to my Bramwell heartbreak, this Gotye song (“Somebody That I Used To Know“) was the anthem to this heartbreak.
Also, very randomly Captain Thor said this song was “our song.” Foster The People’s “Pumped Up Kicks.” It was another incident where I was left scratching my head wondering why he thought this song would be appropriate to our relationship.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet
It doesn’t exactly scream “romance.” Maybe this is what he felt a relationship with me was like (LOLs).
Next up, the final chapter about Captain Thor: the makeup wipe incident, forgiveness, healing, letting go, and what he’s up to now.
Don’t forget to check out the other fifty-five posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place – and the odd “present day snippet” of what I’m up to lately.
Did you ever think or say negative or cruel things to an ex, lashing out because of your own pain?
Catch up on the other posts in the Captain Thor story if you haven’t already – before the final chapter hits.
