Taking Inventory of the Junk Drawer

In my earlier post, I used an image of a broken heart to describe something I was experiencing. While this was partly to symbolize that there was a recent end to a romantic relationship, I feel it is more accurate to say that the broken heart was a symbol, not of myself having lost that particular relationship or really about my feelings for that particular gentleman (who is still a lovely person in my eyes) but rather to describe a general sense of brokenness that I have identified with in the area of my life titled romantic relationships. If this were embodied in a container, a drawer- let’s say- labeled Jen’s Past Relationships- it might look like the junk drawer that everyone has in their kitchen. It’s messy. It’s not really well-defined. It has a little of this a little of that. There’s not really any one theme. It has a sound of containing broken things when you open it- all clanging together. This is a box of items that came in handy at the time they were needed and for some reason I decided I needed to hold on to them: rubber-bands, pieces of hardware, an appliance manual, an expired coupon, a take-out menu, a few twist-ties, a match book, a chip clip, a key ring, a yogurt lid I never mailed in (sorry, breast cancer patients) , etc. You probably have something like this in your own kitchen or office: the all-purpose, miscellaneous drawer. Well, I recently decided to take inventory of my relationship drawer and remember what purpose each had at the time prior to landing in the drawer. I made a list of all of the guys I’ve had fairly substantial relationships with and what I was able to take away from that relationship.

My newest concept that I’ve been playing around with is that we have a natural attraction to people that embody the very side of us that we hide from the world because they give us permission to be something we secretly want to be. Some people may even refer to this as our shadow-self. But in taking inventory, I noticed that each guy I dated possessed the exact traits that I wished I had I myself, but did not: they were strong in areas I was deficient in. Some say opposites attract, but the more I learn about polarity the more I realize we are really attracted to the other side of our same coin. For example: It was noted by a dear friend that I had a pattern of dating guys that the rest of the world would consider to be over-confident or even cocky. At the time, I didn’t see this as valid. I saw these individuals as confident and considered their confidence to be a pleasant, rare find. But really, I was counter-balancing my own extreme insecurities. Outside of these relationships, I would feel tremendous guilt if I exhibited any sign of personal pride in anything. In fact, I was genuinely very embarrassed to have anyone compliment me in public or bring attention to me because I identified that as inappropriate and sinfully prideful. Yet, when I was dating a guy who was totally comfortable with public praise- even to the point of seeking it out- it was as if I was given permission to indulge in this myself via association. I don’t know if that makes as much sense to you as it does me. But, from those relationships, I actually became more balanced. A little bit of their extreme rubbed off on me. Another example of this is from my first (and longest) serious relationship with a guy from high school to early college. During the course of the three years we dated, I went from being a complete type-A personality to being much more relaxed and balanced because he was so completely laid-back that I would sometimes check his pulse to make sure he was still with the living. Almost EVERYTHING rolled right off him (and this one didn’t even smoke pot- habitually, anyway). Some days I thought I could kill him for what I thought was complete apathy or even laziness. I stressed out about his life more than I did my own. Still, any way you slice it, by the end of our relationship I was a changed person. You can’t be seriously involved with a person who embodies this without learning something very important: that people who don’t plan for anything in life still actually get by just fine (even though you sometimes wish they didn’t just to validate your own obsessive behavior). In fact, they get by with a lost less worry and stress than those of us who do plan and obsess and organize. Of course, people like me help them out a lot along the way, but, there’s still no getting around the lesson. I learned that this relaxed approach can be about choosing to be peaceful and accepting of a situation and that this is actually a more beneficial approach on many levels. I am so much more tolerable to work with now when compared to my former obsessive, type-A self. Co-workers have recently spoken of my ‘gift’ for maintaining such a calm demeanor all the time, even in the most intense situations. They have no idea from whence I came, except maybe when I worry aloud about something I have no business worrying about. Thanks, Glen. These are just a couple examples...

So, I made my inventory list of the items in the relationship drawer and realized that, although this is a filled with items that never made glass showcase status, it is nonetheless a drawer of some very useful things I have collected over the years. Plenty of stuff that’s not really junk at all, just things I have needed along the way. And for this, I am grateful.