Tag Archives: dating

You are the weird one between the two of us

Posted on by

4

Let’s get one thing straight: You are the weird one between the two of us.

I was encouraged by your “wink” on Match.com last month. You had a certain cute nerdiness that I like, such as the fact that you knew right away which David Foster Wallace essay I was describing to you. “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” confirms my belief that a cruise vacation should never be in my future. Ever.

When your profile mentioned a liking for David Foster Wallace, how could I resist such a like for literary brilliance?

But then I noticed what you wrote under occupation: therapist.

Crap and fuck, as there would be no way to gloss over the details of my DID diagnosis. It gave me pause as I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of dating a therapist, but you liked David Foster Wallace!

We had a brilliant first date of nerdy talk for 5+ hours at the coffee shop.

I loved the fact that though you majored in film in undergrad you had never seen any of my favorite movies. Of the five I listed, you had only heard of two. I loved that I stumped you that way, though I didn’t do it on purpose. Those movies really are among my favorites: Happy Go Lucky, Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips), Spanglish, Johnny Stecchino, and Vicky Christina Barcelona.

Sometimes it’s fun to be weird.

And then, other times, it’s far less fun.

For example, admitting to you that I have dissociative identity disorder was certainly less than fun. It was one of those moments when you feel all of the weirdness inside and outside of you like a Cloak of Weirdness you can’t shake off no matter how hard you try.

You said to me that you “didn’t know about that …” And it got all weird. You said something about waking up with a knife to your throat, or rather you “jokingly” asked if that would ever happen. You asked rhetorically when you really wanted an actual answer from me.

I let you sit with the discomfort of your stupid rhetorical question.

Get rid of your stupid hollywood images of DID.

For fuck’s sake, I’m a professional with a job with gobs of responsibility, and I am so non-violent I can’t even stomach many violent movies. So, no, you don’t have to worry about waking up with such a situation.

Why the hell did I let the words hang like that?

Why didn’t I say to you, “Hey! You’re a fucking THERAPIST. Don’t be all weird on me for something I never asked for, AND for something that I’m working on … AND get lost, lose my number!

That is what I should have said.

Instead I let it go. I understood the reluctance to believe because I had the same reluctance. I thought if you just see me as I am it will be fine.

But no, everything was colored with the DID, the remarks, the conversations, the non-verbals … it became the weird thing in the room between us.

Things were more fun before DID came into our conversations.

I fear that I will eventually lose my glass-half-full optimism.

And, then I learned just how weird YOU are.

For instance, there’s no plainer way to put this, but you’re a dick.

I said to you this week that I was disappointed because I lost my first case ever in my career. I wasn’t a mess about it, but I was disappointed, and surprised as I believed in my case.

You said to me if no one died then it was a good day.

That was a jerky thing to say. Professional disappointment is normal and okay. You just needed to be mildly supportive of me. Even a simple “I’m sorry to hear that” would have sufficed.

When I told you that we had a drug situation at work, and I laughed at telling you that I had no idea that the word “roach” was slang for marijuana you told me I should be embarrassed that I didn’t know what that word meant.

Really? I should be embarrassed? Hell no, I am fine with not knowing that. It’s not like I work in law enforcement or narcotics. I work in human resources, and I’m so legalistic I reel at the thought of doing anything remotely illegal. I would have been great for the military if I wasn’t such a pacifist and left-leaning feminist. They would have loved my propensity for rules and structure.

Nope, you are the one who should be embarrassed, mister. You should be embarrassed because you really aren’t very empathetic or kind or understanding. Maybe you use it all up at work, but from what I’ve seen, you’re all tapped out.

And, I’m out.

I am not sorry

Posted on by

3

To The Person That Confused Me:

I am not sorry I cried the other night when you told me it wasn’t a good idea for you to come over to my apartment for dinner this past weekend. I am sorry that you noticed I was crying on the phone, but I am not sorry that the depths of my feelings led me to cry.

I will never be sorry that you know exactly how I feel about you.

You’ve acknowledged that you have similar feelings for me, but you won’t act on them. I am sorry that you’ve chosen not to act on these feelings. It’s an even sorrier situation because it seems like you nibble at the edges here and there by flirting on the phone with me.

I must briefly digress by thanking you for spending the anniversary of one of the hardest days of my life recently. That will always mean a lot to me. The memory of you in the pizza place with the loud tie with red, white and blue stars and stripes is embedded in my memory forever. Then to learn that you wore the tie in commemoration of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom made my heart swell with pride.

And, yes, I had such a good time with you that night that I wanted to spend more time with you last weekend. I would have been sufficiently happy just cooking and playing a board game with you. I feel how I feel about you, but I would not have tried anything because I know where you stand. I respect you enough not to go against your wishes. I would have simply enjoyed talking with you.

I cried because I realized that our friendship will not grow because you are not comfortable spending time alone with me. And my brain just gets all clackety clack with that thought because I have a bunch of other related thoughts rolling around in my head: Are you afraid I’ll be “crazy?” Are you afraid you’ll see one of my other selves?

But there’s more to me than this thing we call DID. You created a barrier between us because of this. I know that you intended not to hurt me, but you hurt me nonetheless with your confusing ways. You also contributed to my feeling of not being good enough in this world because of my DID.

Though I am good enough, you’ll just never know it, and never experience it. I may be flawed as hell and prone to dissociation, but I will get to a better place, and you will miss out in sharing that place with me.

I have to move on, and even typing this makes me teary because you already have my heart. But I have to take it back because you do not want it.

You have every right not to want to have involvement with such a condition.

Still though, I cannot ignore the fact that it breaks my heart. If I didn’t have this illness you could see me as me. I wish you could see the me underneath all of this. Part of me wants to say, “Wait! Let me just get integrated in a couple of days, and I’ll be all better.” But I know better. I know that my recovery is a process that I cannot expedite any further. I so wish I could for me and for you. I wish with all my might that I was without this illness, and that I could just carry on like other folks.

But that is not what life dealt me, and all one can do with such a hand is make the most of it.

I wish I was DID free for you. But I am not. Someday maybe, but not today. And for that, I am sorry.

Whoa to you, Mr. Lame Date

Posted on by

0

I really liked Mr. Lame Date. Of course, I did not know he was a lame date at the moment I became smitten with him. I won’t even call him a boyfriend because it was so short-lived. But it was passionate and, like many relationships in the early stage, full of promise. We had a lot in common, he made me laugh, and those boy-next-door looks of his did not hurt.

Inevitably, once you get past the fun pleasantries at the initial stages you have to start sharing the some of the real-life less than ideal crap that we have floating around in our lives. My floatie is my PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorder. His is his ex-wife that has schizo-affective disorder.

After becoming close in a relatively short period of time he texted me today, yes, you read that right, he TEXTED me to say that he needs to “apply the brakes.” He finds me intelligent and “awfully interesting” (such an odd phrase), but he’s not ready to deal with someone who has similar issues to his ex-wife. Well, I didn’t know that PTSD and DID were similar to schizo-affective disorder!

It is sad to me that he’s made a broad generalization about my mental illness without knowing a whole lot about it. But, for me, the worst part is that I had him over to my apartment. I let very few people into my apartment, but I let him in because I really liked him.

So, Mr. Lame Date, to sum it up, you’re a first-class jerk. You knew I rarely let people into my apartment, but you persuaded me to have you over, and I allowed it. I allowed myself to get close to you, and incorrectly assessed you as one of the “good guys.” I was wrong. And perhaps most importantly, I regret giving you 4 of my freshly baked chocolate peanut butter cookies. You are so not worthy of such fine baking. Procurement of fine baked goods under false pretenses will inevitably backfire into bad karma.