Dear blog, I have missed you!

I've missed writing. No wonder I've felt all pent-up and frustrated for the past couple of weeks...I haven't been blogging! I've been so focused on trying to keep busy in ways that don't involve me being confined to my room that I've barely spent more than 20 minutes or so at a time on my laptop. Well, I'm here now, so bear with me.
I've been contributing to another blog and I'm so honored to be able to write for such a great cause. I've been following the blog for a while, and I have met a few great people from that blog as well as personal blogs I've come across through comments, etc. Each of us has a different story - some open adoptions, some closed - but that's the beauty of it. No two adoption stories are alike; heck, even if you asked a birth father for his thoughts and a birth mother for her thoughts on the same adoption, they would vary, I'm sure.

At some point over the past few weeks, I'm not sure when, exactly, but I came to the realization that my feelings for A's birth dad are part of a much larger, much more tangled web than I had originally thought. Yes, I love him. He is my daughter's father, my first born child. She is half of him. He was also the first man I truly loved. I convinced myself I was 115% over him, when I was not. I saw him and didn't feel the butterflies I had grown accustomed to feeling over the past few years, so I figured that was that. The "love" I felt was simply because of the bond we shared over the child we share. Then strange memories would creep into my mind. This would happen when I couldn't fall asleep at night. I tried to tell myself that I just missed the memory of "us," and that I need to simply make new memories with someone else. I also tried to tell myself it was the company that I missed, not him. I've never been more confused. I know I am talking in circles, but as I already said: please bear with me. I'm glad that we can get along, I really am. I don't want to be with him, I really don't. So pardon my language, but what the hell is it that I want? (I've typed, deleted, re-typed, and deleted this about 3 times already). I can't put my crazy, twisted thoughts into words! How can I love a man, not want to be with him, miss him with every fiber of my being, and resent him for things he has done to me in the past at the same time? When will I get off of this ride? I know, I know. The answer is simple: just don't talk to him. Well, if it were that easy, I would have done that. In fact, I did that, last year. And I survived. I was fine. I managed to go weeks at a time without so much as thinking about him. I guess it's not as easy this time around for me to make a clean break. I lost both him and my daughter at damn near the same time, and he is the closest "thing" to her that I have. It terrifies me to the core to think about completely losing him, too.

All of these revelations have brought me to a few other points. Some things I'm happy to finally grasp, others, I wish I hadn't thought about.

I have been very (very, very) apprehensive to date, after all I've gone through. Not only because I am not fully over her father, but because I feel fairly selfish at this point in my life and want to do whatever I please - whatever will make me happy at the time that I want to do it. Selfish, I know. But I'm not hurting anyone in the process. So, as I've said before, I was seeing a guy (we'll call him Z) last January - March. That was going great, until it fizzled out (by fizzled, I mean he tried to trick me into giving him money). I was over the moon at the very real prospect that I could potentially develop feelings for someone other than G. Well, look how that turned out. After that, I declared "F*!* men!" (in my head of course) and didn't want to put myself out there again, only to be hurt and/or aggravated by petty stuff that I didn't need in my life to begin with.

Fast forward to the end of April, when I decided to give it a go one more time. (I know, I didn't last long). I met someone, B, and things were going fine. Slow, just the way I needed them to be. The problem was, he was a bit "clingy." Texting all the time, and when he didn't get a response within 3 minutes, another text came my way. If that went unanswered, I could expect a phone call within 2 minutes. It wasn't at the crazy stalker level, but more of the 'you're really annoying me' level. I pretty much (very rudely) just stopped talking to him altogether. Out of the blue a month or so ago, he texted me again. Said he was sorry for anything he may have done to upset me, and asked if we could get together. We ended up walking up and down the beach (how cliche!) for a couple hours, talking and laughing. We have a lot in common, and while G was never downright mean to my face (with the exception of when we argued, most of the shady stuff he did was behind the scenes), it was nice to have a carefree conversation with a guy. We hung out a couple times after that, and one of my friends met him and thought he was a cool guy. Then he started with the texting non-stop thing all over again. I told him nicely that I was fine with us only talking once a day (or even less), and that I didn't need constant, every-hour contact. This, essentially, caused me to stop talking to him all over again. (What a witch, right?!)

He texted me Sunday morning. Said he was thinking of me and just wanted to know that I was alive. He knows about the adoption and a good chunk of the essential information about her birthdad. He is aware that we talk from time to time when it's about A, and he is fine with it. Well, he really didn't have much choice, but it's amazing that he "got it." I told him I was just going through some stuff, and when he asked if I wanted to talk about it, it finally clicked with me: I am not happy with myself. I cannot be happy with someone else NOR can someone be happy with me until I am happy with myself. I hate the way I look, I hate the way I act half the time, I hate a lot of things about myself that aren't worthy of hating. I just do it because....I just do. I explained this to him; I explained that being in a relationship with him right now would not be fair to him, as I need to focus on healing myself. I know grief is an ongoing process, but I need to get going on that and keep it under as much control as possible. I've convinced myself that I'm "fine," simply because I'm able to get out of bed every day and go through the motions. That's not living, though. It's just being. I was never one to just "be." If anything, my daughter should (and does) inspire me to do more than just exist. In a nutshell, I explained all of this to him to the best of my ability. I also finally admitted to myself, and to him, that I am terrified of letting myself care for (and love) someone else because I am so very scared to lose them. I think this mainly has to do with the 'loss' of my daughter, but also the loss of her father. While the loss of her father is much less profound, it's still there. I love(d) her father. I trusted him, completely gave myself and my life to him and look where I wound up...I'm now single, I became a mother with no child to show for it (other than in 1 dimensional photos), and I've gained an abhorrent amount of weight. Yes, I realize I cannot blame all of this on him. But what I also cannot do is put all of that behind me and jump head-first into another situation with a man where I am required to be vulnerable all over again.

I am not used to being treated the way he treats me. I have stopped speaking to him, cold-turkey, twice now. And he still is being patient with me (maybe because he knows my story. Or maybe he is desperate. Not sure). He told me that no matter what happens, he hopes the fact that he thinks I am beautiful to him will console me at least a little. How sweet is that? I've only been called beautiful by one other man before, and we all know who that is by now. Every other compliment is much more shallow than that.

I just don't know what to do. I don't want to be selfish, I don't want to hurt anyone. But I'm scared.

In other news, I recently found out that I am hypothyroid, which is both good and bad news. It explains a lot, but also means I will be taking a pill every day for the rest of my life. I started the prescription last Tuesday. I hope that the medication, along with some better eating habits that I've already been practicing and a walk 3 - 4x weekly will help me lose the weight I've been so miserable over for so long. I would be fine going back to my post-pregnancy weight, when I was in a 14. Not tiny, but the size I've always hovered around. I have a ways to go, but I believe that if I truly focus on myself right now, I can do it. I did it once, I can do it again!