When Self Esteem Fails

Do any of you guys have one person whose opinion you care about the most?  I've spent a lot of the past few years learning how to ignore what other people thought about me, and it's worked mostly.  Of course, it's not foolproof.  If you poke at the same sore spots repeatedly, it hurts, but ultimately I care very little about what most people think about me.  And then there's my ex-boyfriend.

I suppose he can be considered my ex-ex-ex-boyfriend since I dated him twice (that makes sense, honest).  I suppose it's not really a surprise that the first (and only, as it happens) person I dated (and loved) would be the person whose opinion affected me the most, but it's still bloody annoying.  The first time we broke up I was heart-broken, and went through a really horrid period of time where I was constantly trying to convince myself that I was over him, which only ever worked for brief periods of time.  Eventually I got to the point where I could be friends with him, and that friendship obviously grew into a second relationship.

But in between that first break up and our second attempt at a relationship we had both grown in different ways.  I had become more independent in those two years, and less naïve, but that didn't mix so well with his hopeless romantic side.  We broke up again after two months.  At the end of our second relationship I was pretty sad at first, but the end of our relationship had been filled with arguments and fights and with a lot of unhappiness on both sides, and I've largely come to accept that.  I don't think we're good together, but I also don't think I'm ever going to really get over him.

This was definitely proved by the fact that he very recently started dating someone again.  Partly, this news was very weird, because the person he's dating happens to be a friend, but also because I didn't expect to feel anything resembling jealousy when he started dating someone (mind, it's not raging jealousy, but it's still there). Then, his facebook status today proclaimed that his current girlfriend is one of the top three people he knows, which somehow made me feel really sad, probably because both times we were dating he never said anything close to the same about me.  And then I felt silly for feeling bad about that.

It's really aggravating, knowing that someone isn't good for you, but not being able to let go of them, and having their opinion of you constantly matter.  But so far I've been handling this break-up loads better than how I handled the first one, these past few days have just proved that it's going to be harder than it originally seemed.

So I'm not completely down for the count, but sometimes the little things have the most insidious ways at getting under your skin.

Anyway, I feel slightly embarrassed from having shared all that, so I'm going to end here with a recommendation to read Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver.