I'll Paint You a Picture, Darling, as Well as I Can

I had this moment recently. My therapist loves these. She loves watching my brain move around a problem as I solve it myself. Or, maybe not solve it, but understand it. And maybe it's not a problem, maybe it's a whole person I've been trying to figure out for four months. And it kind of all settled over me, exhausted, after working shoulder to shoulder with him yet again and feeling like I was standing in sunlight the entire time.

I guess you could say baking is my OT and helps me coagulate thoughts into whole sentences.

I'm reluctant to share this with him. I don't know if I'm right, though I think I am, and I don't know if it will be what he needs at this moment. Maybe all he needs is what I'm giving him while he comes into his own realizations. And I can do that too.

He's behaved differently since the whole calling out business. I think that must be where it started. I think he saw then what I am. Sentimental and stupid and how beautiful and fragile that is. And he knows it's hard to crush it, but if he does, it won't come back. And that I'll treat him like all the others who fucked it up. And he'll probably feel like they all feel, some twenty-five years later.

I think he saw that when I let him have it and continued to let him have it for a month. And the most hurt I've ever seen him feel wasn't when I was tearing into him with all the truth and fury in the world, but when I told him we can't be friends and to stay away from me. That's when he cried. It took me less than two days to yell at him for not being conscious of his hernia when doing some heavy work. Yelled. Because I cared. I rarely really yell, but I did without even thinking. Love yelling. I didn't know it then.

And since I stopped punishing him, he's changed again. He needed punishing. To show him how serious I am. All of my softness and sweetness disappeared. And then he asked me to  "let me show you" that he was going to do better. And he's tried every day since. And in the past month or so, I see it. He is showing me. And I see all he's doing. It gets right to me for him to make time he doesn't have and give it to me or do something I like that throws off his whole schedule or hugs me extra-long and hard in public with a crowd (and his business partner and my kid) watching.

And with the whole history with his mom, he does respond well to hard, tough love. He loves her and says she was a good mom, but she was way too hard on him from way too early. And that may be what made him the man he is, so I'm so thankful for every second of it. I just wish it hadn't hurt him so much.

They kicked him out. Kicked him out when his intelligence and mental flexibility made him bored and he got himself into real trouble for the first time. And he tells me this not during organic conversation, but during an actual interview. Of all the stories he tells, none of them are ever self-pity stories. I have to ask him to get the bad stuff. I love that about him.

So ever since then, he's lived his life afraid to get kicked out. And so he self-sabotages because he's looking for someone who will still love him when he fucks up, like we all fuck up sometimes. More on that later.

He's self-employed and has no insurance to deal with any of this professionally. I don't know if he knows about what is pretty suddenly clear to me. But he wants the help. He wants to get better. He wants to be more self-aware and to do something good with that self-awareness. That's why he's trying to get the military to help him.

Because of the nature of his discharge, he has to go before the full board for approval. Can you imagine having to go to a board of people and ask for help? As a man. Likely a board of mostly or all men. That's why I told him I'll go with him. No one needs to do that alone and everyone needs a fierce love to back them up. And what if they tell him no? Because they might. All this work to ask for help and he may not get it and he's sure that I'll just disappear. And it's hard enough to ask for help at all, let alone under the circumstance of having to admit to all of these people who told you that you were nothing that you aren't everything. To admit to a huge group which called you "a disappointment" and "a discredit" that you have flaws. And then to ask that same group to help you.

He's really making himself so vulnerable in so many ways. Love and rejection and all that. And that's why I told him I'm proud of him for doing this. Because I really am so proud of him. He's being really brave. And I don't know that there have been many people in his life to tell him they're proud of him. And I am proud. He's exactly what it means to be a man. A man is brave and vulnerable. Because it takes both halves to be a man. Or at least to be the kind of man I want in my life.

And he dates the way he does because when he burns one down and she abandons him, there's another one there to support him. It's the only way he knows how to get the support and validation he needs. And Stephen started my mind going this way on Tuesday when he told me that he had his meds changed, but didn't tell me. Because he's afraid that I'll tell him he's not good enough at any point in this journey like everyone he's ever loved always has if things don't go perfectly. That I will abandon him. He won't let me all the way in because that thought is too much for him. I see it so clearly now.

He has this image of himself, what he is, what he can be, that I think is unfair to him. When I met him, he was acting like a  five, dating a handful of threes, hoping they'd add up to a nine. If he'd been who he is, who he really was, he'd have known then he was better. These days, he's a solid 8. Just a tiny bit more movement in the right direction and I think the world will start to see him as he is. He thinks he's a 7, hence the self-image issues.

What's really strange to me is his need to care for others. An innately nurturing man is hard to find. I think it's probably the same thing as how people tell me I always know what to say in a hard situation. I guess I just tell them what I always needed to hear and no one ever told me. Maybe he's loving his kids and his business partner, and his dogs, and even me so well because it's what he always needed and no one really gave him. He's incredible in that way. I can't describe it well even. But I will tell you, that it warms my life just to watch it and feeling it is like nothing I've ever felt before. 

And that's why he's responded so well to how I've treated him since he started trying. I'm all love and support and good shit like that. And he needs it. And after I got over being angry, all of that is back, but it's all folded over and magnified because now it's love and not just really like. I love this man and no matter what happens between us, I will always love him. I will support him and build him up and be present for him. I think that's what he needs from someone more than anything else. I guess he really does know how to pick them, or at least jump into the ocean and see what kind of fish still has its teeth in him when he gets out.

And that's why he's leaned in so hard since then. That kiss that night and offering to help with a problem I have that he can fix and hugging me that way in front of all those people and offering to be my place to land. He just needed someone to be really present and supportive and proud. And I'm a champ at all of that. And this love is different than any real love I've ever known. I don't love him madly. This isn't crazy love. I love him with gentle ferocity. It seeps in around the edges and makes me want to hold him and protect him and nurture all the gentleness in him. He is who he wants to be and I love that man.