DAY 21: OH, THOSE FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I am skipping the letter for Day 20. It is for the one that broke your heart the most. I have already written about that. It is a tough call. It could be my first love. That was quite painful and I wrote a blog about that. You can read about that here if you want to know me better. Or it could be Mr. Electric. That, also, was extremely painful. In some ways, it was worse than my first love because it had no closure. I wrote a blog about that one, too, and you can read about it here. I finally found my own closure and wrote it in my Letters to the Ex-Boyfriends/Husbands. You can read about that here. Whew. You may not care about any of that. If so, just skip on ahead to today's letter. It is a letter to someone you judged on their first impression. Personally, I think this is a bit silly. We tend to judge, to a degree, everyone on their first impression. As time goes by, that impression solidifies or changes. Ah well. I know that Flash has already gotten a letter in this exercise, but he is a classic example of how judging on the first impression can go so terribly wrong. So, here goes...



Dear Flash,

Whenever I think that I would like to be in a relationship, I think about you, and I immediately change my mind. We tend to draw to us people who are in the same emotional place that we live. Right now, I am still sick. I live with chronic pain. I try to stay positive and live in that place, but I know that I don't stick there. I know that the reason you seemed so attractive to me when we met was because you understood me so well. Our situations appeared to be so similar. You had been divorced longer than I had, the circumstances surrounding your divorce were different, but you had chronic back pain, so you understood chronic pain. We shared divorce and chronic pain. You also had just moved in with your mother to try and help her get through her divorce. Your dad left her for a much younger woman and she was shattered. You seemed to be the ideal son and all-around good guy.

One of your best qualities was your willingness to nurture others. You were excellent as a caregiver. As someone who had been doing all of the giving, and not getting anything back, it was wonderful to be on the receiving end of some TLC. It blinded me to some your more obvious faults. For instance, you had no trouble traveling me with one week of every month back to GA so that I could do my job. You had no money to contribute to this endeavor, and you got cranky if we didn't eat out enough, as opposed to buying food, and eating in the hotel room. The crankiness got worse, the longer we were together. After a while, I began to question why you didn't get your own job. I was much sicker than you and I was still working when my doctor had told me that I shouldn't. What was your excuse?

I finally quit that job because it was too much for me. One week in Georgia led to two weeks of severe migraines back in Florida. Then it was one week of less severe migraines and then back to work. Clearly working wasn't working for me. It was also around this time that your real self started bleeding through your disguise. The care giving was over. Cranky ruled the day. Then there was the stealing of my medicine. That went over real well. Then there was the missing cough medicine at my parents' house that you never would cop to taking. Then there was the cheating and lying about it. Then there was the verbal battering to get me to give you another chance with the kicker being that if I didn't you will never become a good person. That is below the belt.

What is amazing is that I bought that for a while. I allowed you to sell me on the fact that I was responsible for making you a better person. I remember sitting you down and making you confess to all of it. Every rotten thing you'd done. There was a lot of rotten to confess to and it made me ill when I got the list. My response to all of this was that once you start out making bad choices, they get easier to make. I think of it as a moral line. Once you cross it the first time, the second time is easier, the third time is easier yet, and the fourth time you don't even think about it. And that was where you were living. I told you that your moral compass was gone. You had chucked it out the window a long time ago, and you were going to have to redraw your line. I could not do this work for you. You had to look at your own list and decide if these things were okay or not. If they were not, then that was stuff that was now on the other side of the line.

My problem was that you were still lying to me about cheating on me. I just can't abide a liar. I knew in my heart that you would have left me for her had she not lost her job at that last possible moment. You still weren't working and were looking for someone closer to your kids, and who could support you in a lifestyle you would like to become accustomed. It was just bad luck that her company had to let some people go and she was one of them. Good luck for her, bad luck for you. Really bad luck for me. The fact that you never would admit to any of this only dug you in deeper as a liar in my book. Eventually I realized that I had, once again, come full circle. I was only with you because you had emotionally blackmailed me into being with you. I no longer respected you and really didn't like you very much. There was no love in my heart for you. How can you love someone who steals from you, lies to you, cheats on you, and then pins you into a corner when you make it clear you want out? You can't.

So, the next time I left I had some help. You made that necessary. We talked to the pastor at our church and he was the intermediary. I made it so that you had someone to talk to other than me. And he taught me how to break up with someone like you in the future. It's harsh. When someone just won't accept "no" or "I don't love you" or "it's over," you have to cut off all contact with them. Don't listen to their voicemail. Don't read their email. Don't call them back. Don't write them. In a few months, you might be able to do those things if they have let go. Give them their closure. I suppose that is the one thing I can thank you for: you taught me how to break up with manipulative men. So, thank you. That doesn't mean I want to hear from you, because I don't. Just sayin'.

So glad you're gone,
Robin


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