Feeling melancholy and pensive. Want to reconnect with my first love. But not really.

[pseudonym4now]

I'm feeling melancholy and pensive. Things right now aren't exactly how I want them to be. Sometimes when I feel like this, I think about my first love. I wonder what she's up to, and I get the urge to see what she looks like and find out what's happened in her life. But I don't want to actually talk to her. I'd be a masochist if I put her back in my life.

She was a crazy girl who caused me endless amounts of pain. It was high school and we both gave up our virginity to each other. Our relationship was very weird. We were always on again off again over the course of around 10 years, but we always were very close friends even when we were in a phase where we were "just friends" and not being sexual. But she caused me too much pain and agita, so I had to put an end to our friendship. She was literally making me crazy, and was holding me back from moving forward to better things in my life. So I ended it with her and we haven't spoken for around 5 years.

Since then, lots of great things have happened in my life. I've grown as a person, learned how to have healthy relationships, progressed enormously in my career path by going back to college and doing really well, and other great stuff like that. My current girlfriend is awesome in many ways and we've been together for like a year and a half.

But... I have a bunch of stuff in my life that's causing me anxiety. Namely, I'm getting close to graduating, and school isn't just a fun game anymore, now it's starting to feel very serious and important. And when things feel serious and very important to me it creates lots of anxiety. That anxiety in turn stirs up my huge psychological demons that've ruined everything I've tried to achieve in everything I've tried to accomplish in the past. It's a self sabotage thing. If things are seeming important, it causes me to feel anxious, which makes me sabotage what I'm doing so that the important thing will fail, and then I won't have the anxiety any more. Get it?

I'm crazy, I know.

So, when I feel anxious and like I'm looking for a way out of the situation, my mind often tries to escape into moments in the past. The moments in my life that my mind starts fantasizing about aren't necessarily good moments, they're moments that were very complex. Because the more complex that period was, the more my mind can be fully distracted from the anxiety I'm currently facing. And fantasizing about a complex past moment also acts to cause me to fail out of the current situation that's causing the anxiety in the first place, which then alleviates the anxiety altogether.

It doesn't make me happy, but my mind just can't seem to deal with anxiety, and seems to prefer unhappiness over anxiety.

So... I'm fantasizing about my first love, the crazy girl who caused me tons of heartache and confusion. I have the urge to find out what she's been up to. But I don't want to really, it's just a trick my mind is playing on me.

When I see pictures of her that were taken a couple of years after we broke up, but still several years before today, she already looks like a different person. When I look at these pictures of her, I don't even see the same person that's in my memory, she looks very unfamiliar, almost like a complete stranger. It's not the girl of today I have an urge to reconnect with, I want to reach out for the girl of many years ago who doesn't exist any more.

 

[edesignuk]

Have to wonder why on earth you'd come to a Mac forum and make this your first post...

 

[Queso]

My advice? Let it lie and learn to look forward rather than back.

 

[iBlue]

Things are changing and that can cause considerable anxiety but going backwards isn't going to do any good. Let that go.

 

[pseudonym4now]

My advice? Let it lie and learn to look forward rather than back.

As I said, I don't really want to do it, so I'm not going to. In fact the girl who I want to reconnect with doesn't even exist anymore, as I said. So I couldn't do it even if I actually was going to try.

But the feeling is still there. It's a completely irrational feeling, like having the urge to jump up into the air and fly. It's not possible, it doesn't even make any sense, but the feeling is there.

Which is why I at least had to write about it, just to at least get it out of my head a little bit. And hopefully people will read it, and commiserate, and post their thoughts and feelings in response, and share any similar type of things that go on in their heads too.

I guess you could call it group therapy.

And why post here in this Mac site? Because I like the people here.

 

[Queso]

It just sounds to me that she isn't really even part of what you're missing, and there's actually a part of yourself you feel the need to reconnect with.

 

[pseudonym4now]

It just sounds to me that she isn't really even part of what you're missing, and there's actually a part of yourself you feel the need to reconnect with.

Hmm, that's a really interesting idea. I'll have to think about that and see if I feel like there's any part of myself that I feel disconnected from. I guess I have a homework assignment to do. It's great to hear people's thoughts and reaction and feelings on stuff like this. It really helps.

 

[motulist]

I think I know how you feel man. Do what ya gotta do to feel better, and just hang in there and you'll be happy again pretty soon.

 

[John Jacob]

I know just how you feel (been there done that and all). But I have to agree with dynamicv's advice, to let it lie and look forward instead of backwards.

 

[blairwillis]

Buying a new Mac might help get over her.

Buying me a new Mac might help you too, you never know. I'd like an SSD Air, please.

 

[Naimfan]

Which is why I at least had to write about it, just to at least get it out of my head a little bit. And hopefully people will read it, and commiserate, and post their thoughts and feelings in response, and share any similar type of things that go on in their heads too.

A very dignified and reasonable response that I hope some of the posters here will take note of.

And why post here in this Mac site? Because I like the people here.

And what better reason?

So: Thoughts and feelings from a short story I'm writing:

Another fly in amber laid . . .

Oh, baby. How did it fall apart so fast? I've tried everything to bleed you out—time, other people, self-immolation, you name it, I've probably tried it. About the only thing I've not tried, and won't, is the one thing that you said you used to do in your darkest hours. And just when I think I'm done, really done, blood starts spurting again--and I find some other hidden arterial cut, a nick from long ago that finally succumbed to pressure and time, the blood colored by that bright red hyper-kinetic connection we shared that will never ever truly dissipate. Other times it's that darker, thick oxygen-poor blood just oozing up, defying direct pressure as easily as the imaginary stitches I tie the cut off with. Another fly in amber laid, a not-quite ghost refusing to be disinterred. Because all this time later, it's all still too new, still too deep, still too real, still too big. And every drop a tangled thicket of memory and emotion and searing and thought and blind love.

(c) 2008
All rights reserved.

 

[musiqzhild]

Damm Man I Feel Your Pain.. 4 Real..

Damm bro.. ur post brought tears to my eyes.. .. 4 real.. although it seems like you are older than I am, I have to say that I am going through the same thing man.. the constant desire to reconnect with that person that was lost long ago.. Damm, for me it began around 3 years ago.. things were so sweet and almost perfect back then.. i first met this girl without realising the gravity of my feelings for her.. perhaps because i've always been very skeptic towards Love.. bt yo.. wen i lost this girl, I stayed up night after night.. i wouldnt eat well and i literally almost lost my mind man.. the situation actually had an impact on my physical side.
Damm, its funny though cause the relationship did not last long.. i felt a constant lack of security.. but it was her simple smile that brought me all the joy in the world.. i mean.. i'd get depressed if we didnt speak for a day, but my ego and moral would be sky high if she jst called me and asked me if i was ok. I've been trying so hard to get over this girl.. bt i feel that ive lost the ability to feel attratced to other girls.. let alone fall in love again man.
To tell the truth i've had my share of girls over the years.. bt damm, it jst so seems like the more i meet new peope and try to move on, the more i miss her.. bt at the same time i dont miss the person she is today.. i simply miss the person she used to be. U kwn they say that men dont usually forget their first love.. they jst try move on and find someone that comes close.. But damm, at times i really feel like i could jst leave this life simply because i dont think ill ever find anybody that comes close man.
My pride sometimes lets me down.. i've learned to prefer being totally alone rather than feeling uneasy.. and during the time that i was with that girl, all i felt was uneasyness.. i guess it was because it felt too good to be true.. the bottom line is that now my heart has been suffocated from the excess of delusive desire, and my soul has felt the agony from the lack of devotion.. and it still seems like a long way to go before i can begin to love again.
I sometimes jst sit back and wonder wat it would've been like if we were still together and if we didnt belong to different cutures which pushed us to break up.. and all kinds of positive images comes to my mind.. the real trouble with ur first Love is that so many sweet memories will remain inside You.. completely intact.. and with time we tend to build imaginary memories of what we wish we could live through with that person. I've come to realise that perhaps staying away from her is for the best.. bt it is also what hurts me the most.. i know this reponse is not much help for you.. bt i feel a lot better sharing this with you guys. Thanks.

 

[winterthought]

Thanks for posting that. I had been feeling a little anxious as well, and even though I have a wonderful boyfriend, I began thinking about a past relationship... missing it...yearning to see him again, looking through pictures of the good times we had together, even though, like yourself, I don't really want to see him. The relationship ended for a reason but it's so easy to lapse back into the comfort and sweet sadness of nostalgia. It was nice to come across what you wrote at exactly the time that I needed to hear it.