Sedra asked a question recently, in response to a recent post.  Ordinarily I would just reply directly to it, but it is going to be rather long, so I figured I would just make a post about it.

My usual disclaimer is going to apply here.  This is another no caption post.  Its going to involve my long winded self pity, so if you are not interested, just go ahead and skip this one.

This is going to be a long post, and it may ramble at times.  It is difficult for me to explain the entire situation, because so much of why I react to things the way I do involves other, previous, events that shaped who I am.  It is difficult for me to even find a place to start.

Sedra asked what was happening in response to my post about not getting my hopes up.  This is part of a general pattern in my life, but the post itself was prompted by specific events.  See, I've found that, in my life, every time I get excited about something, get my hopes up, something bad happens.  Like, for example, there was a trip I was going to take when I was in high school.  I got very excited about it, told everyone.  Then it got cancelled.  I know, seems kind of lame, but that is just one simple example of what I mean.  But every time I let my guard down and start thinking things will be ok, that the worst is over, that I might just be able to be happy, life comes along and shows me just how wrong I am.

I recently wrote how my S.O. has taken a job in San Diego.  It is official, starting next weekend.  Our relationship has been under a lot of strain because of it, because I am tied to here on the east coast.  I just bought a house, my job and career are here, all of my friends and family are here.  My friends are very important to me, because, truthfully, they are the first true friends I've had.  So being forced to choose between them and my S.O. is very hard for me.  But my S.O. and I have been together for almost six years now, and had even planned on getting married one day, when we finally worked out where and how we could be together.  But now, I find it hard to see us lasting through this.  After some of our fights, I've already started unconciously building up a wall, prepparing myself for when it happens.

This is where things start getting complicated, my emotional state right now.  Yes, I'm in pain, but it is a bit more than that.  To understand, it is important to know about certain events that took place in my life, as well as how people have reacted to me.  Now, I can't sum up all of the events of my life that brought me to this point.  So I will focus on the two largest, plus I'll try to sum up how I am treated.

The two events I'm referencing are my previous dating history.  I had some disasters in High School, but they never really became relationships, so I'm not going to go into that right now.  Suffice to say that I did have my first relationship until College.  I was lonely, and a hopeless romantic.  I was foolish enough to believe in the 'disney ending'.  It is important to understand the sort of person I used to be.  I was quiet and shy, and an all around nice person.  And all I ever wanted was for someone to see beyond my exterior and fall in love with me.

Lets start by introducing my first relationship with someone we shall call person A.  A was attractive, as well as being older and (in my eyes at the time) more mature and confident.  I'll spare the details here, because they are long and I don't want to relive them.  But I fell in love with A, and fell hard.  At the time I'd given up hope, and suddenly there was A.  To be fair, I know that I latched on harder than I should have.  However, we were together for a few months and I was happy.  Fast forward, I'm sure you can all picture the sort of general sort of details of a relationship.  Now we arrive at the end.  A broke up with me at the end for someone else, providing intimate details of their time together, while A and I were still dating, and how this other person was so much better than I.  Pretty harsh ending, right?  It gets better.  Two weeks later, I find out from two independant and credible sources that A was engaged to be married.  To a third person.  (unsurprisingly, the engagement ended when A cheated with a fourth person later on).  Needless to say I was fairly crushed.

Again, fast forward.  It is now the following fall semester, a few months in the future.  I've sworn off of dating, the pain is still fresh.  I dared to hope and that is how it ended.  Enter person B.  Person B was dating one of my room mates at the time.  I was in a suite of four, and said room mate was chosen by the other two people, but I did not know them before this.  Four, as the room mate shall be known, introduced B to all of us, and eventually we became friends.  I actually spent a lot of time propping up Four and B's relationship, because, despite the fact that they had promised to marry and had been together for years since high school, they were constantly having problems.  I spent a lot of time trying to explain and excuse Four's behavior, Four was really an Asshole.  Anyway, B and I got to know each other.  Then came the accident.  On a trip to visit, B got in a terrible car accident.  B was unhurt, but only by a miracle.  After that, B could not sleep because of nightmares.  With one exception.  B could only sleep if I talked them down.  I made B feel safe.  You can probably guess, but B eventually confessed a growing attraction to me.  Actually, first B confessed about someone else who came into their life, and later revealed the "someone else" was me.  I'm sure many of you are shouting at the screen "no you fool, don't do it", as if this were a horror film and I'm about to open the door.  Its obvious to outsiders, but when you are lonely and hurting, and someone attractive confesses to you, its hard to see that.  Worse, I trusted B when they told me they would deal with Four.  Yes, I was stupid.  I'm not blameless in this, and I'm not going to try and paint myself an innocent victim.  Again, let us fast forward to the end.  Again, I won't go into all the details.  But the end of the relationship can be summed up with a confession B made after it was all over.  B confessed to deliberately trying to hurt me, hurt me as badly as possible.  Badly enough that I would kill myself.  The reason?  Because B could no longer be with Four, because Four did not meet B's new standards, and those standards were me.

What most people don't know, however, is that B succeeded.  I committed suicide.  I don't mean that I attempted it.  I went through with it.  No one knows how I survived.  For a long time after that, I don't really remember how long, I was just kind of a zombie.  I did what was expected of me, but my mind was gone.  My body would move, but there was no thought or will.  I'd eat if someone fed me, but if no one was around I didn't bother.  Eventually I ended up coming out of it, and slowly rebuilt myself.  But there person I was before was gone, and someone new was in its place.  I became much more sarcastic and cynical.  I could never again be called 'nice'.  I didn't care anymore what anyone thought, so I became much more outgoing.  I had no fear of dying, having already done so, and so I wasn't afraid to try things, no matter how dangerous.  I also swore off of ever trying to fall in love again, so it was as much a shock to me as anyone when I ended up with my S.O.

I also mentioned how people react to me.  People are terrified and repulsed by me.  No, I'm not being melodramatic.  I've seen people cross the street to get away from me.  A glance from me and people will freeze like rabbits.  I once got reported as a terrorist because I bought some ammunition and lantern fuel, at my father's request, from a sporting goods store (yes, that really happened.  Cops came looking for me because a customer followed me and reported my license plate).  The terrorist thing?  That happened before A and I had broken up.  So it has been my whole life.  There have been many, many incidents that have made it clear that I'm not a person but a monster.  Before you respond, if you have not done so already, read the original writing Frankenstein.  Not the hollywood stuff, or the modern adaptations, but the original.  See, Frankenstein's creation was actually not the groaning horror from the movies.  It was intelligent, literate, and thoughtful.  It sought a place to belong in a world it had not chosen to be created into.  But, because it was different, because the people could not accept it, it was labeled a monster.  Not for what it was, but because that is what people decided it was.  I, too, am a monster.

So where does all this rambling reminiscence lead to?  Well, since my S.O. and I have started dealing with our current situation, we did agree that it would be ok if we met other people and got to know them with the intention of possibly pursuing a new relationship.  As long as we are honest with everyone, and we end the old before proceeding to any sort of serious or intimate new relationship, it was ok.  And, since, as I mentioned, I've been unconciously preparing for things to end with us, combined with the heart ache I feel because of that, I've started latching on to every attractive person I see, with thoughts like "I wonder if that person would be interested in me", or "I wish I could date that person".  Each time, I get a flare of hope, followed by another little piece of my heart dying when reality sets in.  No one would want me.  The only reason my S.O. is with me is because, though they deny it, my S.O. deep down believes that there is no one else.  Not in the "i'm the one true love" sense, but the "i'm the only one who would have them, so take what they can get" sort of sense.  Comments my S.O. has made on many occasions have made it obvious they feel this way, even though they themselves may not conciously realize it.  And yes, it is different for me.  When I approached my S.O. the first time, it was just to be friends.  I had no plans to ever be more than that.  At the time, I wanted to be alone, so it was surprising to me that we ended up together.  And my S.O. never made any indication of interest until after I made the first move.

I had also mentioned specific events.  Well the biggest one is this.  I recently started chatting with someone.  Let us call this person C.  C and I had met at Otakon.  C is friends with someone who really likes the character I've cosplayed as in recent years.  And the two of them would continually run in to me.  In a convention boasting over 30,000 people, to run in to the same person more than once is pretty rare.  (Point of fact, I've actually found out afterwards that people I knew were at some of the same Otakons I was at, and I never saw them even once).  So it became kind of a running joke.  Both of them are very attractive, though personally I think C is better looking.  Anyway, I recently started talking to C for the first time, really, outside of meetings in the halls of Otakon.  It started out as a joke, but we actually got in to a conversation.  It is still kind of goofy, but, even though I tell myself not to, I have flirted a bit with C.  And that is the problem.  Because I've started getting caught up in the hope.  I've started creating this fantasy where this is the start of a new relationship between me and C, and followed by the 'happily ever after'.  I know that this is foolish.  And I know that I'm just going to end up hurting myself again.  But I can't seem to stop.  Every time C does not respond to my attempts at flirtation, my heart cracks a little more.  And my heart is already shattered, like a glass bowl someone tried to glue back together after dropping it.  But some of C's responses are kind of ambiguous, like they might be flirting back, or I might just be reading too much in to it.  So when I convince myself I'm being foolish, I get a response that makes me hope again.  And I know, when C finally gets fed up enough to tell me to go away, if I haven't managed to quash the hope my heart is going to break again, and I don't know if I can survive any more.  I already hurt so much because of what is happening with my S.O., I don't know how much more I can take.

I need to learn to stop hoping, because it only brings pain.