Three points makes a vector

Things are going to be sort of predictable for a few days. I am pretty heavily in the "let me tell you all the crappy shit about her" phase. In a few days, though, the "I miss her, where am I going to find anyone like her" phase will probably start. Those of you who know how this goes will probably want to go watch the baseball playoffs for a couple of days until things come back to stasis.

I spent a long time last night thinking about the parallels between Melody and a couple of people from the long past, and I started to see some really striking congruences that I hadn't realized before. Maybe I just needed that third data point to make it a vector, I don't know.

All three women were highly intelligent, highly talented, attractive, and (unfortunately) the victims of trauma at some point in their pasts. Janet's father died some years earlier of a brain tumor, a long a difficult process to which she was primary witness. She was a medical student and an excellent clarinetist. Carrie had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a year or so before I met her. She was a mezzo-soprano and of genius-level IQ. Now, Melody, whose home life growing up was a series of traumas, and who is similarly of genius level IQ, seems to parallel them both in a way that would be amazing if it didn't have so many potential downsides.

All three were prone to victimhood.

All three had strong tendencies to look for flaws even where there were none.

All three of them lacked an ability to moderate extreme emotions.

And all three felt I had something to prove, but not positive things. All three seemed to want me to disprove a negative, something that's both impossible and illogical. None of them ever wanted proof positive, like, "prove that you care about me," it was more like "prove that you'll never leave me."

So, what was I supposed to do, sit there for forty years, not leaving them, and at the end of my life, sit up in my deathbed and say, "see? Told you..."

...and then die, and prove myself a liar?

Fuck that.

Oh, and one other similarity: all three lacked forgiveness-sense, either on the giving end or the receiving end. Not only did they seem unable to give true forgiveness for anything meaningful, they also all rejected the idea that they needed forgiveness for anything. Since I was always the damaged, defective one, far be it for me to ask them to apologize for anything they might have done.

I was with Janet about ten months... Carrie a total of about five months, and Melody about six. And in all three cases, the time seemed much longer because the time was so much... thornier. Compare and contrast the discontiguous year with Penny, which seemed to fly by, seemed effortless, even if it wasn't as much of a challenge in good ways and bad as these three women.

All three relationships ended when I realized that these women were Bad For Me™. I did eventually make peace with the other two, though the process often took six or eight years... Janet is now a doctor somewhere in New England, Carrie has found an effective treatment for her MS and sings every week.

I talked a long time last night with a couple of friends. None of them ever pulled out the phrase "I told you so." I think this is probably why they're my friends.