weaknesses and messes

Over the course of an overload of conversations, feelings and observations, I've seen that the judgments we make about what's fair and honest become complicated when applied to romantic relationships. "Complicated" is a copout for a concept that's really too complicated for me to explain. I don't mean that the guidelines have changed, only that I seem to be much more forgiving when they're not followed, now that I've broken them too. We hurt people we care about, unintentionally but also when we know what we're doing even if hurting someone else isn't the purpose of our action. At first this seemed to be an excuse for what I've done--saying that it's an inherent weakness, and in some ways it probably still is an excuse. Yet, I also do believe that this is a part of how people are, and this recognition doesn't mean I'm giving in and will stop trying to be stronger than this weakness.

Growing up I was my brother Stephen's confidante. By the time I was in high school, just 14 which seems so young now, he would tell me about his girlfriends, who he pined for, how he saw love. For years since then I would listen and offer my idealistic views of how things should be: that if this girl was the one, she would love him too; that if that girl cared about him, she wouldn't be so self-centered; that if someone was in a relationship you shouldn't interfere; that if feelings were unrequited it's not meant to be; that if you truly care for someone you can be selfless without losing independence because love is good that way. Easy, unqualified comfort. And if you didn't follow these concepts, you must either not really love a person or you were being too selfish for it to work--something was wrong, in any case.

Now, having gone through certain things and seeing people close to me go through the same and more, I'm less able to harshly judge people's vulnerablities and weaknesses. I have the same sense of what's right, but can understand why people go the other way and I no longer think of them as too weak to do the better thing. Even without feeling all of the same exact things or without having been in the same exact situations, I can understand why a person would stay with someone who's unsure about their love and commitment, why a person wants to let go of something and still half-hang-on, why a person stays because of uncertainty or fear, why we hurt people when we want to be selfless. Feelings like these make you strong and weak in different areas.

I've spent a long time coming to terms with the guilt I felt over being weak about these different things. Part of why it's taken so long is because despite everything, I still have those clean, ideal visions of how things should be; I never expected it to be so messy and fragile. Over time I've become more forgiving to myself and to others. People hurt each other, sometimes because they don't know any better, other times because they thought what the other person might lose wouldn't be as great as what one person or both people gain. All of this is more complex than I could ever fully grasp, it's all such a mess--but the fact is even if we don't completely understand or anticipate, it's still our responsibility to deal with it.

What I really want to say and declare for myself is that even though I'm accepting my weakness, I'm no longer willing to just keep being that way. I can see and imagine the ways in which people hurt one another, and it makes me incredibly grateful for how he has treated me and I absolutely know that he deserves better. It has never been about putting myself down, because though I've learned much about my flaws, what I take away most is knowing what I can give and knowing what I don't know yet. I think I'm more ready now to try and overcome this weakness that seems to plague all of us when we feel. I don't know yet how capable I'll be, but I really want to give it an honest effort. I get scared and guilt returns when I remember that I'm not any better than anyone else, and that selfish desires are not so easily suppressed. But I want to stop dwelling in the middle because of my own needs, because of a need to control things, a need to sustain a closeness, a need to remedy the problem I started. I have to let go of these things, because deep down I still believe in all those things I told Stephen when I was a teenager. It's like I've told people in conversations about these things...when you care about someone there comes a point where you care about them outside of yourself, outside of how they are connected to you.

I still believe that love, in all its forms, can be selfless, and I'm going to try and stop looking to the world to prove it to me, to instead take it into my own hands. I think it'll be okay, and probably less melodramatic than this is making it seem.