The day has dawned, and with it I awoke feeling renewed, refreshed. Myself. I’m no longer freaked out by my ex’s situation. I have always known this was coming, though I hoped it would not.

I remember one night my bff and I were coming home from somewhere and she asked me if I’d ever seen the campus of the state mental hospital where she worked. I had not. We were going right by it so we took a detour and she showed me around, in the car.

It is such a nice facility, with well-kept grounds, a number of dorms, shops etc, for those who live there. She told me you have to be basically destitute to get in there. At the time, my ex was in the process of losing his home, and his business. I knew then that the house was because he had convinced people to loan him money he couldn’t pay back. He’s very persuasive. The business he lost because he just didn’t work. He stayed home and drank, and left it to people unequipped for the task of running a business.

Anyway, as we drove around, and she told me how you can’t have anything to get in there, I said, “Oh this is where my ex is going to end up.” I didn’t mean it as a joke, and neither of us laughed. She knows, she lived through the demise of my marriage and his subsequent journey to the place he is now.

It’s sad, but it’s his journey. I couldn’t help him. I told him more than once, maybe a dozen times, “You are going to die old and sick and all alone, because you push away the people who love you.” I also told him, when he began to devise some scenario in his head that was completely off the wall, “You make up stuff in your head, and then we have to live as if it’s true.” Usually that would stop him, and he’d at least let it go a little. Most of the time, he refused to listen to me, and thought I was out to make him look bad. I blamed the alcoholism.

Now, it feels like I am the only person he trusts. He called yesterday, and left a voice mail to say “hi”. It was shortly after my friend left him. I have the number blocked, but this morning, I am wondering if I should make an attempt to convince him to take his meds, and do what they ask of him. I feel quite strong enough to do it, but really, in the end, I’m not sure it would be the right thing to do for me. This morning I feel detached from him, I know he’s sick, and that he’s in a place that will care for him as well as can be. I just don’t know. If I talk to him, I might be just feeding his delusion. At the same time, he might be convinced to take his meds. However, it would only be temporary, because he probably won’t remember that he even talked to me within hours.

So, no, I guess not. I will leave it to the professionals. They may have to get a court order to force his meds on him. That sounds so ugly, but my friend who’s the psychiatric nurse tells me it’s done on a regular basis for people with paranoid delusions.

He sounds so pathetic in his messages. Weak, and confused, and grasping at the last straws of his life. I feel for him, I really do. When I left him, I only felt relief. I never missed him for a second, I mean who would miss someone who abused them on a daily basis? But I believe in unconditional love, meaning you don’t get to pick and choose who you love. I can feel the caring for him bubble up, but it’s tempered by the knowledge that he is one of those people I can’t have in my life, that even from the confines of his hospital room, he will only bring chaos to me.

I’ll leave it be. If the staff asks for my help, I’ll give it. I won’t offer it up to him, unbidden. I’ll send up my prayers for him, and let the universe drive his train, as I let it drive mine.

Love and light to all.

At the end of the day, things have calmed down. I have a better understanding of the process of dealing with mental illness, especially when it’s through Medicare. Every state is different but my friend who is a psychiatric nurse, and the social worker, have kind of filled me in on the processes. So there are some avenues to getting him to take his meds, and keeping him confined.

The best thing is knowing I don’t have to talk to him. Or even hear the phone ring when he calls. I can listen to his voice mails if I want, when I want, and won’t be blindsided by his delusions again. That fact alone helped me to calm.

I got down to the water and took a 2 mile walk. They have swings down in the beach front park, like porch swings hanging from a metal frame. I found an empty one in the shade and just sat and rocked and listened to the water, and felt the breeze blowing for about a half hour. I kind of did a meditation, and some self-reiki, and got myself calmed. I realized when I calmed how stressed I had been, over my ex, my niece’s illness, and the obnoxious and arrogant selfish conversation with my now ex-friend on Saturday night, preceding all this chaos followed by a demand I pay attention to his problem Sunday morning. I can still hear him yelling over me, “I don’t want to hear about your problems.” Geezus.

Delete. Lol.

People ask me why I care about what happened to my ex because we’ve been divorced 8 years. One reason is he is my son’s father, and a man I lived with for 40 years. He isolated us so much that I am the only one with the information the psychiatrists and social workers need to make a decision that will keep people safe. Not just my ex, but anyone he may come in contact with. If he’s released, and doesn’t take his meds, which he won’t, and feels backed into a corner because no one will believe his delusions, he could easily turn violent, and has guns and I want to make sure they understand this. As long as I don’t have to talk to him, he cannot trigger old shit in me, at least not to a point where it starts to really affect me. But I do have some PTSD from all those years of abuse, and lies. Now when he starts to tell me one of his stories, I know he’s delusional and very ill, but it still brings back a lot of memories of being manipulated by very similar stories that he made up. When I left him I said that he does not know the difference between truth and a lie. He believes if he says it, it’s true. And now he’s done so much of the lying and fabricating , he’s living within his delusions. It’s sad, and scary to me.

I know it’s upsetting to people who love me that I continue to deal with this. But I’m not dealing with him, it’s the dr’s and social workers that I’m dealing with now. I know what I’m doing, and once I know that they understand, I’ll let it go.

Well it’s off to bed. A few of my girlfriends are coming over tomorrow for moral support. I think we’re going to gab and have Chinese take out. Should be nice.

Love and light, all.

Day 3.

He’s been admitted, he’s an inpatient now at the hospital. This is the psych ward of the regular hospital.

So he’ll be there for awhile anyway, which is good news.

This morning they put me in touch with the social worker assigned to him, so I finally got to talk to someone who knows something. He called me again twice this morning, and I didn’t take the calls. She (social worker) said that’s fine, I don’t have to. He told her I’d been in CT, with my son, that the 3 of us had spent a week together and everything was great and then I went back to FL without telling him. I assured her none of it was true. I gave her a bit more of his delusional history. She said he doesn’t realize you’re divorced, and listed only my son and I as contact people. I gave her his sisters name and number.

I called my bff who works with the mentally ill at the state mental hospital. She went to see him on her lunch hour. He recognized her, but that was the extent of his reality. She said he has 0, ZERO, connection to reality. He has something called “flight of ideas” and switches instantaneously from one delusion to the next. He told her that my son was on his way to see him today. She also is upset that they are talking about releasing him at some point, as am I, because as she says, “Where? Where are they gonna release him to? He’s having paranoid delusions, he’s refusing all medication, he thinks there’s a conspiracy and they are trying to poison him. And how can they know he’s not a threat to anyone?” It’s terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

The therapist finally called me back and made an appt to talk on the phone next Monday. I guess that’s not bad, though I really hoped we would talk today. I feel better though, knowing it’s ok that I don’t answer his calls. However, when the social worker called me originally, she called from the same outgoing only number that he calls from. So I don’t want to block it, but I will let it go to voice mail and call her back if she leaves a vm.

I called my atty’s office up in CT, because I want to find out if my son will have any issues legally with any of this, since I would assume that he is actually next of kin, probably before his sister. Like…he owns 3 cars, etc. And how will his rent get paid while he’s in the hospital. Just some clarification. The receptionist was out to lunch and my atty is traveling at the moment. I’ll leave a message with the receptionist when I can reach her.

I’m about to go for a walk by the water. Needing to get out of the house. Needing to get centered, and grounded again. Lots of stuff on my mind this morning, like what did I do, or what do I need to change about myself, to stop attracting men with such difficult issues. I can’t reconcile it at the moment, but I guess that’s a convo for the therapist. I always thought if I loved someone enough they’d feel it, but if they don’t know their own worth, the love I give them isn’t going to help them. And I think I’ve wanted to have it finally appreciated by them. Funny, now my ex hallucinates about a happy life with my son and I. The other man is still wrapped up in his own misery. And it all fucks my head all up.

Well, here’s to some clarity. It’s a beautiful day here, around 75, and sunny. The ocean always calms me and clears my head, so I’m headed there for awhile. Then I’ll try to come back and call the psychiatrist again.

Wishing love and light to everyone. Including myself, lol.

Today was an interesting day. The fall-out from yesterday slowed some from the frantic pace of yesterday, but it had it’s moments. It was trying. It was not quite at the emotional level of yesterday, but not too far below it.

My ex called me from the hospital. He had a new delusion today. He was sure that my son’s car had broken down on the highway near me, that my son was on his way to sell an amplifier to someone, and he was in trouble. And I needed to go help him. I could not convince him that my son was in Colorado, and at work. He tried to get me to say I was in CT for a week, and when I said I was not he got angry.

When I hung up the phone I called the psychiatrist again. She wasn’t in, so I was transferred to the floor nurse. I told her about his call. She knew he was agitated. I told her I didn’t know how to deal with his phone calls, that I had no experience with mental illness. But that if he continued to get agitated, he might lose his temper and he has a terrible temper. I asked if I should have just played along with him. She said that would be a good idea. Soon he called back, and I told him not to worry, I would go get my son and he was fine He said he was so confused and then thanked me, sincerely.

I called the psychiatrist and related the whole episode to her. Telling her yet again, to please not release him, that he has no grip at all on reality and could be a danger to himself or anyone.

The whole thing made my heart ache, and my stomach upset, to have to listen to his earnest delusion and realize how far gone he was. I tried to find a therapist for myself today, which was ridiculously hard, but am now waiting for a call back.

My sis and brother-in-law came over and took me to dinner. We went to the Italian place we’ve been dying to go to. It was delicious and just what I needed. A couple of friends called me to check on me. I am very blessed in that regard.

Love and light.

I’m going to try to write about yesterday.  It breaks my decision to not write about my personal drama, but I really need to write this out, for my own sanity.   First, my horoscope (I’m an Aries) for today said the following:

The Moon understands Mars well today, so give yourself a chance to follow wherever your heart leads. Emotions are there to be recognized and finally worked on, and you’ll feel that there are many opportunities opening in front of you when you listen to your inner senses.

For as long as your boundaries for the outer world are clearly set you have no reason to worry about your situation. There is just enough passion inside you to always light the way and just enough strength to stand against intruders.

Very appropo.   I spent the day recognizing a multitude of emotions on a multitude of things yesterday.  In a 12 hour period my life was picked up, turned upside down, and everything shaken on to the ground. I have spent the time since then, trying to pick up the pieces I need to keep, and putting them back into some semblance of recognizable order. Some of them, I left on the ground, the ones that did not serve me anything but ugliness and someone’s chaotic egoic self-serving drama.

Yesterday morning I was up early because I had the Rock-A-Thon fundraiser I was supposed to be at at 7, and it was about a half hour away. (I never made it, I texted them and explained in a broad way.) I got up, went in the bathroom, came back out got my phone and saw a missed call and voice mail asking me to call her from my bff in CT. That’s not ever a good thing at 6 AM. I called her right back.

She had the police at her house. They wanted to talk to me.

Apparently, my ex had a complete psychotic breakdown. He had gone to the police early in the morning, and told them that I was being held against my will at a house in town, that I was a hostage. He gave them an address and described the house. This had to be around 5 AM, since they were at my friend’s house at 6. The police sent him home and went to check it out, thinking they had a serious situation on their hands. They woke up the poor guy, and probably everyone else who lived in the house right after, to see if I was in the house. I feel so bad that happened to those people. I can’t imagine how freaked out they are.

I know where the house is. But I have no idea who lives there, and I doubt he does either. It’s on a street where two of my friends used to live, both have moved. It’s a nice upper middle class neighborhood, and the house he chose was a log cabin. He had the exact address, which only makes me think he had to be scouting the neighborhood trying to figure out which house I was held in.

He told the police that he’d called my bff that morning, to see if she knew where I was and that she didn’t know.

When the police got to her house they asked her if she knew my ex. Of course, she’s known him 20 years. Then they asked her when was the last time she talked to him. She said, “At least 10 years ago.” They asked if she knew my whereabouts and she told them I lived here, and as far as she knew that’s where I was. They said are you sure, and she said, “well, I haven’t talked to her in a couple days, but Ill check FB and see if she’s posted anything about being up here.” Which of course I hadn’t because I was home in Florida.

They got on the phone with me and verified that I was me, and that I was safely in Florida. They asked a lot of questions about him, and I told them about the very crazy and weird conversations I’d had with him over the last couple weeks. Particularly, the one in which he asked me if my son was in the car with me and if we were heading to his place with “Mike”, and I’d had no idea what he was talking about.

After about 10 minutes, they told me they were going to go back to his house and call an ambulance and have him taken to the psych ward at the hospital. Which they did, and that’s where he is now.

My friend called me back after they left. She works at the state mental hospital in their dental clinic and is very informed about mental illness, and was able to calm me down somewhat. She told me to call my sister-in-law, because she is really next of kin. Although, I still think that if he had to give a number to call he probably gave them my name and number, because I think he still thinks we are married on some level.

But you know how it is when something of this magnitude comes barreling into your life. You try to absorb the information, and it expands and grows, as you realize what’s happened.

He called me from the hospital. I knew the exchange of the number was from that town and thought it might be the hospital. It was him. He sounded scared, and ready to cry, and said, “I just wanted to make sure you made it back to Florida ok.” And I said as quietly and calmly as I could, “I never left Florida. I’m here, and I’m fine.” He said, “Ok, thanks…” I’m assuming that he was getting agitated and aggressive in the hospital because he still believed I was in danger, so they let him call me to reassure him I was ok.

That call made me so sad for him. And somewhat guilty, that I was his only thread to sanity, and I’d failed him. (Though that’s not a role I kept, it just crossed my mind at the time.) I was ready to cry, I was crying I’m pretty sure. But I knew I needed to call my sister-in-law. I took a few minutes to catch my breath, but plugged on, and called her. I reached her husband, after leaving a voice mail on her cell, and told him what was up. Then she called me back.

They were not surprised, though they were shocked. Does that make sense? On one hand, my sister-in-law said, “I’ve always known if the police showed up at my door it would be about my brother, that there was always going to be a tragic ending with him.” On the other hand, the actual break, and the detail to which he built this delusion was shocking to any sane person, especially those who really knew him.

We all agreed that I needed to get in touch with the hospital, and give them information on previous, kind of psychotic episodes he’s had over the years, all of which I always wrote off to his alcoholism. He was always prone to believing someone was out to get him, when things went wrong, but he usually snapped out of it. Maybe that’s because I was there to explain to him what happened, and he hadn’t been isolated for 10 years. I don’t know. We also all agreed that we would stress to the drs how important it was that they didn’t let him out. That if they gave him meds and a dr. appointment he would not take the meds and would not keep a dr. appointment. And that he would be a definite danger to himself and others. My in-laws are worried that he might show up at their door, because he is stuck in the past in a big way, and she lives in the house he grew up in. He may wander up there looking for his parents, if he isn’t under treatment. And he’s so capable, when he’s not delusional, of selling snow to the eskimos.

I am so grateful that he went to the police, and didn’t show up at the guys house where he believed I was with his 12 gage. Just so unbelievably grateful for that.

Anyway, throughout the day, I talked at length to a psychiatrist at the hospital., to family, to friends, trying to re-center myself. And they called back, too, checking on me. But the hardest call was to my son, to tell him. It still makes me cry, to think he has to deal with a father who is this sick. He doesn’t deal with him first hand, but to there are so many layers of trauma for him with his dad, God, I did not want to add one more horrible one. But he had a right to know. We talked through it, he wondered if he was responsible because he would not talk to his father. I told him that he did with his father what he had to do to survive, and that I was ever so grateful that he hadn’t spent the last 7 years trying to understand or rationalize the crazy things his father says and does. For all my wishing that he had a relationship with his dad, I am so grateful now that he cut that toxicity out of his life, and stood strong and followed his heart. We’ve talked , and we talk every day. He’s going to be fine, though his head is still spinning, and I know this will have to be an ongoing conversations between us.

I had a good friend yesterday who suggested I see a therapist, and I think I will call my dr today and get a referral. In talking to my sister-in-law yesterday, I found out my niece, my godchild, has cancer and is undergoing radiation treatments, and will need surgery when that is over. This news was pretty new, and she hadn’t told many people yet. They’d just been trying to deal with it personally. Another close friend of mine told me her husband, who is also a close friend, was an undiagnosed diabetic, and got an infection in his toe that got in his bone, and made him so sick that they had to amputate his toe. So…the bad news just kept coming, and I felt so bad I hadn’t known, hadn’t been in close enough touch to support them.

I spent a lot of time crying yesterday. All of this trauma was exacerbated by the fact that I found something out Saturday night, before any of this, about someone I cared about that turned my head around, and gave me an entirely new view of that person. A view I didn’t like, at all. A view I don’t want in my life. It was unacceptable to me, on an extremely deep and personal level, and that friendship is over. It took all day yesterday when I wasn’t dealing with the other stuff, to end it. The other person kept contacting me insisting I deal with it, and I kept saying let me be today, I have some other real issues to deal with but they couldn’t let it go. I didn’t want to block them, I just wanted some space to deal with the real issues at hand. In the afternoon, I dealt with it, angrily, because of the selfish and self-centeredness on this friend’s part not to even ask or listen to me about the problems I was trying to deal with. I was on an emotional precipice and so when I dealt with it, it was without much grace, but with a lot of honesty, and bluntness. The fact that it was pushed on me to deal with it at such a time just made me want to end the friendship more. There are things you can accept in your life, and things you can’t, and there were multiple things that came to light that I just could not accept having in my life, aside from the unbelievably selfish way I was forced to pay attention to the other person, with absolutely no care or concern for what I was going through. I did receive an apology, but not until I was so angry I never wanted to talk to him again. It’s done, and I’m ok. It needed to be over and end in a way that there was nothing left.

That was not the worst thing that happened by far. It was, actually a blessing, to find it out now, and not later and not to invest any more time or energy into a friendship that was completely not what I thought it was. I’m really ok with it.

Those were the pieces I left on the ground, when my world shook out yesterday. I was so exhausted that I had no problem falling asleep last night.

I hope that yesterday was one of those days when it looked like everything was falling apart, but it was really falling together. Time will tell. I know there will be some hard times ahead. I also know there will be blessings to come out of all this, that the universe will take care of us all somehow, if we just let it. Today I’ll call the psychiatrist back, and give her more information, and, try to emphasize again, how much his family does not want him released to the public. I’ll find a therapist for myself. Then I may go sit on a beach somewhere and listen to the waves break on the shore.

Love and light, and if you made it til the end of this, I thank you for reading it.

It’s been a bad day. I rarely have them, but I had one today. It started last night, and continued through the morning. It just got worse, with every passing minute. Bad news piled on bad realization. The need to tell people who needed to know some of the bad news, and then, in talking to them finding out more bad news.

So during a lull, I sat on the couch and cried. And cried. I did a meditation. It was good. I stayed focused on it. I stopped crying. At least for a moment. Then I had to talk to more people. Some I chose to talk to. Some were hassling me, trying to get me to focus on them, on their little share of all the bad news.

I put the phone on silent, and made the calls I had to make. I called some friends, some family. I was buoyed by their support. I remembered that my life here, my everyday, ordinary life is good. It’s wonderful. Thank God. But sometimes….we all have those sometimes days….there is just too much for one person to deal with. And I was, essentially, despite all the phone calls, alone.

I took a walk, down by the water. It helped. But not as much as it could have, because there were more calls, calls piled on calls. The calls were divine intervention, some of them. People I know and love for a long time who could talk to me about the issues, because they had some real life knowledge about them. Like a blessing, the universe put the people in my path that I needed today. And family too.

What I found out is that some of them are dealing with their own real shit, and we were able to support each other. Real friends, who are there for you, and who know you’ll be there for them.

About 2:30 I realized in the middle of my walk that I was hungry, and I hadn’t eaten yet today, and I needed to get home and eat.

Which I just did. I ate, drank some water, and put on a Netflix series I’ve been watching just to take my mind off of everything for awhile. My little sis said, “Do you have anything to make a Bloody Mary with?” Joking, of course. She knows better. Right now I think I’d be sick.

I apologize for the cryptic-ness of this post. I may be able to write about some of it sometime. It’s kind of like putting it on paper gives it form, and I’m not ready to do that publicly yet. No one died. Just some things happened, that are beyond my ability to comprehend, and to assimilate. I’m letting them percolate through my psyche. Staying in the moment, which is enough. I’m glad I’ve done the work I have in the last many years.

I’ll be fine. I know that, for a fact, I will be fine. And I pray everyone else will be too. My constant prayer for everyone: “Please, God, watch over them and keep them safe.”

Love and light.