What is it that I'm looking for?

[billypilgrim]

I'm becoming more and more self aware lately.  And with that I've been asking myself much different questions than those I was asking when my ex first left.  And today I found myself doing just that.  At work today, I was listening to music and a band that I hadn't heard in a while came through on shuffle.  It was a band that I actually introduced my ex to and  it was also one of the few that took with her.  She didn't particularly care for my alternative taste in music so I was always surprised when something of mine actually stuck.  But that's beside the point.

I went on listening with no issues until I got to chorus.  And there it was, verbatim, a line that she had written me in her last e-mail to me in which she tried to explain herself for leaving our marriage.  I didn't put it together when I read her e-mail the first time or even the hundred or so times since.  But the second I heard the chorus of the song, I knew immediately where I had heard it before.  And the fact that she used it just stays within the general theme of her e-mail, a copy/paste job of lyrics, quotes, and passages from relationship books.  There's hardly any original content in her e-mail.  Nothing she said to me is actually real.  She even openly admits to lifting phrases and block quotes from books by saying "This is how I feel about X" and then she Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V's the next 10 sentences.  I was a T/A in college and reading her e-mail took me back to those kids that would plagiarize their entire papers.  I had to restrain my urge to get out my red pen and mark "Not your words, cite your sources. F." in the margins.  But I kept reading.

For context, here is the passage from her e-mail in which I'm referring.  The bolded is the lyric from Broods - "Mother & Father."  Here goes:

I don't want to be helpless.  I don't want to be a victim who wasn't happy with her life but never asked the hard questions or made the tough calls.  I don't want to wake up lonely.  I don't want to be just fine.  I don't want to end up like my parents, spending years together and creating a family when the foundation was never there.  The questions I kept asking myself over the past few months were the same ones you've been asking - could I ever get over the past?  Could I ever truly forgive you and myself, and go out in fatith that something more could be on the other side of this for us.  And in the end I felt more certain we would eventually get back to this place, get back to our differences that originally brought us together, being so pronounced that we couldn't move through life entwined as one.  I'm sorry for not finding the clarity in myself earlier on and making you feel like I was stringing you along.  I was so scared and confused and so terrified of making the wrong decision that I overanalyzed everything.  But what I kept coming back to was how fundamentally differnt I view things are with us: how we spend our time together as a couple (extroverted vs. introverted), and how we approach life (go with the flow, living in the gray, finding a happy medium, and compromising).  

The last bit killed me.  I couldn't her implying that I am not compromising, that I am black and white, or that I can't go with the flow.  But I know those are projections.  That is me she is describing, not herself.  The only bit she got right about me was my introverted nature.  She went on to conclude with yet another song lyric, only this one from one of her music preferences, "Wherever I go, whatever I do, I'll still wonder where I am in relationship to you." (John Mayer - In Your Atmosphere).  This also was pretty rough for me to read.  She's telling me she doesn't want to be with me anymore but at the same time she's telling me that she'll always think about me?  Bleh.  

But I'm tangent-ing a bit.  I don't need to defend myself here or prove to anyone that I am not those things she labeled me as.  I know that I'm not and that's enough.  Back to what I'm really curious about.  I've gone back to her e-mail numerous times.  So much so that I can recite the first few paragraphs by memory.  The question that I find myself asking is why am I going back to something that I've exhausted?  I know I was obviously triggered by the song but what made me go back and re-read the 3 page case against me?  What made me then go through and look up the lyrics to the song and analyze those lyrics instead of focusing on my job?  What is making me go back to that place that caused me so much hurt and pain?  What am I looking for?  What more could I possibly find at this point?  I know it's likely related to bargaining.  So if that's the case, what's making me bargain?  I feel like a kid playing the "why?" game.  How far down can we go here?  Is it turtles all the way down?  

[Blimblam]

My ex would often find quotes that she felt captured how she felt.  After the break up i pissed me off she did that. 

Earlier in the rs though she talked about how sometimes she just doesn't know how to express how she feels or doesn't even know how she feels. It is inline with the pwBPDs unstable sense of self often looking outside of themself to tell them who they are.  My ex would often tell me she didn't know why she did things.  On the same note it is socially acceptable now with people with all their quotes and memes on social media and crap.  But yeah it does feel cheap, like I want the real truth but sometimes the real truth is something we ourselves don't even know much less a pwBPD. 

[christin5433]

I hope this doesn't sound weird ... .But it's been kinda comforting to me to think the reason I'm letting her go is because I love her. It makes me look at myself in a kind way and it gives me the thought I loved her too. It's just time to let her go