I did a bad, bad thing....

Let me just preface this story by admitting up front and honest that I am a masochist. I torture myself needlessly.

You may have read about my mid-of-the-eve photo shoot where I had fun flipping off the camera pretending the offending persons were cringing in abashed pain and humiliation. Ok, well…this weekend I took the best print – of course – and had it printed at Staples. When I explained to the woman behind the counter that I was going to post it all over my ex-boyfriend’s neighborhood because he lied, hurt my feelings and then let some crazy ass bitch scream nasty things at me over the phone, she said she’d do anything she could to help me.

With my heart in my throat this morning, I alighted long before dawn on the winter trek to Kentwood with about 15 of the posters in my possession. Can you imagine the elation I felt as I drove the thumb tacks into the well-manicured, dainty little trees lining the boulevard at the end of his road and in two other boulevards on his exit route at his swanky subdivision? My hands shook with fear and excitement as I quickly ran from tree to tree, hoping no one would stumble across me before my dirty deed was done. A lone car came by but didn’t seem to care what I was doing. Probably thought I was putting up posters of my lost kitty cat or something.

Now, of course, the question as to why I would do such a thing is paramount in your mind. This is where the worthiness of posting such drivel is revealed…

In the tension between loving someone who hurt you and forgiving them lies a vast expanse of self-sacrifice. Sometimes that self-sacrifice, instead of enriching the quality of the relationship, begins to wear away at the sacrificer’s sense of self-worth. By not sticking up for myself and by not defining the standards by which I needed to be treated, I had suppressed my self-respect and dignity. I compounded the mistake by forgiving too easily, without proof of commitment to change or remorse.

Ok, posting pictures of myself flipping the bird doesn’t exactly restore my sense of dignity. But it did give me a feeling of empowerment. Even thought it is too late, I finally made a stand and said, “Hey, baby, that shit don’t fly!” Hopping back into the truck to Beck’s “Loser” only made the moment more poignant.

However, now that the momentary elation has worn off, all I am left with is a sense of doing something mean to someone that I love, someone who is hurting. I’m not sure anyone deserves that. But why he decieved me for so long when he knows who I am as a person and what was happening in my life, I will never understand. Part of me feels like he deserves it. Sort of.

And so…the self-torture continues.