I owe you, big time.
It can’t have been easy to listen every time some little thing in my dating life set me spinning up about how maybe he didn’t like me, or maybe I wasn’t good enough, or maybe he wasn’t really committed to me, or maybe the world might end, or maybe…
It must have been excruciating listening every time I waxed eloquent over some guy who obviously didn’t deserve it, and actually treated me poorly. For every time you bit your tongue and didn’t tell me I was an idiot, thank you. For ever time you did tell me the guy wasn’t worth it, even knowing I didn’t want to hear it, thank you. For every time you let me cry on your shoulder and didn’t say anything, thank you. For every time you reassured me it would get better, I would be fine, I’d find someone better for me… thank you.
For every 2 am phone call (over a guy who clearly didn’t deserve it) thank you. For every endless IM conversation in which I freaked out and asked you to tell me the future, thank you for tolerating it and not kicking me to the curb.
Thank you for telling me to call you every time I freaked out and felt needy instead of calling the current boy. Thank you for telling me to walk away. Thank you for teaching me to say, “I need to think about this,” and then think about it, instead of just reacting. Thank you for teaching me to simply repeat my stance calmly and consistently, instead of getting into an ever spiraling argument with no end in sight.
Thank you for being calm when I wasn’t. Thank you for listening to me go through the same old pattern over and over again; there must have been times you wanted to smack some sense into me. Thank you for listening every time I analyzed and re-analyzed every word, every IM, every email as if I could somehow shape the situation into what I wanted if I just poked at it enough.
Thank you for telling me to calm down and actually talk to the guy instead of assuming all was doomed and I ought to break it off before I got hurt. Thank you for putting up with the frustration of seeing me make mistakes, sometimes the same ones over and over again, and not giving in to the exhaustion and giving up on me. Thank you for reading the emails I was too afraid to, and then telling me if it was safe or not.
There are far too many people to list you all by name. But thank you in particular to those who put up with me the most: Jay, Megan, Daniel, Cliff, Anghouedd, Wendy, Sara, Simran, Tadao…
(And there are other people since then who have provided similar support, but you have no idea what it was like dealing with me 10 years ago).