Summer love-part two-how can I see what I'm doing and still do it?

This is part two of my story of Roark, the depressed and brilliant man I fell hard for. It matters now, because I see that five years ago I went through a process of trying to understand myself and came to many of the same conclusions I am today.  How could I know all this and still have the same issues five years later? Does self-awareness do anything? I'm starting to think that reason is not my path to happiness and loving myself. 

“My mom has been concerned with my selection of men recently.” The addition of the word recently omits the entire truth. I started dating my first boyfriend in ninth grade because I wanted a date for homecoming and was embarrassed that I was the only one of my friends who didn’t know how to kiss. He dropped out of high school and became an abusive father at 17.

“How recently?” Roark asks.

“Well, since I met you.”

Roark is quite curious about my mother’s impression of him.

“Do you remember the conversation where I speculated that my mom was going to tell me to go jump into a lake to cool down my hormonally influenced decision making processes?”

“Yes.”

She actually said “This guy is too weird. Don’t call him again. If you do I won’t let you stay in my house.” I told her that I’d call him and stay with him and she responded that “there is no way you’ll stay with him, he won’t even kiss you.”

“Wow, I don’t know what to say,” Roark responds. It was offensive and also creepy I’d spent so much time discussing the situation with my mother. There is a slightly awkward pause in the conversation.

“Your mom is exactly right. I don’t know how she knows though.” Roark probably doesn’t realize the extent to which his direct quotations have been documented and reviewed by my mother. She is highly qualified at spotting men who are bad news after a lifetime of intensive in the field training.

Roark warns me again that he is bad news for me.

“My mother says that when a guy tells you that he won’t be a good partner to believe him.”

Roark adds, “and run in the other direction.” I wonder what I’m doing with Roark.

 “I have no self-esteem. This was caused by a number of events that are no longer relevant. I want attention to compensate for these feelings. If I see even a little spark of interest I do things to encourage it even if I have no intention of ever actually starting a relationship.” Roark finds this behavior awful. If he actually just believed he deserved a great woman he wouldn’t do this.

“I gave the impression that I was interested in something that I wasn’t. I say things that imply interest.”  Playing the games of dating when you’re not serious, is like lying by omission.  My mom is right that this is not the type of guy I want to be with.  Nevertheless, we plan to ride bikes together the next day and end up talking about relationships in a parking lot again.

 “I know the causes of all of my problems. The repercussions are still around.” I’m curious and he gives specifics. Roark’s dad died when he was in high school. People didn’t want to be around him because he was so depressed but as a high schooler without well developed self-esteem he just assumed that it was something about him.

Roark seems so apologetic for what he’s done to me this summer. Why does he endlessly apologize to me? Does sorry really mean anything.

I think he’s more concerned about it than I am. He hates this behavior in himself. He hates that he leads women on to fulfill a need for attention created by his low self-esteem. He doesn’t know how to escape this part of him but it’s sabotaging all of his relationships and causing trouble for others. I don’t think that he’s that worried about what he’s done to me, but more that he did it again, he repeated his same problem. He’s not fixed. He needs me to accept an apology for all of this but maybe I don’t want to acknowledge the problem.

On loveline tonight a young girl who had just been abandoned by the father of her unborn child was told that she was always going to choose men like that because that was what her father did. What am I choosing in men? Attention. Attention. Attention. It’s why I need so many of them, I’m temporarily distracted because on any given day I’ll get a text message, an email, a phone call, a date, a bike ride with someone. I keep finding geographically improbably men where nothing really matters because it’s over so quickly.

I’m reluctant to accept Roark’s apology because I have the same problem. We both are willing to spend time together because we gave each other attention. I don’t care that it isn’t going anywhere, or at least I pretend well enough to convince myself.

I’m attracted to emotionally unavailable men because my father was emotionally unavailable. How do I get over that?

A normal girl might have hung out with Josh, realized that he wasn’t going to kiss her and gotten over it, stopped calling him. I didn’t. 

One day while riding bikes with my friend Jack he was talking about his dog Cheech. She loves him even if he ignores her. No matter what she is always there, waiting for him to take her out, even if he has ignored her for much too long. I said “that reminds me of women.” He seemed surprised that I’d said that and said, “Don’t most women lose interest and give up if a guy is ignoring them?”

I’m thinking that maybe most women do and it’s just me who is acting like his dog, endlessly waiting for affection. I’ve compared myself to a Chihuahua. Not a good sign.

“The point of this summer was for me to be in a situation where there were no negative repercussions for being with someone else to see if I would want to.” He tells me.

“I’m a human litmus test. I suppose that I should take this more personally but I’m not really hurt or offended.”

I wonder why I’m not hurt. I think of fathers.

My father was angry with me because I reminded him of my mom. He was emotionally distant. He hurt me. It was hard to reconcile loving someone who hurt you but it was necessary because I had to love my dad. Life without loving my dad would be intolerable. So I learned how to love someone who hurt me, to forgive quickly. And I had to take some of the blame myself because if it was all his fault when he screamed at me how could I feel anything less than hate or anything more than a blood-obligation to interact with him?

 “I’m an attention whore.”

“Me too.” 

I get distracted from the story and find myself trying to understand myself instead of Roark. 

 

I’m a whore. I say that and I mean it. I am. This is a problem. I’m aware of it. How do I address this? Roark’s issues are rooted in a lack of self-confidence. I’m often more conceited than I care to admit. I look at my body and usually think that it is beautiful. I’m smart.  I’m interesting and honest. Someone should fall madly in love with me and many should want to kiss me.  Why am I an attention whore then? And what would I do with myself if I was unattractive, stupid, disabled, fat, boring, awful? That’s it. My self worth is tied to my accomplishments. It is tied to documented facts. The more quantified the better. It’s easy to recite a list: SAT’s 1460, AP Calculus, Physics English all 5’s, Valedictorian, Cum Laude, attended 5^th ranked liberal arts college, distinction on math writtens, Phi Beta Kappa, IQ 145, earned at least $7,000 selling art, wrote 90 page number theory book, top 10 at lots of races.

So I’m smart. How to I prove I’m attractive? It’s a little trickier but you can find some numbers.  Size 4(except my thighs), 20% body fat, 145 lbs. Wyland told me that I’m beautiful and my mom insists his judgment is valid because he’s a famous artist whose sold work for over 100,000 thousand dollars. I was cast as Titania in A Midsummer’s Nights Dream. Three boys have kissed me this summer. Two more have ridden their bikes a long way with me. A couple more text message me. Seven have told me I’m beautiful.

Abandonment. Abandonment. I don’t want people to leave me. My mom left me to pursue her career in Alaska. Is that what I see in my eyes in that picture that is so interesting to me or am I just putting what I want into my face.

My Dad told me once that that he was proud I was his daughter. He thought that I was so much better than so many other kids. I was smarter and harder working and more successful. My mom loves bragging about my acceptance to fancy schools, not realizing that no one has heard of Pomona. She loves me because I’m beautiful. She likes watching men adore me because it reflects well on her genetics. My entire family thinks that they are smart, talented and right.

I can’t sit alone and quiet without moving and love myself separate from my quantitative accomplishments. Can I just be happy with something that is me? Roark talked about loving someone who was worthless. Maybe he meant loving someone without the laundry list of accomplishments. Do we have an essence outside of this? Is it my laugh, my unique smile? My sense of wonder? I cry when I see other people in pain? I love passionately? Is there some sort of rule that real love isn’t quantifiable? If it is marred by numbers it is somehow worthless? Is it possible that I could love someone just because of who they are despite having nothing in common?

Thank god I was never wrecked enough to think that my self-worth was based on the quantity of men I could bed.  So much of my feelings about myself are based on outside evaluations that with men, with love and affection I do the same thing. I count the days and months in between kisses. It’s as if someone doesn’t tell me I’m beautiful once every 35 days it’s not true anymore. Am I better off now that I’m aware of this?