Sugared Harpy

• Home
• About Me
• Categories
• Links
• Subscribe

Ciao!

My Brain is Crazy, part one of several

Note One: This is pretty much stuff regarding to my boyfriend. Yes, I have talked to him about these things. Yes, I’m positive he loved talking about it. Until the wee hours of them morning sometimes. With me crying. Sometimes huffing and puffing. He thought it was charming.

So, I’ve got a boyfriend. And for the past few months, apparently this makes me batshit crazy.

I’ve never been the needy girl (Okay, I’ve been needy but not the kind who fawns on her man’s every action where have you been mister! needy). I’ve never needed lots of closeness and togetherness and usually felt quite stifled by partners. But this relationship is messing with me. Lordy, is it MESSING WITH ME.

So today is your first installment of how nucking futs I’ve become.

A big part of my most recent crazy has been my change in how I feel toward certain things. For instance, I’ve been seeing this man for some time now. At that post, we had moved to the girlfriend/boyfriend point for about a month. Obviously, we had been seeing each other before we accepted that label.

But a few months ago, I start becoming hypersensitive to what I can see in his closet and the stuff I just feel is in the second drawer of the bedside table and what I feel is looming in spaces all over the house, particularly the bedroom. Really, I think it’s the stuff in the bedroom. Huh. Just worked that out. But it bothers me now, just lately, but not before.

I’m pretty sure my boyfriend doesn’t wear pink baseball caps.

No, he’s not cheating. He is, however, a widower. That is a hurt I cannot fathom. A loss I have no way to understand. I don’t try, I am sympathetic and saddened at such a terrible loss, but I can’t pretend to know what he’s gone through. Not during her illness, not through her loss, and not having to learn life after. There is so much that goes into something like that, I will never ever be able to understand the tiniest fraction.

I love that he loved his wife. He is a good man. I am happy he had that life and as much as I adore him in mine, I wouldn’t have wished that on him. Just like I wished I had never been divorced, but I am happy to have this relationship now. I don’t fret about the idea of her, necessarily. He doesn’t live in the past, he seems to feel comfortable talking about that part of his life the same as any of us would do about our own previous situations, he doesn’t make me feel any less or that I’m in some weird competition with who she was. I feel like he enjoys me in a unique way that doesn’t undermine her, or undermine me.

From what I understand, the house looks very different now.

I sleep in their bed with him, the bed I know he’s had longer than our time together. At first it was weird, felt odd, sort of. Not too much really, since it had been just his bed for a few years by that point. The sheets were new, I learned that later. And now there are even newer sheets on the bed; I was there to help pick them out. The bed, eh, it doesn’t bother me for some reason. The house and the bed, just feel like his. I didn’t know him with her.

There is a small picture of the two of them on a high shelf over the closet in the bedroom.

THAT doesn’t bother me. I adore who he is and I fully understand that she is part of who he is. And I’m grateful for her part in his life, because I like him as he is now. The picture, in the bedroom, doesn’t irk me in the slightest. One teeny snapsot of them together is a memento, not a shrine and it feels fine and appropriate. I am acutely aware that his marriage didn’t end by choice, and perhaps this would seem weird if he had merely divorced. Not that he needed my permission, but it’s perfectly fine with me to keep it where it is.

Hats, pink.

The are sitting in the closet. In the closet that is closest to the side of the bed I sleep in, when I stay the night there. Which you know, is pretty much when the kids aren’t with me and his daughter isn’t with him. So in the light of the morning, I can sometimes see into the closet (a mirrored closet…not as sexy as one would lead you to believe…damn 80s design). Several women’s hats hang in there. No other clothing is in there, but the hats are clearly not his. Lately, THEY have been bothering me. I think it’s because they are so personal. Personal effects not seemingly serving as keepsakes. I really think he just didn’t think about them, rarely thinks about them now, and there they still are. Where I try not to stare at another woman’s belongings when I spoon with my boyfriend.

The bedside table has two drawers. One is cleared out for me.

It’s the other one that is bugging me. He sweetly cleared out the top drawer one day as “my” drawer on “my” side of the bed. But there are two. I can’t seem to put handle anything in there because I wonder if the bottom drawer is full of the things that used to be in the top drawer. I wonder if it looks like mine at my home, filled with very personal items like birth control pills, glasses, nail file, ouchless ponytail elastics…personal personal personal.

When it was over, he said he didn’t know what to do with some things, so he “shoved them in places.”

I am becoming highly aware of this. I know pretty much what he kept, from heres and theres of various conversations. Things kept for her children when or if they want them, usable items of the shared house that there’s no reason to toss, I’m sure there are family pictures to doodads to highly precious objects important to just him and her that I don’t worry about…feeling those are private. But I wonder more about the other things. The things he didn’t know what to do with, shoved in a drawer, things I might bump into accidentally and not know what to make of them. I fear them and my own feelings.

I don’t want him to do anything about these things, per se.

I mean, hey, if he wants to move them for his own sake, I will feel probably feel relieved and less anxious. HOWEVER, and this is big, I am not asking him to do so. I would not, could not ever ask someone to potentially go through something painful to ease my mind. It’s just not on the same level, to me. Nor would I appreciate someone asking me to do the same.

The problems I’m having are my issues. He’s done nothing inconsiderate to me. He’s done nothing wrong or even new. He is certainly not handling anything inappropriately. My feelings have been pretty bland on the matter until fairly recently: not worrying or caring about any of this. My reactions have changed and I have to deal with it. I’m dating a widower and I intend to do so for a bit longer. Just like he is dating the newly divorced and has his own issues, these are mine.

And they are making me crazy lately :)

More tomorrow…

Posted by Melissa on February 11th, 2008 under Boyfriendlies

Recent Posts

• Most Awesomest Line Ever About a Planned Trip to the Museum
• 4pm
• Updating Quickly
• So
• House Porn

Archives

Select Month December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005