“You see me better than I am, she said, and I’m worried what’ll happen when your vision changes.” — Brian Andreas

The Boyfriend has a school event tomorrow and I’m internally freaking out. My fear of abandonment alarms are ringing like crazy and I’m trying to deal with that healthily, but that doesn’t help with the fear and paranoia slowly suffocating me.

So I’m here, trying to process my emotions and why I’m so terrified.

How do I explain it? I know it’s just a fear but it somehow feels real, as if it’s already happened; I can see it in my mind’s eye—him laughing and having fun and forgetting about me and then abruptly recalling my existence and thinking, “Ugh, what a loser. I’m having so much more fun with my friends than I ever had with her. What was I thinking? Ew. I’m so done with her.”

The Boyfriend wants to know why it is that he can’t have fun with them and still miss me and love me. Just the thought of him having fun with someone else makes me want to throw up.

“My biggest fear is that eventually you will see me the way I see myself.” — Anonymous

I guess deep down it’s because I honestly see no reason why he would want to be with me. I mean, I’ve read enough accounts from the other side of the fence to know it’s no picnic to be dating a crazypants. It’s not that I have no good qualities; I have at least a scrap of self-worth to realize that I’m not a complete good-for-nothing. But I still don’t think I have enough light to make up for my dark. I don’t think there is anything good enough I can offer that can counter-balance the bad.

So, in my opinion, he’s dating me because he’s super deluded and seduced by, I don’t know, my borderline wiles and addicted to the lovebombing. And all of that is going to fade away one day. There’s going to be a day when he finally comes to his senses and realize he was being a complete idiot and then he will leave and never look back.

And every time he spends time with other people and has fun with them, it just makes me feel like that dose of reality will burst his bubble, and he will see me for the imposter that I am. And it absolutely, completely terrifies me. I go about every day wondering at the back of my mind if this will be the day it all comes crashing down, but it’s when he’s off having the time of his life with someone else that the fear springs to the forefront of my mind and utterly consumes me.

I know it’s deluded of me if I insist on isolating him from the entire world in order to make sure he never sees the light and remains in love with me. I know that if I have to go to such lengths to keep him by my side, then it’s not real love and I’d be better off without it. I know that ironically, it’d be my control freak issues that would actually push him further away from me.

Logically, I know all of this. Yet it’s always the emotions that are the toughest to deal with. I can’t reason with them, I shouldn’t shove them aside… it’s so tempting to switch them off until the event is over but I know that’s not the right thing to do.

It’s times like these I wish so much to be just a regular, non-clingy human being who would be all chill and see no big deal in all of this.

But ah, radical acceptance entails that I accept the reality that I am me, and then do the best I can from there.

So instead:

Boyfriend is not Ex. Boyfriend will not start preferring to hang out with his friends over me, Boyfriend will not ‘choose’ them over me, Boyfriend will not flirt with another girl behind my back. (I think…….)

Ex. Boyfriend will not start preferring to hang out with his friends over me, Boyfriend will not ‘choose’ them over me, Boyfriend will not flirt with another girl behind my back. (I think…….) Boyfriend claims that he loves me no matter what. Yes, there’s a chance he might be lying, or that he thinks he’s telling the truth but will wind up changing his mind. But what good will my panic do? What is going to happen will happen, no matter how hard I try to avoid it. If he’s going to fall out of love with me and in love with someone else… nothing I do can possibly prevent that from happening.

Even if he loves someone else, so what? I can do this on my own. I don’t need him. My worth is not dependent on his love for me. I am not defined by his feelings for me. Just because he might not love me, does not mean I am unlovable.

Whatever it is, I can get through it.