better

You know that line from that movie, where Jack Nicholson's character tells Helen Hunt's character that she makes him want to be a better man?

Yeah, I've never understood that line.  How can someone else make you want to be a better person?  Huh?  Doesn't compute.  Someone good in your life may bring out the best in you.  Or make you want to try harder, strive more, challenge yourself.  Sometimes, I think having a good partner, even a good friend, to anchor you, makes it easier to strike out, to reach further, because you know that if you fall, you've got someone to help you get back up.  Which, come on, everyone needs.  But you make me want to be a better man?  No.  I do believe the aphorism that if someone tells you they aren't good enough for you, believe it.

Anyway.  Sort of not the point.  The point is that tonight I ended up doing something that I needed to do, for me, that was harder than I thought it would be.  And I do feel as though forcing myself to do it made me a little better of a person.

I got an e-mail over the weekend from the guy who dumped me about 4 months ago.  Right after he broke things off, he attempted a bit of chatty e-mailing, and I shut that down.  I got no explanation then of why he unilaterally decided to end the relationship, and I would have done unseemly things for "closure" at the time.  Instead, I had a realization that there was no such thing, and all I really needed to know was that he no longer wanted to be in a relationship.

So this weekend, he finally decided to tell me what had been going on in his head.  It was not the most coherent writing I've ever read, and it was less coherent (although longer) than most of the e-mails we exchanged during our relationship.  But basically, if I boil it down to an essence, he broke up with me because he was insecure about our relationship and how I felt about him, but he couldn't say any of those things to me at the time, and he was now feeling out the possibility of maybe giving things another chance or at least being friends.

I considered ignoring it entirely.  I don't owe him a response.  I decided I owed myself a response.  It was an effort on his part to tell me what was going on his head, which was more than happened most of the time we were together, and in a Golden Rule fashion, I wanted to acknowledge that.  While I didn't need it, and I suspected his motives in e-mailing now, I wanted to honor the best intention I could imagine instead.  And also use my words to say, no, there will be no relationship, I wish you had said any or all of this months ago when we could have ended things kindly, and while it's too little, too late, thanks anyway.

All of which I had to type out three or four times until I could say something like that sincerely, without snark, sarcasm, or condescension.  And when I finally did it and sent it, I did feel as though I'd at least honored my own moral code.

What I learned was that it's harder than you think to actually live by your own code, that trying to assume good intent from someone who hurt you is difficult, but that doing it while honoring yourself and your boundaries is actually more worthwhile than you might think.

Feels like a good way to open the new year.  (Also?  Still going good on the produce front).