I put a spell on... me

"Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper.” ~Donald Trump

I had this gut feeling once. It was about this girl that started working with me at an overnight job I had for a little while. She was quite sexy, but my oh my was she stuck up. To the point of arrogant, really.

Fast forward about four years, and what do you know, I was right. I can logically point out just exactly how stuck up and arrogant she is and all the ways it undermined our relationship.

What goes in the middle is something of a tale. We started talking a little bit, went to breakfast a couple of times. Started IMing back and forth, one thing leads to another... And four years later I've finally parted ways with her. Finally, and couldn't be happier for it. And I don't mean break up and move away, that was done a while ago. I mean I finally started seeing past the spell I put on myself and actually seeing her for what she really is, and I couldn't be more disgusted. Not even interested in being friends anymore. And the sickest part of it all is that I knew all this deep down the very first time I met her, but I talked myself around it.

Going to school, your teachers always tell you not to change your answers on the questions you aren't sure about, go with your first choice. It's probably the correct one. That has continued to be true over and over since then. I've met people that just make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, only to 'work past it' and find out later I was dead on in the first place.

The real question that looms, to me, is, "Why do I keep doing this?"

That took some reflection to figure out. And a lot of it happened during heartbreak and/or rage because, you guessed it, I had been taken to the cleaners by a supposed friend or loved one on some level. Not gonna lie, I've been made a fool of a couple times along the way. Not often, but every once in a while somebody makes it over the moat, the wall, past the guards, fools the council, and then convinces me that they're something other than what they are. And what allows this to happen?

Good old hope. The very thing that keeps us going in the first place can sometimes be an overachiever and let us think better of someone that really didn't deserve it in to begin with.

It starts slowly mind you. They have some trait or attribute that you just love about a person. Just ache to have. It's your fetish, your obsession, draws you like a magnet. And once you get your hands on it, you may as well be trying to pry crack from an addicts clenched fist to let go of it. Then starts the spell weaving.

You start thinking of all the daydreams you've ever had about you being happy, and they're in the picture. Laughing, smiling, dancing, moaning, sleeping beside you, there when you wake up and there when you get home, just the way you dream of life being. And here's where it begins.

You start to associate them with your daydreams. Not what you're seeing right in front of you. What you hope for. And the worst part is, you don't even realize it. It's all happening deeper in your mind than you can even rationalize. You start to argue with friends and family, start to excuse the person as their instincts are screaming, but you've muted yours in lieu of this new feeling of trust and love. And it's not even real. Your hope has cast a spell on you and you don't even know that it happened.

And here's the real kicker. After you finally realize that you've made a bad choice, these mental associations with the person will trigger aftershocks for months, maybe even years. And the worst part is, some of them won't even be real.

The first girl I fell head over heels for broke my heart from a couple thousand miles away when she called to tell me, "I found somebody...."

I had dreams for months after that. All of the things I had imagined with her, all the little mental movies I saw in my head were playing, laid out like a scrapbook of images suspended in space, framed like postage stamps. And burning. Us at the alter. Us at the beach, dancing as the sun set. Waking up in the morning. All ablaze like someone had lit the corner of every poster at the movie theater. It was literally like my mind was torching all the connections I had made to her for the future. In a way, it was cathartic I suppose. I thought they were nightmares, the torture of some angry demon inflicting pain into my heart and mind, but eventually they stopped, and I even stopped thinking about her.

To conclude, my only point is this: listen to the precious council of your gut feeling. Consider it's sway when it bellows in your ear. I'm sure at this point you've thought of a few instances where you ignored it, only to regret that decision later. Don't become a slave to it, ignoring all thought. But listen to it's vote whenever it presents itself.

Until next time...

Angelus