Jewel of Denial

I feel positively juvenile when I refuse to do something just because I think I won’t be good at it. Yet, that’s my attitude toward relationships. But I also don’t avoid relationships because I think the ex was the love of my life. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Reasons

I avoid relationships because I believe I am truly bad at them. I clearly have terrible taste in men and horrible instincts when it comes to interpersonal relationships because, as I think back on the relationships from my past, I have learned nothing from each one, and they all ended badly. 

Is that not a valid reason for avoiding future entanglements? I panic at the idea of getting to know someone else. I panic at the thought that another person might get close enough to influence me and cause me to make rash decisions that I’ll regret the rest of my life. 

Denying my inner romantic

I say it is safer to just avoid relationships altogether. Inside my inner romantic just rolls their eyes and thinks you just haven’t met the right person… 

Well, I guess there is a reason to squash that voice. Because they don’t have a lick of sense. I don’t need my inner romantic leading me to make more bad decisions because life is not like a romance novel. 

I am not going to meet someone who is genuinely interested in me and has my best interests at heart. Someone who will be equally invested in the relationship as I am, who loves all my quirks and finds my hobbies interesting. That is not my life.

Trust issues galore

If the past year and the pandemic have taught me anything is that I am not going to find someone sensible in the state of Texas. And considering the political climate and the latest bout of domestic terrorism and display of white privilege, you can’t trust anybody. 

I don’t watch the news anymore. Growing up with my mother, who obsessively watched the news every day with Peter Jennings, got tiresome. And my boring ass brother would watch nothing but the news 24/7 if the news channels he prefers to watch actually aired news that often. 

So maybe it’s the rebel in me that prefers not to sit in front of the boob tube and get fed the news that they feel I need to know. You can’t trust that they haven’t skewed the information to manipulate opinions and thoughts. 

Can’t deny historical evidence

Case in point, the ex during the second Obama election. Where previously I thought he was more open-minded, if perhaps lacking a more worldly view, he was listening to Glenn Beck ad nauseam, and it was like he transformed into another person. An openly racist person. 

But the ex wasn’t really transformed. The year prior to the first Obama election, he was overseas, so if he was displeased with who got elected, I didn’t really hear about it until he got back, to which my response was, ” What does it matter who is president since it doesn’t affect us locally?” He knew who I had voted for, and he didn’t like being confronted with the fact that he had not voted at all, so what right did he have to complain?

American psycho

As the years drew closer to the 2012 elections, he was growing dissatisfied with his time in the military. He felt overlooked. He kept from me the secret that he almost went to Captain’s Mast because he gun decked maintenance reports for some bitch he was probably fucking on the ship. (That last tidbit I suspected, but since he was talking about getting out, I didn’t pursue it) His overall state was just being angry. 

He got out of the military, we moved to New Jersey for his new job (how much did that suck… don’t know? Just read about it), and then it was the year of the election. When he began to spout racially charged comments about blacks and Hispanics, I knew something had broken in him. 

I literally cried the day the ballots were cast and the results were declared, because I was legitimately scared for my personal safety if the Republicans had won. 

Four months after the election, I divorced him and moved away. 

What the hell do I know?

I mention all of that to say that maybe the world has been going to hell in a handbasket longer than I’ve been paying attention, but it seems like the last four years have been incredibly rough. 

If I didn’t feel safe when the threat of a Romney presidential win was looming, imagine how bleak everything has been since #45 has been in power. Especially knowing that the ex, who has never voted a day in his whole fucking life, made an effort to register and show up to vote for that monster. 

Clearly, I have terrible taste in men if that is who I was with for 15 years.

Leave the relationships to others with better interpersonal skills, with families that aren’t broken beyond repair, and who don’t carry enough emotional baggage to fill the entire luggage section of a 747.