Oh.

"It's just that, if we were still together in six months and my ex-girlfriend asked me to get back together with her, I couldn't guarantee that I'd say no...."

We had been seeing each other before, a while ago. Not for long, a couple of months, maybe. We started seeing each other again last week and I felt a glimmer of hope. I think that I'd moved on in various ways since we were last together, that the issues that I had with my past were securely behind me. They were no longer lurking, no longer scuttling around on the outskirts of my consciousness ready to leak their poison into my brain.

I broke up with him last time because I didn't feel that either of us were truly over our last break ups, both of which were painful. I felt that we were playing a game, going through the motions but our hearts weren't in it. My heart was elsewhere, trying to fix itself. I could see someone else's face when I woke in the morning, and felt myself constantly trying to push down the feelings of hurt and loss that I had been carrying around with me for six months or so. I couldn't carry on doing it, it was too exhausting. I couldn't pretend to be wholeheartedly with someone when I still had issues with, if not feelings for, someone else.

I didn't tell him any of this at the time. I was cruel and just drifted away, distancing myself from him until he asked me directly, at which point I told him and then cut myself off completely.

The thing is that I couldn't understand why he was with me. I don't mean that in a self-depreceating sort of a way, but more that I felt like we didn't know each other. That's the thing with dating, I think. Meeting up with someone and immediately being in romantic mode, where you're meeting because you might end up in love. I find it strange and unnerving. I would so much prefer I got to know someone, they got to know me, before any romance occured. By romance I mean a relationship, not sex. That I can cope with. Slut that I am.

We were together, but not because we'd met and over a period of time realised that we liked each other, but because the first date was alright, as was the second, and on the third I put out and it went from there. I know that sounds crazy, but once you're sleeping with someone you're not just two people seeing each other, you have to wake up together, talk in the cold light of day about what's the best route to work and would you like a cup of tea and can I borrow a towel. It's different. Then every time you see each other chances are someone's staying over, and then, even if you're resisting the terminology, you're acting like boyfriend and girlfriend/boyfriend and boyfriend/girlfriend and girlfriend. To say you're still just casual doesn't really mean anything, it's just semantics.

This time I felt we knew each other. We had good fun times, went out, talked, laughed. I felt we were closer to each other. We liked each other already because we knew each other. He liked me. So much, he said, that he had to honest and say that he still had those demons scuttling.

He couldn't sweep me off my feet like he wanted because he wasn't fully over his last break up.

This is something I understand. I know what he means. I more than know what he means, because I understand it in an intellectual sense but I also have emotional experience of it. By telling me this he was doing what is right for him and also what is right for me.

The irritating thing is that it just sort of came up in conversation. He didn't sit me down to tell me, nor did I ask him directly about it. We were having a conversation and it came out. I think that perhaps it was the first time he had articulated it even to himself, let alone out loud. If we hadn't talked about it we would have had a lovely evening, fallen asleep together and woken together and all would've been fine.

Except, of course, that it wouldn't have been. I'm glad we had the conversation. I'm glad he talked to me about how he feels. Last night, though, I didn't really see it like that. I was consumed with my firm belief that it means, like everything else, that I am simply not special enough. I know that's the low self-esteem kicking in, and that this isn't about me. Last night I was rigid with rejection and pain, struck by the confirmation of everything I essentially believe about myself. I felt torn between understanding for him and hurting for myself.

Because I did understand, really. I do. I couldn't properly explain it, but I wanted to tell him that I think he's a wonderful person and that I hope he sorts out what he needs to sort out. It's funny because people have said that to me before in similar situations (but in which I am the one with 'issues') (I'm always the one with the fucking 'issues') and I never believed them. I always felt intimidated and confused by their generosity of spirit, but now I understand it.

This has become a very long post. I am hurting a lot. I feel rejected and sad and like I have lost something.

I felt like I couldn't say it last night, or this morning (um, yes), but I want to tell him that I am feeling all of these things. I want to tell him that I understand, and that I sort of wish we'd never had that stupid conversation. Although I don't really wish that. My impulse is to run away, to never speak to him again, to allow this to become another brick in the wall I want to build around myself. I am trying so hard not to do that.

I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than that it hurts. I'll be alright in a couple of days. As usual.