It's kinda complicated how I decided that I'm through with relationships.
The simple explanation is that each of the years I've lived counts for two, which puts me past retirement age, and past the "relationship" age; assuming I'm not one of the Rolling Stones, which, by the way, I'm not. But it's kinda hard to convince anyone how one of my years actually equals two.
Another reason is that I've pretty much learned any and everything I want to learn from relationships. And if there is nothing to learn, I'm bored with it. Relationships aren't for my carnal needs or intimacy or whatever social bullshit. Everything is about learning. I'm not saying I couldn't learn any more from them, but just that I've learned everything that I want to. Bored now.
Furthermore, I just can't see intertwining and integrating someone else's life with mine. I've become too individual, too independent, too solitary, to let someone into my space and my time. I've become too defensive of my space and time. Any relationship I got into would require reservation of the right to say, "get the hell out", and where's the love in that?!
My attitude is not unrelated to my last relationship. This is something I realized recently. I broke things off for good in that last relationship because I felt she was monopolizing my time and my being.
I had just joined a band and realized I could not be in the band and the relationship at the same time. The pattern had shown that she would not let anything come before her, and being in a band was me, being in a band was putting myself ahead of her, and that couldn't be done.
So I cut off the relationship, which was in the midst of a fight that started on the day I had auditioned for that band.
My doubt now is that it wasn't just her monopolizing my time, but it was also my willingness to give up my time and my being for her. I have a pre-occupation with avoiding conflict, and that was manifested in my willingness to throw myself and my needs away to make her happy. Scary.
I still do think our break up was justified considering other circumstances, such as despite my pre-occupation with avoiding conflict, it was still there, but the shift of blame of the immediate cause is just more shared. I'm not able to say that if I got into another relationship, I wouldn't lose myself again for the sake of avoiding conflict.
Sadie did manage to elicit that I'm not refusing all relationships for the rest of my life. And it's true. I haven't 100% ruled out the possibility of finding a relationship that might make me want to live.
But if I went into the criteria required of a person I would be interested in . . . let's put it this way. It would be easier to find a cello-playing, motorcycle-riding, within-one-inch-of-my-height-wearing-two-inch-heels, with great hair, than it would be to find someone I would be willing to integrate into my life.
February 23, 2003; 5:20 P.M.
