Guilt & Trap

I finally quit my job at RecSports.  I've been joking about quitting almost since I started but I today I emailed my shift supervisors to let them know I would not be coming in anymore.  I feel bad about not honoring the 2 week notice policy but I doubt I would have ever needed a recommendation from this minimum wage waste of time.  Nevertheless, I feel guilty about leaving everyone "high and dry."  The hardest part about quitting was knowing that my I'd be hated by everyone who now has to work harder due to my absence.  But I'm happy to be free.

In many failed marriages, the discontent party often expresses how he/she felt trapped.  This is a terrible feeling but how do we find ourselves in these predicaments?  Why are we signing up for things if we don't want them or, more commonly, we don't know what we our getting ourselves into?

My first "girlfriend" post-elementary school was in 8th grade.  The day we became boyfriend-girlfriend is a little foggy, not unlike the confusion felt after a hard blow to the head.  I cannot with certainty recall what was going through my head but I consider that under the circumstances I didn't have time to make a thought out decision.

At this particular cross-section of eighth grade, I hit a local minimum in my time-harmonic attitude towards dating.  In other words, I was not really interested in dating anybody at that time.  Unfortunately, when you are segregated within a small gifted program, there is always a chance that you may attract the affections of a peer, through sheer overexposure.  One day, in my English class, a group of girls surrounded me before the late bell rang and began the siege.  "You know (NAME) likes you, right?!  Right?!  So are you gonna go out with her?? Huh?  Huh?!"  I couldn't think.  I was a dear in headlights.  All I could manage was an "Um, sure" with an uncertainty in my voice that should have been a giveaway of my true feelings.  Amidst this dialogue, sits the girl in question, freaking out in the corner of the classroom over the embarrassment.  "Did you hear that?!" the lead girl shouted, "He said 'YES!'"

My first girlfriend?  Really??  I immediately was hit with the oh-crap-how-am-I-going-to-get-out-of-this feeling.  But I said yes.  I couldn't just recant immediately.  Then how would I look?  So I was going to have to suck it up for a few days before letting her know it would not work. 

In the mean time, we went on with business as usual.  We continued playing 4Square during PE like usual.  We were still both in band together.  We both competed admirably with the Math Team and Academic Team.  Yet, I can sympathize with the hurt that I must have been causing her.  If I were in a relationship with someone, and they were around me all the time but never wanted to be near me or express any sort of affection, then I would feel alone, unloved, and helpless.  That is how things remained though.  I felt trapped and afraid of the guilt I would have in breaking up with a girl I never even liked and I'm sure she felt trapped by her helplessness to change our dynamic to the one she imagined it would be when the boy she liked said "yes."

After the last home Academic Team match of the season, we were walking down to the parking lot and she said optimistically, "I can't believe it's already our three month anniversary?!"  The news hit me hard.  I had to recount the weeks to see if she could be right.  "It's been that long?" I asked, "we need to talk..."  I then proceeded to awkwardly attempt my first dumping.  It was not good.  I felt like crap.  But by the time I got in the backseat of my mom's car, I was relieved to be free and knew that it was better to hurt her now than to hurt her more over time out of guilt. 

I have since been on both sides of the guilt-ridden break-up.  I've actually been on each side more than once, but this was my first of either.  I'd rather the lesson I see in this experience now had been more obvious to me then.  Maybe then I wouldn't have found myself repeating the mistake when the naivety of pubescence was no longer an excuse.

As I've said before though: I jump the gun with girls.  I find myself trying to move things along way too fast and I seem to try to trap them into a relationship with me.  I need to learn better.  I need to learn patience and to respect God's timing rather than unsuccessfully trying to force my own agenda.  Otherwise, I will inevitably be left when they get over the guilt and get out of the trap.