Category: Relationships

Relationships

Only One Love Song

by KimLeave a Comment on Only One Love Song

I’ve been lucky enough to see Damien Rice live..twice.

The first time I saw him was in October of last year. It was the second-to-last stop on the US leg of his first tour in nine years. It was such a big deal that a friend and I flew to Brooklyn 14 hours after I flew back to the states after my stint in Germany. It was an incredible trip and an even more incredible show (Glen Hansard even made a special appearance!). I had always known he was talented, always known that he was a very special musician, and seeing him live solidified that knowledge.

In October, I was still blissfully happy in a long-distance relationship that had started several months previously. We had reconnected after over a decade of not living in the same city, him being in Alaska and my home changing multiple times. Hours and hours of skype were part of every week, and my twenty-fifth birthday was spent in Anchorage with him. It was a relationship different than any I had ever experienced before. The communication was unreal. I grew to understand and know him better than almost anybody I’ve ever known. So at this concert, surrounded by songs that I thought were all about love, I thought they resonated with me.

The relationship ended about a month later for a multitude of reasons, and I think I’m just now finally able to look back on everything with a sense of thankfulness for the good moments that did happen. Of course, there are still twinges of loss, but overall, I’m glad everything happened the way it did. Since then, any sort of romantic life I might have had has been in a very strange place. I don’t mean for all of my posts lately to be about relationships and romance, but for someone who’s spent the majority of her last nine years (excluding this past year) in a relationship, the mental adjusting to single-hood is a difficult one.

Back on Damien-topic. The second time I got to see him was two days ago. I’m still on a concert high. Not only was I in a different emotional place, his raw emotion and connection to his songs was much more evident this time around. It was otherworldly. I brought a friend with me, and she and I sat in our chair in the second row enraptured the entire time. It was one of those shows where you just watch in awe of the artist on the stage. I’m fairly certain we both had slightly teary eyes the whole way through, and there were moments that his lyrics hit me and brought back memories from the past few years in vivid color. Memories of not feeling loved, memories of loneliness, betrayal, anger, sadness, but also memories of hope and learning to figure out what I want from life.

If you aren’t familiar with his back story, Rice had a very tumultuous relationship with someone that used to play with him. It was a very passionate relationship, but major ups and downs came with the passion. Many of his songs are about that relationship, and most of them are not favorable. At one point in the show, he started talking about how he was asked about all of the love songs he had written. He mentioned that he went through the songs he wrote and noted that there was only one song really about love: “I Don’t Want To Change You“. The lyrics are a complete surrender, a total giving up of the selfishness many people tend to bring to the table in relationships without realizing it.

In this past year, I’ve learned to really appreciate lyrics more than ever before. Being able to hear the background stories of some of his songs and seeing the different emotions tied into each song was key to bringing those lyrics even more to life. I feel like I’ve grown into a completely different person than even who I was a year ago. I’m constantly working on letting go of the cynical bitterness I feel like I’ve been using as a shield to protect myself from getting hurt and getting back to a place where I can unselfishly love people no matter how they might have treated me in the past. I’ve particularly been struggling with that the past month or two. These songs, this show, this phenomenal musician..they were a perfectly timed reminder to get back to the goal of forgiveness and love that I set for myself months ago.

Damien Rice at the South Side Ballroom, Dallas, TX - August 201
Damien Rice at the South Side Ballroom, Dallas, TX – August 2015

listening to: Damien Rice

Relationships

Making Sense of Late-Night Musings (and Something About A Crush)

by KimLeave a Comment on Making Sense of Late-Night Musings (and Something About A Crush)

I get a lot of my blog post ideas late at night, but they don’t often make too much sense. For example, I met a girl this week who opened with the line, “I’m really good at making out” and my mind was blown. Maybe I’m just a bit old fashioned, or maybe just somewhat reserved, but I don’t ever recall a situation where stating that fact gets you lots of high quality friends. So I came home and started the beginning of a micro-story attempting to understand the psyche behind her…at 3 in the morning. Needless to say, I fell asleep before finishing and woke up completely lost as to where to go next.

That same night, I was somehow mixed in this feud of friends. This has been going on for quite some time and it almost physically hurts to see people on both sides of the issue that I care for deeply that just keep hurting each other. In my private journals, I’ve been exploring friendships and what that idea actually means. That still hasn’t gone much of anywhere yet either.

Rewind a couple more weeks, and I’d started a piece all about my dad and all these crazy stories I’ve just learned about him involving the 1950s, a tiny town out in West Texas, and a bunch of synchronized cherry bombs. This guy, the one who’s always been such a stickler for the rules and kept a stoic face for the majority of my life, was a hilarious teenager.

Most recently, I woke up a couple mornings ago with a message on my phone (from myself, of course) that read, “THE END OF A CRUSH. WRITE IT. BLOG IT. DON’T FORGET IT.” I obviously felt that this topic was incredibly important in the moment, but all week, I’ve been struggling to expand on the idea.

It’s true that for the past several months, I’ve been dealing with a bit of a crush on this guy that I know. It’s been a strange experience, a feeling I haven’t had often. While I’ve had feelings for various people and felt emotional connections throughout the years, this was the first crush I’d had in seven years.

I’ve never enjoyed the word “crush” because it’s far too accurate for describing the emotional state involved. It’s the overwhelming sense of excitement when he says he wants to spend time together followed by the even stronger feeling of being let down when he just doesn’t show up. It’s literally a crushing feeling, and it’s not enjoyable in any way.

The odd thing is that one day I woke up and could almost physically feel the relief crash over me when I realized that nothing was to come out of this crush. I had known this in my mind, but the self that is in control of emotions kept whispering “maybe the next time, maybe he’ll change, maybe the timing is just bad.” Despite my mind, my emotions kept my heart hopeful, but at some point my mind had become fed up and shut off the ability to feel anything but a friendship for him.

I’ve been so emotionally fragile in other parts of my life lately that I find the switch in feelings quite beautiful. The way the mind can protect from harmful things is fascinating to me, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. It was just as if my mind snapped back into control, slapped me in the fact with a curt “get over it”, and the rest of my being followed suit.

As with the rest of my writing lately, my thoughts on the subject just end there. They end abruptly. Even my journal entries have paragraphs and paragraphs of musing, then just trail off without a conclusion of my thoughts. Perhaps I really enjoy cliffhangers. Perhaps I like the experience of someone’s mind ingesting the ideas I write about and then taking off on their own with a different thought process. Or maybe I’m just lazy and never finish the things that I start. That’s the most likely explanation.

Old Main at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas - May 2015
Old Main at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas – May 2015

listening to: Letts

mental health, Relationships

A Villain

by Kim1 Comment on A Villain

Several months ago, I wrote about being asked about moving on. While I still agree with all of my statements in that post, I don’t think that it’s necessarily about me moving on. I think with some current events lately, it’s clear that I haven’t actually moved on.

The end of a serious relationship is always difficult. The end of a marriage is even more so, especially when it doesn’t end amicably. There’s a lot of pain that one endures; a type of pain that sticks with you, no matter how much you try to rid yourself of all of the baggage.

It shows itself in feeling completely alone with your thoughts. It shows itself in the inability to really connect with another person. It shows itself in being completely disinterested in any type of relationship. It shows itself in feelings like you are simply too much trouble for anther person to have to deal with.

I know I’ve written about my inability to connect and the trust issues I have. I don’t want to be seen as beating a dead horse. But I’ve been encountering this major downfall in a newer way recently. In high school, I saw myself as completely undesirable. In college, I probably settled a few times more than I should have for guys that weren’t all that great. I don’t know what’s changed since then. I’m still incredibly awkward, not the perfect picture of beauty, and I don’t have much going for me. I live with my parents, I’m carless, and I’m waiting tables. But somehow, I’m attracting people. It’s a completely foreign concept to me, one that’s taken me aback and left me confused about what to do.

I’m still in the “I’m never getting remarried” phase. Actually, I’m still in the jaded phase of feeling like relationships are mostly a waste of time and emotional energy. I’ve got several friends that I love with everything in me, but sometimes I just don’t have the strength to be around them and their significant others. It’s not that I’m unhappy or jealous. I suppose it mostly just reminds me of what I thought I had five years ago before everything started to really fall apart.

In the writing course that I’m still wading through, one of the prompts involved fictionalizing and vilifying my own traits to make myself the villain in a story…turning it into a sort of shadow self. I blazed through over three pages of writing, and my shadow self was all about one thing: emotional destruction. An excerpt:

“She was carefree. Carefree in the way that she handled hearts. She wanted to be loved- more than anything, she wanted to believe that she could be loved- but she didn’t trust anyone to fully love her for her, so she hid her qualities until she was a shadow of a person.

She was a wild thing. She was a person who had trained herself to ignore any possible pain she might be causing anyone because otherwise, she’d never do anything for herself. So she turned off her ability to connect with others, especially in a romantic setting. She came in like a whirlwind through men’s lives and demolished everything in her wake.

She was an all or nothing type of girl. And when it came to fight or flight tendencies, she ran every time. Part of her realized that with the running, she just wanted someone who would want to actively chase after her. She knew that when people learned her true character to the fullest extent, they would no longer want anything to do with her. So she kept parts of herself hidden from the world.”

It’s funny. Part of me wishes I could find someone that I can truly be myself around, a person who could love me despite all of my flaws, a person who I could trust with anything. But there’s this other part of me that wants to run any time anybody shows any sort of interest in me. I’m a person who was completely broken, and even though I’m putting myself back together, the cracks will always be visible. I don’t want anybody to have to deal with all of those cracks.

Neptunbrunnen (The Neptune Fountain), Berlin, Germany - May 2014
Neptunbrunnen (The Neptune Fountain), Berlin, Germany – May 2014

listening to: Letts, Awolnation, Purity Ring

Adoption, Relationships

Relationship Struggles

by Kim2 Comments on Relationship Struggles

I’ve always said that I’m bad at relationships. In fact, I even started a blog post last week with “I’m bad at relationships” as the opening statement. It’s still sitting somewhere in draft form.

I’ve been mulling over that idea for the past week. It’s one of those ideas that tends to float around in the back of my mind quite often, but it’s been closer to the forefront lately.

I think my adoption has a lot to do with the way that I relate and interact with people. I was watching a show earlier this week that has a strong adoption theme interwoven into the plot, and I think it’s the most fascinating part of the story. It shows the strong desire to connect with family and loved ones, but the hesitancy to really get close and let people in.

This has been my main issue: the struggle between trusting others with the most vulnerable parts of me and trying to acknowledge that there isn’t something inherently wrong that people will somehow discover, then choosing to no longer invest any time in a friendship. It’s something I’ve discovered a lot of adoptees struggle with to some degree. I think it has to do with having the knowledge that somewhere out in the world, there is someone who didn’t want you enough to keep you.

I know there are extenuating circumstances to almost every adoption. I know that in many cases, giving a child up for adoption is the most painful and selfless thing that a mother could ever choose to do. I know that it’s probably not fair to blame attachment and trust issues on a mother who was only trying to make sure her child was given all the opportunities possible. However, knowing these things doesn’t always heal the pain. It doesn’t erase the struggle that I’ll most likely fight for most, if not all, of my life.

I can’t speak for adoptees as a whole, but I know that for me, my relationships have struggled because of my pain connected to my adoption. My adoption story isn’t really one of abuse or despair. I was put up for adoption because my mother was a selfless woman who couldn’t provide what she wanted for me as a single mom, and I think that’s an incredibly brave act. But I see girls who were younger than she was working and fighting every day to give their children every opportunity possible. I see these ladies doing everything in their power because they want to take care of their kids. I see all of this and wonder why my mom wasn’t the same.

Rationally, I know the hurt doesn’t really make sense. I know that my life would have probably been even more difficult. But being given up leaves an emotional scar on your very soul. It’s part of your identity whether you want it to be or not. And unfortunately, it seeps into other aspects of life. If a woman who spent nine months carrying you and essentially nurturing you doesn’t want to continue doing that, how can friends or even a romantic interest think that you’re worth the work and energy for a serious relationship?

So when I say I’m bad at relationships, I think I mostly mean that I’m bad at trusting relationships. No matter how wonderful my friendships are, there’s a tiny voice in the back of my head that whispers that I can’t possibly be worth it for the long haul. Instead of facing the core issue head on, I’ve always tended to just end a lot of my relationships, with friends and otherwise, before they get too close or too involved. My incorrect rationality has always been this: “if I’m not worth keeping around anyway, I might as well end it sooner to avoid as many hurt feelings.”

It’s stupid and ridiculous and probably shouldn’t even be an issue, but your past and experiences can do a lot to effect your subconscious. They don’t have to control it as long as you’re aware of them, so I suppose that’s what this post is supposed to accomplish: acknowledging the issue with the intent to be more aware of it and hopefully more willing to try and change.

Eiserner Steg, Frankfurt, Germany - September 2014
Eiserner Steg, Frankfurt, Germany – September 2014

listening to: The Kooks

mental health, Relationships

The Hardest Part of the Story

by Kim3 Comments on The Hardest Part of the Story

The only thing I’ve ever published on this blog and then deleted is still a hard story for me to tell. It’s one that needs to be told and one that I don’t try to hide, but I was far too emotionally invested to write about it appropriately.

People that have known me for a while remember when I got married back in 2010. Looking back at everything now, I realize that the marriage shouldn’t have happened in the first place because I was already far too consumed by my depression, but in the moment, it made sense. The marriage lasted three years. Most of it is now a blur to me, but there are still some very vivid memories.

I suppose I should start back before I even met him. I should start back at my freshman year of college. That was the year that everything started to change for me. That was the year that I partied far too often and invested time in some people that didn’t have good motives. That was the year that I lost any innocence and not all of it was by choice.

Fast forward to the next year when I met the guy I would later marry. There were moments at the very beginning that should have been clues that there was something wrong with my psyche. If I felt too constrained in a blanket or a hug was too tight, I wouldn’t be able to breathe, my eyes would instantly tear up, and my body would just freeze. Panic attacks would become more frequent as the years progressed, but I should have realized that something wasn’t quite right at the very beginning.

What started off as a casual friendship turned into a pretty serious relationship. I became dependent on him and went as far as to drop out of college and move to another state to be with him. That was when he proposed. Part of the reason for proposing was so that we could live together without the complete and utter disapproval from my parents.

Looking back, the year we spent together while engaged was a year of my emotional and mental health utterly deteriorating. I started waking up in the middle of the night because of panic attacks. There is nothing more terrifying than being unable to move and so frozen that your brain can’t process what is going on around you.

The wedding day quickly approached. I clearly remember wanting to call off the wedding day, but also being so concerned about what others would think if I did that I carried through with it. I was a mess the weekend of. There wasn’t a waking hour that I wasn’t fighting back tears. I thought it was happy nerves, but I’ve never been that out of control with my emotions, and I know now that the overwhelming emotions were more signs that there was something off.

We were married, and things were fine for a while. This is where things get even harder to talk about. I suppose typing it out is easier than verbalizing everything, but there were three different instances during the three years we were married that changed everything. It was a kind of abuse, the kind that is both hurtful and degrading, and I was completely unequipped to respond properly. After the third incident, I finally realized that there was nothing more important than getting out. I’ve always used the same example when explaining this, but it was as if there was a pane of glass that kept getting cracks in it until that third time. That final moment of hurt and abuse was enough to shatter the glass and make me realize just how badly I needed to remove myself from the situation.

I’ve found that this is a tricky topic to discuss for a couple of different reasons. For one, I needed to escape for my own health and safety, but I’m not out to paint my ex husband as an evil person. There are numerous great qualities about him, but I can’t look past the pain he caused me. I’ve never wanted revenge, but I wasn’t about to allow that hurt to continue. You hear about abuse happening, but you don’t imagine it happening in a seemingly happy marriage. You don’t imagine someone who is beloved by everyone who meets him could possibly laugh when confronted with the pain he’s caused somebody.

Secondly, I don’t want pity. I’ve never wanted people to feel sorry for me. It’s in the past now, and just like the other hurtful moments in my life, I’ve learned from it. I’ve learned how to stand up for myself and I’ve learned to be far less tolerant when confronted with similar issues. I’ve learned how strong I can be when it’s absolutely necessary, and I think that strength is my most beautiful quality. I’m proud of the person I’m becoming in my recovery.

So the reason I share the basic overview of this part of my story is this: I want more people to truly understand that there can be pain when everything looks perfect on the outside. I want people to be more willing to help when they think somebody might be hurting. Most importantly, I want people who might be experiencing something similar to know that they can be hopeful, that there is another side and a way out from the hurt. Recovery is possible even after the darkest moments.

Niederrad, Germany- October 2014

Niederrad, Germany- October 2014

listening to: Vance Joy