Lately I've been reminded of my past, of all the copious failed attempts at relationships I've engaged in. I don't really want to get into details in public, and since most of my readers know my history I'll sum it up like this: before I met Brian in September I'd been chronically single save four short-lived relationships (none more than six months), the first of which messed me up for the rest of my dating life and two of which were emotional mindfucks that reduced my self-esteem to superficial threads of desperation.

Also, most dating situations I found myself in, ended like this. (The third commenter is one of the perpetrators of the aforementioned emotional mindfuck.)

I have a tendency to hold subconscious grudges against people who I feel have wronged me, even after I've psychologically rationalized their reasons for the way they treated me. (All I will say is that it all goes back to Freud.) I don't like it, but I also don't know how to work past it. I'm still angry about things, annoyed by others and, somewhere in the recesses of my heart, deeply hurt by others still.

Being with Brian, especially lately as I become farther and farther removed from the city in which most of these dating fiascos of past happened, has mollified these memories for me. But as I spend most of my time these days alone and without him, I've had plenty of time to contemplate our relationship. He's become such a center for what I associate with relationships that I'd sort of forgotten what it used to be like for me.

Now that these memories are slowly floating back to me, I'm feeling a duality of things. I still hurt from the way people used me, manipulated me, or just plain didn't care enough about me. Although I've rationalized that the reason for their actions is that we just weren't right for each other, either at the time or at all, I still can't help the pang of anger that sits squarely in my chest. But also, it's like I'm meeting Brian all over again. In the past seven months our relationship has grown and deepened past the point of newness and excitement, and we've come to know each other well enough that most things don't surprise me about him anymore.

Suddenly I find myself reminded of the things that grabbed me from the start - things that told me this was right, and that he deserved all of the parts of me that no one else before him did. Small things - he smiled when we first kissed, genuinely thrilled to be with me and not just grunting, head down, like I was some conquest. He made it clear to me that he wanted to see me again. He told me I was beautiful. He called. He told me that I had been in his head all week after we first met. He counted down the days before he would finally visit me for the first time. Did I mention that he called?

More than those, though, are the bigger things. When he recognized that he hadn't met and might not ever meet anyone like me, he didn't want to let me get away. He's not afraid of his emotions - things don't have to be hidden or unspoken, and his declarations of his feelings toward me are brazen and never retracted. He wants to share with me the things that he finds invigorating and beautiful, not just tell me about himself or his accomplishments or get me in bed with his wit and sarcasm (or alcohol). Consistently from the outset until now, he's recognized my qualities and what I possess as a self-actualized person, not just a girlfriend or specimen of the female gender. He has never, ever, ever ignored me, belittled me, or pointedly said or done anything to hurt me.

I know it seems sort of silly to just now, at this random point in our relationship, be noting all of this, but these are things that just last summer I never thought I would have. I didn't think it was possible that anyone would be this good to me. I didn't think anyone could actually love me. I thought I was deficient, missing the DNA code for 'could be someone's girlfriend one day.' I had been pushed around, objectified, disregarded, forgotten, jerked back and forth so much in the past five years, without nearly enough periods of actual functional dating, that I sometimes believed that I simply wasn't worthy of the kind of love that I had always so wanted.

I suppose the fact that I still ache from my past indicates that somewhere in the mire of my subconscious, buried beneath the parts of my brain that have acclimated so easily to being in a relationship, I still believe that. And that I'm still that version of me, wounded with my arms thrown over my head for protection even though I need no protection from the person in front of me.

Lately I've been reminded of my past, and I realize that it still haunts me despite how much good I have in my present.