…maybe you just need to have one last knock-down drag out with him… a final showdown, so to speak… let it all out, pull no punches, and let the chips fall where they may.

And then take your leave of him, and always remember that you’re not willing to go through that much grief for anyone, ever again.

Then focus on yourself for a while, until you’re comfortable enough to add some new things in your life, so that you can feel good about having had the chance to do so.

You don’t like the way he behaves, the way he frames each situation, or how you feel about his preference of actions. You really don’t like him very much. You’re just caught up in missing who you thought he was, which was only possible because he wanted you to think whatever would help him get what he wanted (most people, not just guys, are guilty of this to some degree).

being involuntarily and substantially distracted, disrupted by unresolved conflicts, to which one has already become irrevocably attached, due to prior choices… is kinda not in the same realm as “grow up.”

When you’re already agitated, every little thing bothers you more and more. It’s a vicious cycle, which feeds into itself, and keeps getting more potent and disruptive, unless you can stop the source of what fuels it. If the source is something you can’t change, there’s really not much you can do about whatever is bothering you. Either it will keep affecting your life in ways you don’t want, or it will eventually decrease to manageable levels, and you will then be able to control more of what happens in your life. But there’s no telling how long it could take to reduce on its own, and i’ve never encountered anyone who had a good answer for “how do i stop caring about stuff that bothers me too much?”

Here’s the problem: once you care, you care. It’s phenomenally difficult to “un-care,” once you’ve already allowed a genuine attachment to develop. So, in the future, be very strict and discerning in how, when, where, and to whom, you allow any attachment to form. Protect your own heart; no one else will do that for you, no matter how much they might swear they will. Instead, they will entice you to form attachments they will later compromise for you, leaving you in the same position you’re in now: wishing you never cared, or could just turn it off.

One does not simply “not feel” pain when something beyond your control inflicts it upon you.

You can choose your actions, but you often do not get to choose whether to feel or not feel, when something happens to you, because of someone else doing something you didn’t want.

I don’t get to choose not to feel disruptively devastated and heartbroken… i only get to choose not to become violent in response. But that trigger inside me, that part of me that does want to just say “fuck it” and go smashing skulls with hammers, still keeps trying to convince the rest of me to let it make the choice this time.

There is no way for me to deactivate that entirely, because what causes it still exists. So this generates a perpetual internal conflict, which is exhausting… emotionally, mentally, physically. There is no way to control that part of the reaction, because something i cannot resolve, continues feeding into it.

I can’t control how i feel about those things… but so far, i haven’t hurt anyone over it. But sometimes i wish i had, and think maybe i should.

At least then i’d be able to say: “i did it because I WANTED TO!” (and because everything leading up to it had already taken away everything that any harsh consequences would have cost me… so there was nothing left to lose but a life i didn’t want, and the chance to hurt someone who hurt me first; once i die there will be nothing, so i wanted to spend the last moments of my life, making sure that the person who ruined the rest of it for me, against my will, did not continue to benefit from doing so).

The only way to make it stop affecting you, is to figure out how to not care.

I know how to avoid beginning to care… but once care has already developed, i have no idea how to resolve it. This is yet another example of why prevention is always preferable: sometimes the only way to solve a problem, is to not allow it to ever occur. If it does, you’re stuck with it… like being a puppet on strings attached to hooks in your heart, held by someone you hate for exploiting you, while they laugh at the ridiculous writhing dances they make you do, while you can’t seem to unhook that shit from inside you.

The metaphor fails when people say “just cut it out!” There is no deliberate and final action that can result in the end of such feelings. There is only a perpetual requirement to manage them, to continue altering your own reactions to your own feelings, and to somehow manage to survive anyway, even when you feel like you have nothing left to give, and cannot meet the requirements, expectations, deadlines, placed upon you BY OTHERS, which you would surely postpone as long as you needed, if it was really your choice.

Most people don’t choose to be puppets; we had that choice taken away by those who were in the position to do so, in order to facilitate their own gains.