Vixen Manual - Karrine Steffans [45]
I have always said, “The one thing none of my exes could ever say about me is that I did worse after they left.” That was always my motivation after a bad relationship and breakup, of which there were many. I would always go out of my way to do and look better. What I did varied. Maybe it was a change of hair color, a new car, a new attitude, a new style, or a thriving career, but there was always something I could do to make all those losers say, “Damn!” I’m willing to bet that many of you are not much different from me. It’s normal to feel confused about which direction to move in once a relationship falls apart, but it’s also normal and expected that you will pick yourself up and start a new life, even if it’s just one baby step at a time.
I always had a fear of being one of those women—like my mother and others I’ve known—who never let go of the pain that someone, usually a man, had caused them. Those women held on to it, letting it stew inside of them until it formed a bitterness that they used like a weapon, wielding it against everyone and ultimately running them away. I dreaded one day being forty-five and alone, with my son all grown up, off somewhere happily living his life, and me left behind with no partner to journey with through my own life because I had chased them all away with a similar anger and bitterness. And to be honest, that’s just what I was doing and had started doing very early in my dating life. I would pick fights with boyfriends, constantly comparing them to exes. Some of those comparisons left current beaus feeling inadequate and underappreciated. The fights I picked weren’t always based on relationship baggage, though. Sometimes, pent-up hostility toward my family would pop into an argument. Most of the time what I found myself doing when drawing from past pain during a current relationship was projecting all of my insecurities onto the people in my life, blaming them for the way I felt or for the way someone else had treated me. To be superhonest, even now, from time to time, I fall right back into that old habit. That’s when I have to read my own damn book to fall out of it! It can be difficult to unlearn learned behavior, especially if it was a negative muscle—and I’m using muscle as a metaphor in this instance—that you exercised time and again. Muscles have memory, so it’s easy to snap back into old behavior if you’re not vigilant. You have to want to change and be willing to do the work required to make sure you stay positive and forward moving.
Just as this sort of emotional baggage can affect your romantic relationships with men, it can also affect your relationships with other women. It’s hard to maintain good, positive friendships if you are not living a positive and productive emotional life. They say that misery loves company, and I have found that phrase to be resoundingly true. You can never be happy with unhappy people around, and you will always attract those kinds of people if you don’t take care of yourself emotionally. There will always be no-good men and drama-prone friends ready to swoop in and add more no-good drama to your life. Avoid this at all cost by maintaining your emotional health. Pick yourself up. Be encouraged. Take note of others who have lived through much worse than you and have still managed to thrive. Know that there is always a bigger, brighter outcome waiting for you. All you have to do is to take strides toward it.
When my son’s father left my newborn son and me, the pain was so great, so devastating, I swore it would kill me. I went through all the clichéd responses to this type of tragedy—I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and, even worse, I found it difficult to care for my son. Everything I had was wrapped up in my son’s father. He defined all that I believed I was. Even though he was incredibly abusive and ran our home like a dictatorship, I depended on him to tell me who I was, even if that meant that I would always be abused. It took me a couple of years to really get over the pain of the abuse and the ruin of my life as I knew it. It was