someone told me, point-blank, that he wouldn’t date me because i was out of his league. he might have been lying, but i believe him; he had no reason to lie, and there’s no point ruminating over the reasons behind an immutable outcome.
still, it was a bizarre statement.
i was right there before him, asking if he wanted to be with me.
didn’t that mean that i thought he was good enough?
sure, i write about ELO scores and power asymmetry and all that. but in a moment like that, did he think such things mattered to me?
what does any of this matter as long as i love you?
but there he was, letting his demons get in the way, all the while looking at me but beyond me.
ah, so this is what it means when they say a relationship is a commitment. it is a commitment to work through your insecurities together — because you trust the other person to bring you through it.
i feel that rationality in the face of emotion is an illusion. if you can be rational when it comes to someone you’re head over heels for, you’re probably not as much in love as you think.
that’s how i knew they didn’t like me enough.
was it something about me? sometimes, i think they saw something in me that they decided they couldn’t handle. they didn’t trust me to stay. if i didn’t know any better, i would have thought that the problem has always been me — and yet it really isn’t, not at all.
that they chose not to stay breaks my heart, but it wasn’t about me. it wasn’t even ever about us.
it was always about them: what they wanted and felt they couldn’t want and didn’t deserve.
i can’t help but wistfully wonder if — or rather, how much — i would have loved his insecurities, or the insecurities of all the men i’ve loved. but much as i want to, their demons are not for me to address, and not even their eventual partners will be able to do so —
in the end, it’s a battle we have to confront alone.
baby g’s diary 