This poster is about how it was.  He knew, he didn’t feel it, and he didn’t care.  It had no impact on him at all. He still wanted what he wanted, the effect on me of that was inconsequential in his mind.

Anger has subdued this morning, and turned to a visceral pain. I didn’t sleep well, I was too angry yesterday, and had a hard time calming my psyche for sleep, even though I was also exhausted, after leaving the house at 8, and getting home at 8.  Going to be a long day today.

I don’t understand how a seemingly fairly enlightened man can treat someone the way he treated me. How he could push his agenda, knowing it caused me pain, knowing I didn’t want what he wanted.  I tried and tried to end it in a way we could stay friends, telling him we just wanted different things.  And in the end, he still was trying to come here for the night, even though in the next breath he said he just wanted to be free.  How does he reconcile those two actions?  I have no idea.

He says he has loved women and been hurt by them all.  I wonder….did he treat them all as objects to use for his own gratification?  I have no idea.  He didn’t love me, i knew that.  But I thought he cared about me.  I can’t imagine asking someone to give themselves to you when you know they adore you, and then saying, well it’s nice but I want to be free. That’s caring??  Not in my book.

I feel stupid, then I say, at least I know I can love. At least I know I can feel.  At least I know I am capable of empathy.  I gave myself to him in love.

All winter we would spend the day together, go to breakfast, he would take me places, we would laugh, we’d come back, take a nap, we’d have fun. Then suddenly he stopped, he no longer wanted to do anything.  At first he said he was busy getting his yard in shape in the spring.  But he just stopped cold, anything except “a nice afternoon” or a “Nice night” together. My dreams of summer, that he knew I had, just slipped away.  He was oblivious.  I tried to end it, he pulled me back. Why?

Did it fill his ego to have an adoring woman in the background?  I suppose. He was unconscionable to ask of me what he asked. He knew I was incapable of enjoying that. But I allowed it, a few times, because I missed him.  Finally in the end, I knew the pain I would feel if I allowed it would offset any pleasure it gave me, times10.

It’s over.  I’m sitting with my sadness, and hurt.  By tonight I would expect I will be on a much more even keel, or at least by tomorrow. I am glad I stood my ground, I am happy that I left myself with a shred of dignity.

Onward, as Liz Gilbert says all the time.  Putting one foot in front of the other, making tentative, but real,forward movement.