More. March 14, 2007

I know, I know: Wah, wah, wah. Woe is me. I’m batshit insane and need to get over myself.It may seem unimportant or self-involved or jealous or immature. It may not be something you’d be angry about or something you’d let affect your relationship.

To which I say: congratulations, you are a better person than me.

I don’t like that seeing her name in the acknowledgments section bothered me to the point of tears and rage. If I could pick out my feelings each day like I pick out my clothes, I would definitely leave “insecure” sitting in the back of the closet, never to see the light of day, right next to “jealous” and “vulnerable.”

It is M’s book and since it is his name on the cover and not mine, he had sole discretion as to who got thanked and who did not.

Do I wish he hadn’t thanked her? Of course I wish he hadn’t thanked her. Who would want their boyfriend to thank someone who has viciously affected their relationship? I haven’t gone into all the details as they are entirely too personal, but rest assured that she has, in fact, done things directly to both me and us as a couple. Things that made M take a step back and decide he didn’t need her in his life. There were no ultimatums from me to that end; he came to the conclusion himself.

However, somewhere deep down where unadulterated rage toward her doesn’t exist, I understand why he did include her.

Do I wish he had spoken to me about it beforehand? Absolutely. And I will stand by my argument that, since we are in a relationship and a potentially lifelong one at that, it is something he should have brought up before I stumbled across it on my own. He admitted that he knew it would bother me, so it’s not like my hurt feelings came out of left field.

It’s a respect thing. He knows that this is someone who has affected our relationship and he knows that I dislike her for very valid reasons. While it was absolutely within his rights to include her, out of respect for me he should’ve at least given me a gentle heads up about it. I deserved that much. I would’ve given that much to him.

He’s gone now, for eight days. Jet Blue is about to take him south, toward 85 degree weather. I was dreading it at first but now I’m actually looking forward to having some time to myself. I’m looking forward to stepping back and assessing what we have and coming to the conclusion that it’s all worth fighting for. To say I’ll ever be okay with her is ambitious. If she fell off the face of the earth, I would lobby for a national “Yay! The Whore Fell Off the Face of the Earth! Day.” But I can be okay with my relationship which, in turn, will mean that she ultimately does not matter.

As I was writing this he called, from the boarding gate. To thank me for the ‘congratulations! Your book came out!’ card I secretly stuffed in his carry on and also to tell me that he’s been thinking a lot about what happened and that he apologizes for not bringing it up sooner. For not telling me. I, in turn, apologized again for letting the situation get the best of me and for not handling it with a cool head. I was hurt and I should’ve just voiced that hurt without turning it into a fight.

Apologizing to each other doesn’t undo what we both went through, but it goes a long way toward repairing it.

Oh, and since today is all about being positive and working towards a better version of both myself and my relationship, if you leave a nasty comment devoid of constructive criticism or even if I don’t like your tone, I will delete it. I may have opened myself up to it yesterday, but not today. I never claimed this was a democracy.