Christine, Wondering

Random Musings of a Human Becoming

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Another revelation


The realisation I had last week about Mr S Bananahead's cheating ways was perhaps the second-last niggling question I had about the relationship. The last was the incomprehensible question that kept me tied up in knots for a long time until I learned to consign it to the "don't know, don't care" bin. The question went something like this: "He bought a ring. He was sure enough that he wanted to marry me that he bought a ring. Why would he buy a ring if he wasn't sure? You don't buy a ring if you're not sure. Why would he buy a ring then sabotage the relationship for no apparent reason and move a new girlfriend into his house in the process? Who DOES that? What went wrong when up until that point he was sure enough to buy a ring?"

Suddenly, yet another GPYP post made me realise that there does not have to be any logic to it. He was a liar and a cheater. He was illogical and wrong-headed. A sensible and emotionally stable person wouldn't buy a ring unless they were sure. But Mr S Bananahead was neither of those things. Possibly he was sure and then changed his mind; that can happen even to emotionally stable people. But with Mr S Bananahead's track record for honesty and stability there's no reason to assume that his thought processes followed any sort of earth logic. A sensible and emotionally stable person wouldn't buy an engagement ring he never intended to use. But Mr S Bananahead wasn't sensible or emotionally stable. There's simply no way of knowing what his motivations were, but the initial confusion was invalid. "You don't buy a ring if you're not sure". If you're a bananahead, maybe you do. And that's all I need to know.

Barring unexpected triggers, that's the last of my baggage from that relationship. Good feeling :)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Stop the room, I want to get off ...


I've been nursing a slight cold for a few days, and it decided to get a bit worse today, during music - one second I'm singing, next second I'm coughing up a lung. By the time I got home I had a headache and a tight throat as well, so I thought I'd take a couple of cold & flu tablets (paracetamol, codeine and pseudoephedrine, basically) to knock it on the head.

Ironically, that knocked ME on the head. Half an hour after I took the tablets the room went kind of odd and the bits of the room in my peripheral vision started spinning if I moved too quickly. YUCK.

I've managed to make dinner - without burning anything - but I feel woozy in the head and generally off-colour. And the dizziness has transformed the righteous ire I felt when I got home (MORE parent-generated crap at school today) into a tired depressed funk. I'm sick of dealing with political crap and just want to get on with teaching.

*woozes*

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Realisation

I've finished doing the grief work around Mr S Bananahead, to the point where it's strange for me to even think of him. But recently I was reminded of the strangeness of the breakup. I saw in a catalogue a picture of the ring he'd bought for me, and for a moment once again paused to wonder why, on the verge of proposing, he instead sabotaged the relationship he'd driven along so fast for all those months. It was a passing return to wondering, and I quickly consigned it to the "don't know, don't care, doesn't matter" basket and moved on.

But a few days later, I was reading through various GPYP posts to find good advice for a friend who'd just been dumped, and I read a phrase I'd seen a hundred times before but had never really absorbed . . . "what he does with you, he'll do TO you".

Oh, DUH.

When Mr S. Bananahead and I met, he was still living with an ex-girlfriend, who hadn't moved out because the housemate thing was convenient for both of them. He insisted on keeping me a complete secret from this ex-girlfriend, ostensibly because she had been paying the mortgage while they were together, and was owed a considerable amount if she moved out. I didn't even meet his parents until she was safely moved out and paid out. I met her once, because my car broke down and I was stranded at his house. I was introduced as a friend, and couldn't help noticing that she called him "sweetie" still. I later also found out that they'd still been sleeping together from time to time up until Mr S Bananahead and I started going out . . . so they were not so thoroughly-broken-up-for-the-past-6-months as he'd claimed. But despite the strangeness and inconsistencies, I let the secrecy happen until she was safely moved out, and believed Mr S Bananahead's reasons for it.

When that relationship began to go wrong, it was because Mr S Bananahead gradually scaled back affection and communication, all the while denying that he was doing any such thing, until I was nearly frantic. In desperation I turned up at his doorstep unannounced, and when I got there I discovered that he had a new female housemate he'd neglected to mention. His excuse for this was that we were too busy fighting for him to tell me anything, but since we were fighting because he refused to talk . . . ahem. Bullshit.

At the time, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. She probably was just a housemate, right? But when I re-read that phrase - "what he does with you, he'll do TO you" - the uncertainty vanished. Of course she was his new flame. As demonstrated with myself and his ex, he's got a history of lining up a new girlfriend and keeping her a secret until he's got rid of the old one. Tell the new one a convincing story about the need for secrecy, so the phasing out is as painless as possible. He did it with me. He did it to me. It's what he does.

I STILL don't know why Mr S Bananahead decided to trade me in for someone else. I don't care. He's a bastard and a cheater and I'm well shot of him. And it was me that pulled the plug in the end, with far more dignity than he could ever have mustered. What I DO know is that I needn't doubt what was going on any more. I know what was going on. It was right there all along.