1.  When he washed dishes, I had to go back through and rewash some of them that were still dirty.  Yuck.

2.  His juvenile obsession with comics and superheros got to be a bit much.

3.  Trekkie.  Eek.

4.  He couldn’t keep up with me.  Know what I mean?  Nudge nudge.  Wink wink.

5.  Despite my willingness to give it a shot, the whole “interfaith” relationship thing was going to be a lot of work.  It’s a relief.

6.  He had a bunch of medical problems.  And he was kind of a pussy about it.  I’m really glad that’s not something I’m going to have to put up with. 

7. Despite how he seemed in the beginning, it turned out that he was actually quite negative and perfectly capable of playing the victim.  Not. Attractive.

8.  He did not have the money management skills I’ve really wanted in a potential mate.  He would spend so much of his money on toys and models for his games.

9.  He was a blonde.  I’ve never been super into blondes.  Attractiveness-wise?  I think I can do better.

10.  He was a… small …man.

Dammit Wade.  Now I miss you.  Why’d you have to write to me?!

Suddenly I’m plunged into memories I’d rather forget. Mostly because they’re happy, but gone forever.

Damn you. Damn you for loving me but not having the balls to do anything about it.  Damn you for taking advantage of me and for using me.  Damn you for being exactly what I wanted, and for always withholding, for always being just out of reach.  And fuck you for your complete lack of response when I said I loved you. Not that I expected anything more.

Thank you for leaving.  I doubt I’d ever have had the strength to get over you if you hadn’t left.  While you deftly delivered the single-most hurtful emotional wound I’ve ever received, you also helped me break a relational pattern that was getting me nowhere.

Thank you for your friendship.  Some part of me will always love you because you’re great.  Fortunately, most of me has wised up and has happily moved on.

And thank you for helping me see that to be perfectly honest… relationships with Christian guys have never been anything but total shit.  Maybe trying a relationship with an unchurched guy will actually be better.

He’s already ten times kinder than you ever were.  And he sees me.  He sees and responds to all of me.  I’ll never understand your way of seeing and responding to only about 45% of me.  I guess that’s your illness.

Thanks again for going away.  Your seductive partnership was poison. But, I wish you nothing but joy and healing and love.  I wish you would one day be able to really feel and receive those things… from someone (else).

No Longer Devasted,

Carey Megan

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

Being caught in the bars of my crib because I was trying to escape.  I remember it because it was terrifying, and it seemed like it took my parents an eternity to come get me.  I remember fearing I’d be stuck in the same spot, crying forever.

I was always trying to escape from “bedtime.” My mom said that several times I nearly burned the house down because I would turn the spaceheater in my room all the way up, so I could play by the light of the heat coils.

Proof I’ve been an insomniac since I was wee.

I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.

I’m making mistakes and failing.

I’m done letting people tell me who and how I should be. That’s not real accountability.

I worry that I’ll never be funny again, that this Epic Weariness will be all I have to offer the world.

I’ve been awake an unhealthy number of hours out of the last 72.

At this stage, I’m still a little too emotionally healthy to be able to give myself over to the kinds of spectacular self destruction that seem really satisfying/devastating.

I guess that’s a good thing.

My knee hurts.

I write about it because for the most part, it’s all I know right now.

In the last four years, I’ve lost four of my closest “best” friends because they chose to reject me.  Mostly this speaks to my poor choices in choosing my closest friends.  But the “why” doesn’t really matter.  The hurt is from the loss and grief, not the sting of rejection.

However, those rejections play a part in a larger, disturbing trend that I recognized last night as I was falling asleep.  I already knew that these few years had been marked by disproportionate loss, crisis, and grief… but it just hit me last night that these years have also been marked by a remarkable amount of failure.  My failure.

In the three and a half years since I first started working at the men’s homeless shelter… there is only one thing at which I was successful in the big picture: teaching preschool.  Every other major endeavour, choice, and many of my relationships have been a study in failure.

Maybe this is normal?  It’s wreaking havoc on my emotional health.  When I was younger, in school and whatnot, I went through my phases of being “Poor Study Habits/Slacker” girl, but that didn’t include failure as a part of the equation.

So I’ve been falling flat on my face.  In addition to a bizarrely bi-annual deluge of major life crises.  I haven’t gone six months without some legitimate trauma or loss in the past four years, ranging from… breast cancer scare (complete with surgery), my grandfather dying, best friend meltdown & rejection (times three), being laid off, nearly losing my home, major betrayal/emotional abuse at a workplace, the man I loved/my best friend moving halfway across the country and rejecting me, and then we have the slightly smaller things that exacerbated the circumstances I already listed: best “friend” refusing to be there/picking fights at my lowest moments of greatest need, dear friends moving away or disappearing into new relationships/marriages, changes in church leadership/structure causing all kinds of interpersonal drama, unrelenting money trouble, roommates moving out, discovering my own limitations, failing seminary classes, MAJOR ministry (crash and) burnout. 

I could keep going, but I think I’ve listed enough to be cathartic.  And that’s the point of writing all this… catharsis. 

I’ve needed to chronicle this list for my own sanity, to remind myself that I’m not crazy. I’m not making up these feelings to be a drama queen, but that all this emotion is the reasonable result of life circumstances.

That said, I don’t want to be defeated by these things.  I don’t want the failure to be the end of the story.  So I started a new medication yesterday, and I hope it helps me to imagine possibilities again… potential happy futures… For most of my life optimism has been a core part of my identity, and it’s scary and disorienting to feel so hopeless.  

So I hope for hope.

I hate having to deal with conflict in social group settings. Ugh.