I am a vampire

I read this blog today and it brought tears to my eyes. See, I recognized myself in this woman, but unlike her, whenever someone tried to tell me about it, I tuned them out. Because of it, I turned my prince into a frog, and he looks at me like I’m a vampire.

I grew up learning the lesson of “everyone you love will leave you, so leave them first”. Oh and I learned that lesson well. We can delve into my psyche and say that I had abandonment issues because my parents got divorced or my mom kicked me out or whatever, but as an adult I have to say that what began as a defense mechanism while I was young has turned into I’m just a fucking bitch now that I’m older.

I had my prince. He was the most amazing man I’ve ever met, and regardless of what has happened between us, he is still the most amazing man I’ve met. All he wanted to do was love me, and that scared the hell out of me. So I pushed him away. Literally. I didn’t want anything from him. I would tell him regularly that I chose to be with him, and basically that he wasn’t shit and he should be honored that I was with him. Oh I was a bitch. I’ll even go so far as to say I was THE “C” WORD to this man. Want to talk about damage? I damaged this man. I would complain about someone I know who would emasculate her man, but I was doing the same thing to my man. Can I blame him for having had enough and turning the tides on me?

The awakening that I had wasn’t like a slap in the head, it was more of a gradual realization of the way that I treat men. Funny, I’ve never had a problem attracting a man. But when we’re done, I’ve usually ended up hurting them so badly that they hate me. I ran into one of my exes a couple weeks ago at the bar. We were sitting there talking and he was telling me all about his girlfriend and what’s going on in his life, and during a pause in the conversation, I looked at him and said “I’m sorry for what I put you through”. A little while later he came up to me and said “for what it’s worth, thank you for apologizing”. I think that was when this self-realization of what a man-hater I had become really started.

Look, life doesn’t have to be this way. I am still in love with my ex, unconditionally. We’ve hurt each other so badly and so much damage has been done to us, by us, that I have no idea if we can even get past it. To be honest, part of me wants to and the other part of me is too afraid to. Because if I have to stop being a man-hater, and I have to start embracing my femininity, then that means that I’m giving up some control and leaving things to the Universe. And that scares the hell out of me. But I can’t go on punishing men because my parents got divorced. I can’t go pushing them away trying to make them leave me just so I can say AHA. I don’t always have to be right and I don’t always have to have the last word (and oh gawd is that a HUGE thing for me).

And so, for me, the journey begins today.