Back and Forth, Up and Down

I wonder if I should get my head checked? (That's a rhetorical question, because the answer is an unequivocal YES!) I should probably get my medications reviewed, anyway. I haven't mentioned it before, but I'm on meds for depression. Somehow I'm guessing that doesn't come as too much of a surprise.

Depression and getting better (or at least, coming out of it a bit) is not what I want to talk about here - I'll save that for another day. In many ways, I'm a different person now than a couple years ago before I started getting treatment. I've always been emotional, to an extent. Probably moreso than most men, but not overly so. More along the lines of enjoying certain chick flicks, or getting choked up at movies, or enjoying poignant moments. But I've never been very demonstrative with them, certainly not with tears.

I'm not sure of the correlation, if there is one, between all the things that are happening in my life and the ease with which they come and the frequency of my tears. I wonder if emerging from depression has allowed me to express my emotions as is really my character? Maybe this is the way I really am and during my depression (-decades!-) everything just stayed subdued. On the other hand, sometimes I wonder if perhaps my meds are responsible, maybe I'm overly emotional because of them. Don't know, but it's possible.

I'm not going to discount another significant possibility - B. She's certainly shook up the rest of my world, my head, my self. Many times I've wondered if maybe my feelings for her are just so strong, so overpowering that the way I react now is the natural result of my relationship with her. I really believe that the depth and extent of my feelings for her far outdistance any past relationship. When she says something that touches me, deeply touches me, I can't hide my emotions. When I'm hurt by her (not -by- her, but because of something about her), tears come. I don't feel like I'm being a "sissy" - I don't believe men should be ashamed of displaying their emotions. I do wonder, though, if I'm being overly emotional. Hence, my wonder about having my meds checked.

When I think about B, especially now after basically "losing" her, and I think about how I feel about her or what she means to me or what she's brought to my life, or how things could have been, I can feel the happy tears. They don't come out necessarily, although they have. It's more of a welling up inside, a balloon of happiness and warmth that fills my chest, then my body and then my soul with happiness and warmth and comfort ... and her.

When I think about B and what we've lost, about the things we can't have now, the things we won't have, it's different. Many times the tears do come, or at least enough to wet my eyes. There's such a feeling of loss, of despair, or cosmic unfairness, that I can't help it. I love her and I want her and I think she feels the same, so why can't it be that way!! I don't understand, not at all. Every bit of me wants to rail against the wrongness of things being this way, to protest the fucking galactic unfairness of it all, and the emotions just come out. I can't help it.

And then there's the times when we're talking or IM'ing and she'll say something and it'll just all come crashing down on me. For example, last week she wrote me an email, the first in a long, long time (happiness enough!). She wrote that she'd thought about me the night before and realized that there were things she hadn't tokd me in a long time and she wanted to. The email was nothing but upbeat and friendly and obviously written to someone special to her (uh, that'd be me).

I read it. Several times. Eventually probably dozens of times. I've read it today another 4 or 5 times. Anyone who received a letter like this would be touched, as I was. But then I started reading between the lines, picking out lines and wondering what they mean, what she really meant by them. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment, perhaps self-flaggellation is what I'm truly best at.

She wrote: "You are someone I could fall in love with, easily." Wouldn't any reasonably sane person take that as a compliment, as something special? I did take it that way. I also read into it as though she were saying "You are someone I could fall in love with, easily, if I were looking for love. Since I'm not, I'm not in love with your or falling in love with you." And that said to me that she didn't, hadn't, doesn't love me, when I thought she did, does. And that made me want to cry. I felt like I'd be dismissed almost, like everything (I thought) I'd been to her was swept aside.

She also wrote "...although I’m not able to give you what you want out of this relationship...". Wouldn't most people take this as a simple statement of what is (or maybe better, what isn't)?. I took it as though she were saying to me, once and for all, finally, that "there's no way we're going to be together, no way we're going to be any more to each other than we are now". That she's not going to leave him, now or ever. That she doesn't, isn't going to, and can't love me like I love her. That we're not going to meet, not for lunch, not just to finally meet, certainly not to be lovers, not to be partners. Then I wonder, does she mean it that way? Maybe she's saying it for herself, almost like "I'm sorry, I want to, but I just can't give you what we both want out of this". No, I conclude. She must be telling me, with finality, that what is, is and what isn't won't be.

The last one: "Even if we, for whatever reasons, are not in each other’s live any longer, I will always carry you with me." Fuck!! Is there much room for misinterpretation there? Is she not telling me that we won't be in each others' lives? I don't it doesn't say that, directly. I know it says "if", but still.

Put these all together and you have disaster. I managed to turn what was meant as a warm, sincere, intimate letter, what should have been perceived as a communication from someone who truly cares about me into something negative.

Even worse, she called and heard in my voice what I was feeling. No only did that hurt her because I was obviously not responding in a positive way to what she wrote, but it made her feel almost betrayed in a way, because she opened up to me and I turned it into something less.

Fuck. What the hell is wrong with me?