Putting the Puzzle Together

This afternoon I opened my Box O' Journals in search of material. And boy did I find material.

I'm really glad that I chose to record my thoughts and my life the past almost 15 years. Some of my thoughts are stupid and trivial. Some parts of my life that I chose to record are laughable - the crush I never thought I could get over, the overwhelming anger towards my sister for trashing my bedroom, the logs of trips to Wal-Mart with a complete list of my purchases. Some memories are happy and funny. Some are sad and depressing. Some of it I read now and am able to see the bigger picture those tiny daily puzzle pieces created.

You know how sometimes things happen and you don't fully understand why, but then suddenly one day you have a moment of realization? Like the time I hung out with my teenage friend when I was I was nine years old. I wanted to go swimming, but she said she couldn't. She couldn't swim? No, she said, that wasn't it. She didn't want to? No, she said. It was going to rain? No, she said. She didn't have a bathing suit? No, she said. She just couldn't. I didn't understand. For weeks I puzzled over it. Why couldn't she? I found out when I was 12. It made perfect sense. The pieces of the puzzle fit together to create a complete picture I wouldn't have been able to understand at age 9.

Today I journeyed back to 2005. I was 22. I lived with my parents and "helped out around the house", as they called it. I paid rent - officially it was $100 per month; unofficially it was two-thirds of my weekly paychecks if you counted the don't tell your father and the don't tell your mother "loans".

2005 spelled the end of my most toxic relationship. This wasn't a boy-girl relationship. It was a girl-girl relationship. A relationship where my best friend played holier-than-thou, innocent preacher's kid and I played like I was I gave a shit about organized religion. She had already ended the friendship once because, in short, I wasn't good enough for her. She did it through a comment on my LiveJournal. After a while we became friends again until I received an e-mail from her telling me that she loved me but it just wasn't going to work. She told me she could no longer be a hypocrite. I had already left the church by that point, so I was an outspoken heathen by then. In her e-mail she told me she was giving up smoking (which she started doing before she even found out that I did -- just sayin'), giving up listening to the devilish Christian rock I had got her hooked on (Tobymac and Nicole C. Mullen are the devil, I guess), and she was giving up me.

Whatever. I grieved, but I didn't grieve as much as the first time. I cried, but I didn't cry as much as the first time. I wrote her a nasty letter that I never gave her and moved on.

The funniest part about that story is that she's a missionary now. For a while she dated one of my good friends, then broke his heart the day after Christmas, through e-mail. He took her to the airport so she could head back to the mission field (before the break-up). On the way he stopped to get gas. While he was getting gas, she went inside and came out with three packs of Marlboros. From what I've heard, she's also a huge fan of this special jungle juice they make on the island. Supposedly, it's more potent than bourbon.

As I read through my 2005 journals today, I read about days where I defended Mom vehemently. I called my dad an asshole, I said she was too good for him, I called so-and-so and who-and-who assholes and said they should stop calling my mom a hypocrite. I defended her even while she was treating me like shit.

I read some of these entries to TAIM and he said, "Sounds like your BFF was the first relationship you sought out that was just like the relationship with your mom."

And then the pieces came together.

The men I dated before I met TAIM were more like my father. They were the type of men I could have easily had complete control over had I desired to. With that knowledge, I figured I was safe as far as subconsciously seeking out toxic relationships like the one Mom and I had. But, no. My best friend, she was Mom. She made me feel like dirty, rotten garbage and I was nothing but nice to her. One time I called her out on something and she pouted for weeks. I ended up apologizing to her to make everything right, just like I did with Mom. In that relationship I was the constant reconciler. I was the one making the effort while she was making the demands.

It's funny (not in a ha-ha sort of way) how we really do seek out relationships just like the ones we had with our parents.