Unimportant
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A Wonderful Happy Ending
10/29/2014
I am now the person that I was before I met Karen. I am a good person.
I wasn't as good as I wanted to be and I was always inventing ways to try to be better. But nevertheless, I was happy about who I was.
But perhaps because I loved Karen too much, or admired Karen too much, I started being someone else. I started somehow basing my life on Karen rather than on myself. Whatever I did was somehow always a response to Karen. I thought Karen was important. Me, not so much. What she wanted was always a good idea. What I wanted was, in my mind, never really important. This was deadly. You might call it low self esteem if you want, but that was not it; it was just “less important”. You may have no idea of the chaos that a less important person can create while trying to be important.
Despite my "working on myself" it took a calamity and several months of pain while still "working on myself" to break it all loose. But I did it.
I am me again! I no longer consider myself less important. And I am a better me than I ever was. That’s the happy ending.
You may think “I’ve heard that before from Joe,” and you have, because I have been working on myself, constantly. And you may hear it again. But now, let me explain. This is how bad it has become. My “unimportant” behavior has effected Karen so badly that she hasn’t yet (10/29) been able to see that it’s gone.
On my birthday I sent out thank-you cards to all my close friends for the support they gave me that actually helped me attain the age of 80. Of course Karen was the primary one. But apparently she was afraid to open her thank-you card. In her caregiver group she told Lois that the reason she didn’t open it was because “she didn’t know what to expect,” ...from a thank-you card. That is how far my weird “un-important” behavior had affected her.
She was still thinking of me as the person I was for the past 15 or so years. But I have reverted. I am now the person I was before I met her, no longer less important. She only knew that interim person that I was during our relationship.
Our relationship now is the way it should be, no longer from the point of view of someone who thinks he's less important. Believe me there is a difference.
If you have a relationship with somebody who considers himself or herself as “less important” get rid of him. He'll do all kinds of crazy things to make himself more important. And eventually, like Karen, you will never know what to expect. Click here for examples.