3cubed

Thursday, March 13, 2003

 
The contents of my life were mostly garbage

Today I performed the unpleasant task of pouring through the contents of my old apartment with Bobby. When I left, over a year ago, I only took mine & Maggie's clothes & her toys. He moved last weekend, therefore I finally had to go over & get the rest of my things. Needless to say, nothing of monetary value was left. He had several different ever-changing explanations for everything missing, I'm sure the truth is that they were pawned, traded or sold long ago, but the bottom line is, it's all gone.

Don't take that to mean I still didn't have lots of crap to get. Wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible, I didn't look through much when I packed last weekend. I just threw everything into boxes & unloaded it into my parents living room. Yeah, they were real pleased with that decision. My father has told me I had better have the maze of boxes cleared out by this weekend "or else". Not wanting to spend the entire weekend on this project, I took a couple vacation days to get it done. Yesterday, I did none of it, then had to hear about it when my dad got home, so I spent all day today, minus a nap during the thunderstorm, going through boxes. I went through 6 garbage bags of clothes & 8 boxes. Out of all that, I only have one & a half boxes of stuff I want to keep. And I still have a lot more to go through.

I had so many notes from Bobby, like a shoebox full. He used to write them all the time, usually while I was sleeping & then leave them on the bathroom mirror, or in my purse, once I found one inside a sandwich he had made me for my lunch to take to work. The notes provided me with some insight to the dynamics of our relationship. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I stayed as long as I did (6 years) and now that I've had some distance from the situation & after reading some of the notes, a few things became apparent. Almost all the notes followed the same pattern. They started out with an apology, since I've mentioned how numerous they were, that will give you some idea of how frequently he screwed up. This was followed by showering me with compliments, which filled a basic need I have due to my insecurity. Then came how much he loved and needed me. Another need of mine, (classic co-dependancy) to take care of someone. They always closed with more of how sorry he was & promises to change and do better. Another interesting factor of the notes, which was usually mixed in there somewhere, was a plea for me to talk to him more about my feelings. This is something I've only recently realized about myself & I didn't think that I did with Bobby. I've always thought of myself as extremely open & easy to know, but that's really only with factual things, not with my emotions.

I've been trying to figure out when I began behaving that way. Was it the point in our relationship when I realized that I would one day have to leave? Or did it happen before I ever even met him?
Tina 7:21 PM