People like to tell us how a relationship should work, they like to tell us what we should or shouldn't do, they often like to put their 2 cents in. Hell, some of them like to put in a whole dollar for that matter. I don't like people in my business for that reason. (Ironic when you consider that I'll blog about some of it.) Recent unfortunate events have had me in shutdown mode. We all have been there. We break up with someone and we feel nothing. We don't want to think about it. It is what it is. Of course, most of the time we eventually realize that we've entered shutdown mode. We just bury what we're feeling because we don't want to deal with it. I don't usually do this. Yet, I went into it after breaking up with my boyfriend, well, now ex-boyfriend. Didn't want to deal with him. Chris (I hope he doesn't care if I use his name) and I had an argument. It started with me telling him how I was feeling. He took it to be about him. I had explained it wasn't, but I think he had been pushing me away for a bit. He had quit calling me as much, literally called me only twice in a month. He even refused to call me at all after he stormed off in a huff, cursing me and telling me to call him in a couple of days. I'll be blunt at this point. Once a woman starts chasing a man, she may as well be a dog chasing a car. She looks as idiotic and there's no point in catching that car anyway. From experience, it gives the man a free pass to walk all over you like a doormat for the rest of the relationship. So nothing after a week. No call, no text. Ok, snap his ass out of the funk and drop the relationship off Facebook. Text saying, "Really? That's how you want to do this?" No call. We exchanged texts briefly, but no call. I went into shutdown mode. I'm not chasing a car.
Shutdown mode is pretty appealing in ways. First of all, there's no ugly side effects like getting angry or arguing or even crying. It's all nothingness. Lots of us do it. It's simple. Just don't think about it and it'll all be better. It's not that important anyway. I didn't have to think about what attracted me to him in the first place. I didn't have to think about the fun we had or any of the long talks. I didn't have to think about snuggling or just watching the television together. It was gone. Out the door, stormed off with a series of curses and utterances. It was a blip. Shutdown mode lets you tell yourself the storm has passed. But it's like being in the eye of the hurricane. The storm passed over and the worst is yet to come when it comes back at you from behind. Eventually he sent me an email and a couple of texts. I read them. He wasn't saying anything wrong or right in them. He just wasn't picking up the phone. I wasn't calling him. End of story. Full shutdown mode let's us tell ourselves that anyway.
Then, sooner or later, the storm comes back over. We had talked and talked and talked at first. Of course, you can't sustain that all the time, but it had gotten my attention, especially since I have the attention span of a gnat. Eventually the good qualities of a person are going to come back into focus. The bad things are always first. His email had actually cracked the door open. His storming off. The attitude. The cursing texts. The lack of calls. The unhappy stuff comes in the door and sits down. Drives you into thinking the shutdown mode was good. The back end of the storm going over a lot easier than you expected. It's only the start. Then you start remembering the good things. A smile, a dance, a kiss, all these things come back to you too. Chris had this way of looking at me that made me blush. I don't remember anyone ever looking at me like that. Shutdown mode is over and you've got to play with the cards as they've been dealt. He's not calling and that's that. Closure is kinda hard that way. You can avoid this. Avoid them. This isn't how I normally deal with a break up. I usually talk it out and end on good terms. I don't consider shutdown mode healthy, but a lot of us refuse to recognize it's shutdown mode. I wasn't realizing it was until the back end of the storm hit me from behind. How had I missed that I was only in the eye of the hurricane?
So what to do? Nothing. I said in a previous blog, second trys had never worked for me. They never worked because I was the dog chasing the car. I had let them walk all over me after that. My ex-husband and another ex-boyfriend. There's nothing good that comes from chasing a man--right reasons, wrong reasons--doesn't matter. I've never seen a woman that chased the man get what she was really looking for. I've watched a lot of women do it though. And they look idiotic. Really unwilling to look that ridiculous, let alone when this all started because of a small mistake. It'd be like building a mountain from a mole hill. But now that shutdown mode is over, I've had to try and cope with what I'm feeling. I've been taking it bit by bit. Trying not to overwhelm myself. Longest relationship I've had in over 10 years and definately not the ending I was expecting. Not sure what I was expecting--I am a woman afterall--but I know this wasn't it. The hurricane may be passing but the torrential rains that follow can be a bitch.
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