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"you never needed to understand why i love you. you just needed to accept it... which i don't think you ever really did."

no, it's true. i didn't accept it, because i didn't believe it for the most part...but i know those reasons why. and i think that i *do* need to understand it. when i loved myself, i understood it more, but when that began to falter, so did my acceptance and belief...and it faltered due to my lack of conviction...vicious cycle.

i know i'm a good person. i don't like feeling like i'm a bad one. i wouldn't want the person i loved to feel like a bad person. i think that's what i ask for in return...

i couldn't feel like a bad person anymore. i couldn't BE a bad person.

fred always harps on about my parents treating me indifferently, and how that's fucked me up into this strange adult i am now. i get angry at him for doing so, as i want to take responsibility for my own failings - i'm 25 years old; i don't live with my parents, i barely talk to them enough, and i can't bear to admit that their spectre might still haunt me as an adult. ADULT.

but i'm still "their child." (something i tried to explain to my father, but he couldn't differentiate being *A* child from being *someone's* child - the word "child" just overruled the definitions for him. or perhaps a better way of putting it, as i might have done, was "i may not be your child, but you'll always be my father" - such a movie-of-the-week-on-adoption line, but the emphasis is on the relationship, not age.

i found an old psychological assessment that i forced dr. creepy to do, back when i was 15. i marvelled at the fact that this was TEN YEARS AGO...and surprisingly enough, he was saying the same things about my parents that fred says! AND i was living with them at the time and obviously enveloped by their presence/absence, and influence. he said that i had a central feeling of not being treated with empathic regard, or a feeling of not being wanted. that i fear rejection and ward it off with solicitousness and manipulative behaviour.

i think, for such damage, i function quite well in a relationship. a love relationship, a friendship - because i know i'm a good person. when i hear about how others behave towards their partners, or the emotional explosions they experience, or the violence they commit, i can't help but think of how normal, and well-adjusted i can actually be.

i guess that's what surprised me the most about the dissolution of my relationship - i have always thought "i'd make a good girlfriend/boyfriend" and i think i really did. i didn't make a good husband...i don't think i'd make a good wife...i probably don't make the best partner. there are inherent differences in all these traits; i can't think that i'd be able to satisfy someone within these structures.

i have hexed myself into being alone.

(i know, such a typical maneuver for the broken-hearted)

i'm not sure who would want what i have to offer, but i'm even less sure of what i want from someone else.

i think i'd want them to make me understand why.

not just tell me, or show me. but feed me. teach me.

i can't be taught right now.