giving up the ghost

As Big and I have been talking about the future, our past keeps becoming present. He wants to talk about the past, he wants to resolve any hurt or lingering feelings, he wants to discuss it, accept it and leave it behind. Me, well, what I want to do is avoid talking about the past save for a few snarky remarks here and there to let him know I haven't quite forgotten. Forgiven? Probably. So do we have to resolve our past to get to our future?

It seems so. What worked for us in the past will not work for us in the future. We cannot let big issues linger underneath the surface. We have to deal with them head on and we have to communicate. I am still terrified of communication. I am still terrified of opening up. For example, today he said something a bit surprising, he said that when we dated in the past, he didn't feel like we were ever close, like he really didn't know me. And what's worse? He still doesn't feel like he knows me, he knows me better, but he wants to know more of me and the only way to get to know someone is through time.

Although I have made a lot of strides in my ability to open up, I still don't enjoy it. I don't want anyone to see what I have so desperately tried to ignore and overcome...that I do lack confidence, that I am extremely defensive and sensitive about certain things, that I care what strangers think of me, that I feel embarrassed, for not having more boyfriends, that I am intimidated by a lot of people, that I lack the ambition and motivation to really be somebody important and successful. The fact is that I am terribly ordinary, I am not special, I am not talented, I am not intelligent or innovative, I am not gorgeous, I am not charismatic, I am just entirely average and ordinary. I am not the person I wanted to be. But I am lucky, and what I have done here in Chi is accept me for me, and learn to be happy with average.

I guess my point is that I need to learn to open up and talk about things without becoming defensive. Big is not trying to hurt me or make me feel bad when he talks about the past. If anything, all he keeps doing is apologizing over and over again for how much he hurt me. He wants to make sure I am able to get past what happened. But I guess that me getting past the past was to pretend it never happened; the pain, the hurt, the blame, the loss of my friends, the cutting, the depression, the therapy, the tears, the desperation, the anxiety, the fear. I moved past it because I let it go and dissapear into a foggy barely there recollection. It became a ghost.

The problem is that while our past is in the past, I can't help but make the occasional snide and cutting remark that I know will hurt him. In some ways I still think he should pay and suffer for the past just like I did. But deep down I know he suffered too. And deep down I know what happened wasn't entirely his fault, he is not to blame. So as we agreed, the past is the past, I agreed to let go of cunning comments and he said how sorry he was. We faced our ghost.