I saw myself as broken. How do I heal?

Roark, a depressed and brilliant man who I fell for almost instantly sent me an email admitting that he'd cheated and that he was scared he wouldn't have a good relationship with his new girlfriend.

I showed it to my mom. She wrote him back. He got angry that I'd shown the email to my mom even though he knew I was writing stories about him all summer and that she was reading them. I wrote this back. How can I have that insight five years ago and still be where I am now? I feel like insight doesn't bring progress. I don't know how to love myself. I don't know how to be secure. How do I learn?


Here is my email to him:

For the first time in weeks I went out to the loop with the intention of hammering. Your email made me angry and lifted me out of the habit of my slow base pace miles I’ve been putting in recently because after school I don’t have the mental toughness to suffer.

Going up a hill, suffering through a harder gear than usual I cracked. I started crying.  In my life being treated badly feels more like love that kindness. Partial abandonment is the sign of love. The people who love me hurt me because they care, because they are trying to make me a better person, to correct me.

And I get it, maybe, why out of everyone I’ve met what I have with you feels the most like love. Receiving insulting drunken emails from you feels more like love that kissing someone who is legitimately kind and interested in me. You don’t tell me that I’m beautiful. You don’t hold me or my hand. You don’t show any genuine or direct interest and yet that feels more like love to me. It is more exciting interesting and it scares me because I know that if you had wanted to you could have done absolutely anything you wanted with my heart. Maybe I’m selling myself short to think that I would have fallen for you completely with no regard for rationality but I fear that I wouldn’t have had the wisdom.

If my life had a slogan it would be

RAPE IS SEX

ABUSE IS AFFECTION

ABANDONMENT IS COMMITMENT

 I’m used to loving people who do not treat me well. I’m used to being hurt or angry and not standing up for myself because it’s easier to accept fault and try to avoid being yelled at any more. When you emailed me back about trust I felt like maybe I screwed up. Upon reflection, you knew that my mom was reading stories about you and everything that you said. I never promised that I wouldn’t tell her about what you said and in fact made it very clear exactly what she knew about you by sending you the stories. Forwarding emails to my mom is not socially acceptable and I haven’t done it before and wouldn’t  ever send a reply to someone who I thought might actually be interested in me because it’s a sure way to scare someone off and offend them. Perhaps letting her read your words was worse than all of the direct quotes in the stories but I’m not sure by how much. I also know that almost all women upon receipt of such an email would share it with at least one other person they were close to. Does it make me worse that I completely admitted to doing just that or just more honest?

I even acknowledged to you that I knew that it was strange what I had done but that I’d have nothing to lose. I’m not sure that I necessarily believe that because a part of me does not want to lose you and whatever we have (even though I’m not sure what that is.) When you told me that you had nothing to lose it was offensive. I was nothing. I didn’t matter, but yet I did because you were emailing me. More paradoxes. “I’m in love with a girl named Sophie, cammie?” What does that mean? The juxtaposition of our names is like you really love her, but I’m still something, enough for me to stay interested. I would have been willing to start a relationship with someone this summer. Summer flings are grand but if there is something there I wouldn’t end it just because of temporary geographical difficulties. You never wanted to start anything with me, just kind of kept me interested on a string. 

It’s almost like intellectual infidelity. You are getting something out of your relationship with me. You are not willing to give up Sarah to actually be with me, to love me, to have an open honest relationship with me but you still see something in me. I’m weak enough to accept that small attention even though I deserve someone’s full attention. Even though I shouldn’t be flattered I am. I know I should be able to have more on some level but I’m still screwed up.

I see your life, your mistakes your faults and emphasize with them and still trust you even though maybe I shouldn’t.

I’m scared that I feel this way for you.

You are in some ways my Howard Roark(a character from the Fountainhead who I took my ex's fake name from). You are a measuring stick for other men. Are they as smart as Roark? As interesting? As much fun to talk to? It doesn’t necessarily make sense because you and Howard Roark are characters in a story. You both have so many flaws that are necessary parts of your brilliance. 

When I read the Fountainhead I did not think that Dagny was raped. I didn’t really consider it.

This is the scene: “It was an act that could be performed in tenderness, as a seal of love, or in contempt, as a symbol of humiliation and conquest. It could be the act of a lover or the act of a soldier violating an enemy woman. He did it as an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement.  And this made her lie still and submit. One gesture of tenderness from him—and she would have remained cold, untouched by the thing he had done to her body.  But the act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she wanted. Then she felt him shaking with the agony of a pleasure unbearable even to him, she knew that she had given that to him, that it came from her, her body and she bit her lips and she knew what he had wanted her to know.” Page 217

When I kiss men or sleep with them I want them to hold me down, to bite me, to subdue me. Perhaps it is just normal sexual expression, but I know that I’d have a hard time marrying someone who didn’t want to do this to me.