Did I get dumped on my birthday? Some might say that is questionable.
Do I feel like I got dumped on my birthday? YES!

It was going to be a beautiful day today and I guess it still will be. But, I cried today.

I cried today, like a lot, because of love. Children of Alcoholics only want be loved. We never truly felt loved by our parents. So deep down inside of us we’ve never had it unless we found it later on in our teenage years, or 20s, or 30s, or 40s. But I’m 51. I’ve been involved. I’ve had relationships, but I’ve never been with somebody that truly loved me or wanted to be committed to me. The two relationships I had, only one called me his girlfriend toward the end of our relationship and the other use to joke to others about me being his wife, but never had ever talked to me about a commitment. But neither of these, were the type of relationships where you date, officially make it exclusive (probably because if they were caught seeing other people they could say that we weren’t really a couple. One did say that to me!), and ever even led to the words, I love you. So, for five decades, well, maybe the last 20 years, I learned to love myself. My son also loved me and my family loved me as much as they could with their own dysfunction and definition of what love is. But, as I learned what true love is and being loved was, I wanted it.  The only true love I’ve ever felt is from my son. And, there’s a human part of us that needs someone else to love us besides ourselves and our own family.

So, my birthday is going to be a full day of fun. I’m going to ride my bike to have lunch with my son and his girlfriend at the beach and have dinner with a longtime girlfriend that I’ve known since we were teenagers. I will still do these things, even though I am upset. But like most birthdays, a part of me didn’t want to be alone tonight. So, I texted someone that I’ve been seeing and talking to for a few months now. No, I don’t want a relationship with him, maybe down the road, but I do like him. I like him a lot and I don’t get like this over many men I meet. I do like spending time with him. If I could change a few things about him, he’d definitely be somebody I truly wanted in a person. After we first met, he said that he wasn’t looking for a relationship at that time, which was fine with me until I met him. The vibe was good, the conversation was good, who he was and his interests were were good. I was kind of taken back by it clicking so well between us. Overtime I realized it was the qualities that I liked and wanted in a man. I enjoyed keeping in touch with him. So until that person, my person, showed up with hopefully some of the same qualities and engagement, he had, he would do – I thought! But, I did like him a lot. So, this birthday morning I text him to see what he was up to tonight, and I got this long winded text about how we couldn’t see each other anymore, that he was looking for serious relationship now, and wanted to build on that and having a family of his own, etc. etc. I loved his honesty and thanked him for it. But as soon as our text ended, I started to cry. And then I started to cry some more. The crying wasn’t because he wasn’t available. At that very moment it was because why couldn’t someone like him, or anybody decent, have ever come along in my life.

I was yet reminded again of what I don’t have and what I’ve never had. I am beginning to resent the 7 1/2 years I wasted on someone in my 20s into early 30s. I knew I was never going to make a future with that guy, but I wasted so many years on him. The resentment is huge at times like this. And there is this little smart, healed, part of my intellect that knows even if I didn’t waste those years on that guy that I still wasn’t ready to have a decent, respectful, loving, nurturing, kind man in my life. But, the resentment and the time wasted is still there. And then for 6 1/2 years after that, I didn’t date or meet anyone. I was too busy raising my son on my own and trying to unravel that relationship. I was trying to learn from it. And then after all that time, I got involved with an addict and for a year and a half it was great at times and it was turbulent at times. Then he, that I thought was the love of my life (just if he could get sober like he had done before), and probably the only man I’ve really loved, died. And after that, I take another nine years gaining weight, not wanting to date, having intimacy issues because I don’t want to love another man, that I finally now get to the point that I can love again, want to be loved, and know what type of person I want in my life.

Life just seems to pass me by so quickly in this department. And the thing that brings me back to tears is that all I ever wanted was for someone to finally love me in that way. To make it official, to try to be my partner in life, to say, I love you and don’t want to be without you.

So, I’m not devastated over this guy (I don’t think. Well, maybe just a little.), but I’m just yet reminded again that there’s a little part of me that yearns for love like that and from someone like him.

Now it’s time to get myself together, I have to ride my bike out to the beach and meet up with my son and his girlfriend for lunch. The tears may flow, but I am trying to remind myself of how lovable I am, how beautiful life is, and how I will hold onto the fact that I believe, hope, my person will eventually find me.

It hurts when time and time again though it feels like you keep getting your heart broken or you keep on falling short in the end of not getting that love that you want so badly. As a child of an alcoholic, a moment like this triggers all those unwanted feelings of no self-worth, no love, no value, and no nurturing that occurred in your childhood. Or, at least the inconsistency of it. You craved for any love from your parent or parents. You wanted to be enough. You wanted to be more important than the drug or the alcohol or the chaos. You just wanted to be loved. So when you feel like once again someone that you like doesn’t love you or like you enough to see what could develop, it brings up all those feelings. Even the, why not me. What is wrong with me, is asked.

Nothing is wrong with me. I know that. Yes, I’ve wasted a lot of time on people that didn’t deserve me or weren’t going to be healthy relationships anyway. Also, for so long I wasn’t healed when it came to this. I needed to unpack all that and learn from it, too. Also, like my girlfriend reminded me – I was handling shit; raising a child on my own and putting myself through school. Nothing is wrong with anybody. ACoAs (Adult Children of Alcoholics) are lovable and some can be the most giving and empathetic people out there because they have been through a lot. You may have done a lot of healing, you may have learned to love your inner child, you may know your own self-worth, but the fact is that it still hurts when someone turns away from you. Those feelings come back, even if it’s for like me, just for a few minutes or hours. But as a friend reminded me on this day, as I said to her and cried, it does get easier and it doesn’t hurt as bad or as long.

I will hold onto this today – You know who you are! You know you’re lovable, you know you have strength that other people don’t have because they haven’t gone through the shit you have gone through, you know you have compassion and empathy and you know you have a lot of love to give. It’s just taking you a little longer to find love and the right person.

I will keep reminding myself that I wasn’t ready for a healthy relationship back then. I will stop resenting the time I wasted. I was healing, recovering, and just taking care of business.

Love will come. That healthy love that I deserve. I just have to have faith in that.

 

 

* This was written on Sunday, my actual birthday (March 7th). See previous post, https://wp.me/p4g3TO-uG to read about the guy that sent me the text written about in this blog post. I believe I’ve mentioned him in other posts prior, too. And by the way, he had no idea it was my birthday. He was very sweet and apologetic about what he was texting. Unfortunately for me, another sweet quality (thoughtfulness) he has.

#relationships #relationshipgoals #readyforlove #childrenofalcoholics