I Haven't Felt the Way I Feel Today in so Long it's Hard for Me to Specify

I ran into a friend from my old team (at work) in the bathroom yesterday, and she told me that I look young and healthy and happy, like I had gotten rid of a dead weight that was dragging me down. I told her that's exactly what I had done, and the difference is like night and day! There is really no other way that I can put it, other than to say that I feel absolutely fantastic these days, aside from the current allergy attack and the occasional angry spell that occurs after someone busts in my car window. I am so fantastic, in fact, that it's hard to imagine why I let myself be so miserable for so long. I guess it's because I did not truly realize how miserable I was until I was out of the situation.

In contemplating the changes that have occurred in my life this year and the profound impact that said changes have had on me and my emotional state, I have realized very many important life lessons. I feel really stupid, to be honest, because many of these realizations are things that I've said and thought before but never actually understood the importance. And still others are things that I should have realized a long time ago. For instance: you can only make yourself happy. You cannot force someone else to be happy if they don't want to be. This, of course, is something I've known all along, but I guess it takes living through someone else's misery and being adversely affected by it to make the meaning truly sink in.

Another of these important realizations has been about manipulation. I am not a manipulative person, just by nature of the fact that I am neither clever nor cunning enough to pull it off. I am way too blunt and outspoken to be manipulative. But it turns out that I am easily manipulated because I am so trusting. I've been burned time and time again, don't get me wrong, and those emotional scars have made me wary no doubt, but I cannot help myself from trusting people. Specifically the people that I care about. I won't lie and say that I will continue to trust people because I think it is an admirable trait. Discretion and caution, I have found, are much more admirable traits to have. It would also, though, be a lie to say that I have stopped trusting completely. That's moving backward, not forward, I think. No, instead I have finally learned to trust myself. It's true that I have led myself astray before, and I have no doubt that I will do so again, but the fact is that I only have myself to rely on when it all comes down to it, so I have no other choice.

The first thing I'm trusting myself to do is to be honest. I spent way too long lying to myself, saying that everything was okay when it wasn't, that the doubts I had had from day 1 were perfectly normal, and that everything would be be better if I did this or that or whatever. I am not a good liar, so I couldn't even convince myself that those lies were true. I kept repeating them, though, because I had gotten myself into the situation and was determined to see it through. And, to my credit, I did see it through to the end and did what I could to make it work. It wasn't working, though, so I bowed out as gracefully as I could.

The manipulation didn't end there, though. Even after I had left I allowed it to continue for a while. Why? Because I didn't see it for what it was right away. There's that whole trust thing again. I realize now that it is the manipulator's classic move to make his victim feel like there is no one else in the world that can be trusted, and that he is the only one that cares about her interests. Again, I feel really stupid that it took me five years to realize these things, but there's nothing I can do about that except move onwards and upwards, right? Right.

So I asked him to watch my cat while I was gone for a long weekend. He was moving into his new house and needed a place to sleep for the weekend. It was an epiphany of sorts, to walk into my house after a weekend away and feel the overwhelming negativity that his presence had created there. At that moment I understood why I had been so miserable for so long, and why there was no longer room in my life for that kind of negativity.

I wish I could say it's been bliss ever since. It hasn't been. Obviously I still think about it a lot (and by "it" I mean the five years I spent with him), and I am trying vigilantly to deal with all of the emotional ramifications--and trust me, that's no easy feat. It seems like every day I remember something else (or, in some cases, I am told of things and events about which I had not previously known by people who care about me but don't know how to keep their mouths shut when it matters), and I just want to punch something, but I know that stewing and feeling sorry for myself is not productive. In fact, it's out of the question all together. I got myself into that mess, after all, so I'll deal with the consequences. I can say, though, that it has been blissful to be away from the negativity, and to be free from the mental chains that I allowed external forces to impose, and from the ones I put on myself.

Freedom. It's a beautiful thing.