That's what I feel like I've been trying so hard to do lately. It's making me insane. I'm not the kind to hide things or avoid things or shy away from things....tomorrow night, the goal is to make all of this clear.
I had the most amazing talk with Jeff last night.
I know, I can hear all of you groaning....but it's not our usual kind of talk - promise. I kind of laid into him. The brutal honesty that I've been demonstrating came into play. I confronted him about the issues that I have been left with: About my fear of feeling, my fear of committment, the new insecurities, the feeling of failure, the feelings of inadequacy....everything. Amazingly enough, he expressed having many of the same fears. And, after digging through our past for a bit - the little dishonesties, the forced feelings, the obligatory committment - we really got to the bottom of things.
Above all, Jeff was my best friend. We started hanging out in 1998 and were inseparable. He was my shining star. He was the bright spot in my day. He was like family. Then, one day in 1999, amid some strange situations, we ended up asking each other why we had never gotten together. And, there we fell - he moved in a few days later and we were inseperable. Shortly thereafter, I became pregnant with Nevin.
While Jeff and I loved each other, deeply, it was not the type of love that people marry for. We were never IN LOVE with each other the way that we should have been. Where we messed up is that we tried to force that. Both of us felt strongly that, if we were going to have a child together, we had to be a family. We had to be that perfect, picturesque model of what life is like. Truth is, we never were. We both faked it well - we convinced the whole world that we were madly in love with each other....but I don't think we ever really convinced ourselves. I tried to convince myself...but failed over and over. He did the same. We played the family well: hosting Thanksgiving, having family days on the weekends at Fairy Tale Town, driving to work together in the mornings or meeting for lunch, always kissing each other goodbye and making sure that we didn't hang up the phone without saying I love you. We had the cute apartment in the great neighborhood, we both had good jobs, we had the matching cars & the family pictures at Disneyland..... But, instead of building an epic love story, we built the foundation for a resentment that would eventually deconstruct both of us into casks of nothing that had to be rebuilt and reshaped and reformed.
I've been working on it for a while now.
Jeff just started at Christmas.
But it's brilliant.
And, talking to him last night, I realize that I have my best friend back. He's on the road to recovery. He will be my friend until we die. I hope that the man in my life will always be able to understand that.
