The Dithering of a District Diva

Unless you are late to The Dithering or my life, you are probably aware of my Grey’s Anatomy obsession, as well as the fact that I can make any scene from that show directly relate to my life (that stuff is, real, man! You don’t understand!).

Take the scene embedded above, for instance. Meredith, all sad and depressed because McDreamy chose his wife instead of her, sticks her hand inside the body cavity of a man who’s been shot full of unexploded live ammunition (A.K.A., a bomb). The 22-year-old EMT, Hannah, whose hand was holding the bomb steady inside the man, got scared out of her mind, shouted “I have my whole life ahead of me!” and ran out of the O.R. The other doctors and nurses ran, too, or hit the deck. But, not Meredith. Oh no. Meredith had the bright idea to stick her hand inside the body cavity, because, hey, she might save the man, and save the hospital from blowing up, or, if all else fails and she blows up, at least she won’t have to deal with that terrible thing called life without McDreamy. So, as she saw it, it was a win-win.

Inevitably, Meredith deeply regrets her rash decision. I’m certain she thought: Sure, life without McDreamy would suck, but, surely, one day, life will be worth living again. But by the time she came to her senses, it was too late, obviously, since she had her hand on a bomb.

So then, the bomb-squad guy comes in. He wants to rescue Meredith and the hospital. It’s his job, after all. He keeps Meredith calm and focused enough to “gently” hand the bomb over to him and he walks it out of the O.R. Of course, the bomb goes off in bomb squad guy’s face, and he turns into pink mist, leaving Meredith unscaved.

So, how does this relate to my life, you ask? Quite simply, because I have been wrongfully operating under the auspices that I am Meredith in the above scenario. Granted, there was once a sense of my McDreamy is gone, so what else is there? But, that is only a part of the analogy.

I once described my feelings on my relationships via Twitter (follow me!) like this:

You know when Meredith stuck her hand inside the bomb guy? Yeah…like that.

One of my fav Twitterers responded:

it’s okay! As long as you have a bomb-squad guy to take the L!

I laughed hysterically, at first. How clever! Why didn’t I think of that? The smile faded once I grasped the fact that, I kind of had thought of it.

Taking a long hard look at the four relationships that have shaped my life, it seemed like I consistently and rashly grabbed hold of a bomb by jumping into a relationship without being emotionally ready for that relationship. And all of them wanted to be my bomb-squad guy. Each in a different phase of my life, wanted to be the source to usher me into a new era. Each to help me overcome my emotional issues. But, jumping from one long-term relationship to the next, I rarely evaluated what went wrong with the last, and certainly didn’t learn my mistakes in them, as I consistently repeated them in the next relationship (i.e., breaking up with each of them via Dear John, here’s your ass letter, two by phone and a fourth, once technology advanced, via text message). <—That part is what i would consider to be where I hand the bomb over to the bomb-squad guy and I run away to safety and he turns into pink mist.

In my defense, only some of them were actually torn up about it. If that’s really a defense…

But, well into my third relationship, I started feeling badly about this pattern that developed (not to the point where I actually evaluated any of these relationships or my mistakes in them, but just for the sake of feeling “blue”). And bachelor number 3 picked up on this feeling, and, while I won’t give him 100% credit for manipulating me into staying in a relationship with him as a result of my blues, I will say that I allowed him to use it to his advantage. But, I could only take so much and then it was bomb time. As the pink mist of bachelor number 3 was still all over my face, I began with bachelor number 4. Number 4 found my blues “depressing” and was–what I believe anyway–relieved by my text-message-then-phone-call-in-case-you-didn’t-get-my-text-message-break-up.

And, admittedly, he should’ve been relieved. I was absolutely not ready to get into another relationship after the disaster that was the 3rd. (Whoever said “third time’s the charm,” is seriously underinformed). And in that 4th relationship, I felt like I was trying to give the bomb back to number 4, but he just wouldn’t take it from me. Like a twisted game of hot potato, I tried and tried and tried again to give him the bomb and he refused to take it, and the music stopped and I got caught with it. It blew up on me, and I was–at last–pink mist.

But then again, maybe I have been misanalysing my relationships. In fact, I don’t believe I was Meredith at all in these relationships. I am not an emotional landmine, so I need to stop thinking of myself like that. I am not a “man-eater,” so I need to quit calling myself that. What I am is a woman with an enormous heart and an even bigger sense of loyalty and duty. It is my terrible judgment that gets me into relationships with guys I don’t need to be in relationships with, and it is my overwhelming sense of loyalty that keeps me in relationships long after my common sense kicks in and I realize I need to be out. It is also my horribly impulsive and childish cowardice that makes me not face up to my mistakes by looking a guy in the eye and saying, “I need to get out of this,” and actually being brave enough to stick to what is clearly the best thing for me.

No. I am not Meredith; I am Hannah.

When I do FINALLY realize that a bomb is about to blow up in my face, (i.e., being ill-equipped to deal with your: (1) low-level-drug-dealer-ambitions (2) complete lack of any ambitions (i.i.e.what are the SATs?) (3) utter break from reality (i.i.i.e. “you can’t leave me cuz I’ve been in an accident, I mean, my mom’s in a coma, I mean my dad just died of a heart attack, I mean cuz no one will ever love you like I do!!”); and (4) obsession with perfection (i.i.i.i.e. “can I just ship my wife away once she gets pregnant so I don’t have to see her fat?” How’s that for McDreamy?) I CUT AND RUN. And I don’t just run; I run away with hands flailing in the air, screaming, “I have my whole life ahead of me!!!”

And I do. I’m 24 years old. There is nothing but LIFE ahead of me.

I have also been the bomb-squad guy, all this time, taking the “L” by accepting far less than I deserve. But as long as I don’t have any kids, I don’t have to put up with anyone’s foolishness, and, likewise, no one has to put up with mine.

I am also fully aware that it is not respectful or considerate to break-up in any fashion other than face-to-face, and I’ll never do that again. And, hopefully, next time, there won’t be any breaking-up at all because I will have let God do the choosing, since I obviously haven’t the slightest clue of what I’m doing. But I am absolutely convinced of what I deserve, and I am certain that I have yet to be confronted with the physical manifestation of what I deserve, just yet.

But I’ve also completely accepted the fact that I am not done reflecting on my past relationships and my role in their demise (the fact that I–as a completely unpregnant and unmarried woman—Googled exercises that pregnant women can do to avoid getting fat, is evidence of that).

I’ve said before that I’m not dating until I pass the Bar. That’s just silly. The Bar has nothing to do with achieving clarity in my life, it only shows that I can memorize and regurgitate laws (something I’ve already proven by graduating from law school). So, I won’t date until I finish writing my book. One hopes that digging back through all of that crap and seriously analyzing it and coming to some sort of conclusion about what real love is, will put me in a much better position to avoid bombs of all sorts in the future, including my own.

And I’ll let Jesus keep taking the “L” for the majority of the mistakes I make, shielding me from the majority of the bombs I trigger in my own life. That is, after all, His job.

Comments

comments