An unwanted gift

When I was a teenager, I did a stupid, albeit romantic, thing. I quit university for a woman. How could I do that? Well, she had quit her course, for whatever reason, and I quit to be with her.

But I was stunned when soon after, she signed up for a different course. Still, I tried to understand why she had betrayed me. It seems weird now, but I lived a long way from her, and we didn't see each other for the summer after I quit. I went to Reading to see her in the first week of the new university year though.

I remember meeting her vividly, although I can't quite picture where it was. She wouldn't see me during the day and I didn't understand why. But we met up in a quad, or a car park, somewhere concreted and open.

I had bought her a necklace and I gave it to her when she walked up. She straight away handed it back and dumped me without any further ado. She wouldn't even go for a drink. She had arranged to do something with her new friends.

I didn't know what to feel. I didn't understand and I still don't. I don't know how people can be the way they are. What had I done to make her stop loving me? How had I displeased her? Of course, in hindsight, I can see that I was no longer the bright fellow student who she had been going out with. I was a loser dropout. I had nothing to offer her.

I never understand when people change, because I don't. I only shift in my feelings when I'm compelled to. As anyone who converses with me knows, I am mostly reactive. I respond to others, but I don't make things happen. It makes me discontent to be like that, but I don't know how to change it. It's making it hard to move on with my life, because I can see clearly how thngs can be good but I can't control or, it seems, even influence them. Others choose, just as A did back in the day, and they choose to hurt me more often than not. I am left wondering what I did that made them stop wanting me, stop loving me, stop needing me, when it seemed to me that I didn't change. I feel like I have a lot to give, but it's never right, never enough, never any good.

A never explained. She obviously didn't even think it was worth bothering. I accepted it and went to another university. My problem is that I find it hard to recognise that she did something very wrong to me. Because that would be grossly unjust, and I find it difficult to accept that my life should not be just, I had to believe I had deserved it. I couldn't accept that she was just a selfish bitch, who had strung me along when it suited, and then binned me once she had something better. She probably found another boyfriend who was richer/better looking/better suited to her.

I feel like I have a lot to give, but no one wants it. It is killing me, because I am constituted to serve others, and not having someone I can be of service to is profoundly painful to me. If I am not increasing someone's happiness, I feel cast down. It's very hard for me to feel good about myself in that circumstance.

I could list the ways that I have been made to feel worthless recently, but what's the point? I know that none of the people -- all women, of course -- who did it meant me to feel that way. They just didn't think I had any worth.

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:09 pm