A blog I follow, Edge of Humanity Magazine, put up a post linking to a video of Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane singing “Need Somebody to Love” at Woodstock. (https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/23191541/posts/1034769613 The quality of the recording is not so good, but it’s Woodstock, and the performance is iconic.

It reminded me of the time back in maybe 1974 or 1975, my ex was driving to Boston in his new Jaguar XKE 12 cylinder convertible. British racing green. He had a CB radio. He pulled up alongside a tractor-trailer. The graphics on the side of it were “Jefferson Airplane”. It was their stuff, being hauled to Boston for a concert. He got on his radio, and managed to hail the driver of the truck. They talked for awhile, and he finally asked if anyone in the band was in the cab with the driver.

“Yeah,” the driver said, “Paul Kantner is here.” Then Kanter got on the radio and talked to my ex for awhile. When he found out my ex was driving the Jag, he asked him if he could pull into a service area, and Paul could ride the rest of the way to Boston with him. Then he invited ex to the concert, backstage, to meet the rest of the band, etc., etc.

My ex had a business appointment in Boston that day. To do what Kantner asked, he would have had to blow it off. So, he declined the invitation.

That was when he was 25 years old, lol. And trying to build a future. But what an opportunity he missed! I was frankly surprised when he got home later that day and told me about it, and that he’d said no. I thought he was so dedicated, to us, to our future, I was impressed. We’d been together by then about 5 years. We weren’t married, but we had a life together. Still.. I was surprised. He could have made up an excuse to the appointment, and had a night that he never would have forgotten. It might have changed his life forever, who knows?

Years later, when I thought of it every once in awhile, I thought and still think about 25 years later when he made excuse after excuse about why he couldn’t get into work on any given day, how he had so much to do. It was our own business by then, and I was there, running it, handling it, enabling him, to sit home and do nothing, except become a seriously abusive alcoholic. God forbid I should ever question him. God forbid I should ever object. Doing that could end up with no dishes left unbroken in the cabinet and food all over the floor. To question him was an unforgivable sin.

Well, I did, finally, when I left him. When I got a job outside the business so that we could eat, because his disinterest in running his own business over the years caused the business to go from gross sales of about $2 million, down to about 10% of that. But getting that job enabled me to execute a plan to leave him, to get away from his abusive ass, and get my son away, and salvage the rest of my life.

Another instance of misplaced trust. Because he did big things, like not miss an appointment in exchange for a chance to meet the Jefferson Airplane, I trusted him to be working toward a nice life for us. I guess he did for years. Just like I trusted Scott because he told me about the prison whore, showed remorse, tried to repair the damage. I thought, if he’ll be honest about something like that, he’d never lie about smaller little things.

But it’s the little, insignificant things that count. Being there, listening to you, wanting to know how you are, if you’re ok, respect, taking an interest, being proud to be seen with you,….I could go on, and on.

My ex was all those things in the beginning. As he began to withdraw into alcoholism and became more and more abusive, sociopathic…he began to isolate himself and his family. Scott…always had isolated us, I kept waiting for him to open up. I kept waiting for him to make me part of his whole life, not just one facet of it.

I could beat myself up over that. It seems so stupid in hindsight. It was such a red flag flying. But when we were together, it was so often magical, it was fun, it was loving (even though he denied that later). I honestly thought he was just afraid, I believed him, that he was afraid of getting hurt again.

My ex….is just such a sad story. He’s just destroyed his life. But he abused us so badly, when I left him I was completely out of love with him. It took me years to work through the anger at what he tried to do to me. I guess I didn’t completely work through it, because I fell in love with a man a lot like him, a pathological liar who could deceive much more expertly than my ex could. My ex actually tried for years not to be who he became. Scott worked at it his whole life, and it shows.

I learned about trust. With both of them. It will be a long time before I trust a man again. I am grateful to Brene Brown for dissecting trust, and showing us how almost every moment in a relationship is either an opportunity to connect or an opportunity to betray. Every small little moment. The few large moments that these two men didn’t betray should not have outweighed all the small, every day, seemingly insignificant moments where they did. Over and over.

I saw my ex do it to everyone, lie and betray their trust. I blew it off for a long time. When he began to do it to my son is when my eyes began to open. It was the unconditional love I had for my son that opened my eyes to the truth. It was a gradual understanding that everything he said was a lie.

Scott, I didn’t see until it all hit me in the face, and knocked me down and broke me into thousands of teeny pieces. His well crafted deceptive screen blew apart in explosions, and ripped me apart. I had no idea, and then….I had to deal with and accept that everything for the last 6 months or so of our relationship was a lie. A manipulation. A deception. I still work at comprehending the depths to which he pulled me. Or tried to. I guess he did pull me there for awhile. I can only thank God that I found a way to get back up, from being flat on my face in the dirt, bleeding and bruised, to my knees, to a crouch, to finally a fully standing position again.

I don’t talk to either one of them now. They both remind me of times in my life I’d rather forget. I’d rather leave them in the past. I can’t help either one. I love them both, I love the light I always saw. I love their potential. But their reality, I can’t be anywhere near. It’s one of the things I will be gladdest about when I move to Florida. To be 1500 miles away from the scene of their crimes.

Sunday morning musings. How I got where I am. What karmic lessons I have learned. I know that these two men were my best teachers. These lessons are not textbook type lessons, they are part of my being now. Part of who I am. I have evolved because of them. For that reason, I am able to be grateful for the experience of them in my life. Now, I’ll take those lessons with me, and perhaps in the last quarter of my life, find the love that can last.

Love and light, everyone.

Thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for the link below.