Here I am, once again waiting for sunrise. I woke at 4 AM on the dot. I tried to get back to sleep but to no avail. I finally got up about 5:30, knowing if I wrote out my feelings, I might be able to sort them out. I was thinking about how Dan stopped by yesterday afternoon with some more of my stuff he found. While he was here, and didn’t even come in the house, I asked him for a folding table I knew was in his truck that we use for sound healing to put the bowls and drums on. It apparently upset him, and he started an argument with me when I told him I’d bought it, and I can use it. So, long story short, I am apparently supposed to be happy with all the stuff he bought me, and while I appreciate his gifts, I wasn’t bought, he can’t pay for me, or my love. He buys without any conversation about it, often stuff for my house that I’m not even given an opportunity to give input on, or have expressly asked him not to spend the money on. But I decided long ago, after repeatedly telling him that it makes me uncomfortable, that it’s his money to spend as he sees fit, he’s a grown man and I assume he can manage his own money.

Anyway, it was not a happy conversation.

Immediately after one of my BFF’s from CT Facetimed me, and we talked for about an hour for the first time in a very long time. It felt so good to reconnect with her. She has been there with me through my marriage, divorce, a boyfriend who broke my heart. She was so happy when Dan and I got together, because she and everyone liked him, I was not the only one who fell for his acting ability. But she supported me yesterday, but she told me how proud she was of me, to be accepting of what is, to let go, to set boundaries.

I had to hang up after an hour because I’d made arrangements to meet a couple very close friends at a restaurant to listen to my two more very good friends sing. (We are all part of the same tribe, as we say.) As I was getting ready to go, the woman singing sent me a text to tell me Dan was there. I was happy, and not happy. Because it still hurts me, that he shut me out, but I was happy he was getting out, and not locked in his condo. But as he left, he walked over to the table, came up behind me and apologized for over-reacting. I thanked him, because it was good that he could acknowledge that he’d been such an ass….but really it was so minor in comparison to the reason we are split. I wish he could apologize for that, and at least try to repair that damage. But that’s wishful thinking, and it’s not going to happen. This morning the poignancy of that dichotomy, what he says and what he does, woke me up and is hitting me a little hard.

One of my spirit girls and I had a conversation this week, on FB around a meme about how relationships are not designed to make you happy, but to help you grow. Because I keep saying that I thought I’d learned this lesson, but apparently not. Immediately after that conversation I found an article by a page called “Fractal Enlightenment” which suggested that we keep coming back to the same lessons because our path is not linear but a spiral, and each time we encounter the lesson it’s from a different perspective. Which, I’m pretty much in agreement with. An understanding of this makes the frustration of having yet another failed love affair much easier to take.

If you’d like to read it, here’s the link:

https://fractalenlightenment.com/40308/self-development/keep-coming-back-lessons?fbclid=IwAR2xqfwcdqIODHYSnIdu2cGUc78ehhXOES-m7sNmOfYGBx-HQf13m2NscE4

Obviously, I am in a serious place this morning. There are emotions running around in my heart from missing Dan, yet knowing that it would only get worse if I didn’t set boundaries. There is only one way to open a path through them. He knows what it is, he chooses not to take it. I refuse to go back to where we were. As I told another old friend yesterday, I can’t go backward, even though sometimes it’s tempting.

I am ok this morning, just working out this stuff. Hope everyone has a good day. Love and light.

I got the rat poison. I opted not to get the kind you throw in the attic, because it kills them instantly and then, you know, you have a dead rat in the attic. I have used them before, but always had Dan’s house to escape to when one died, and ripened. Upon close investigation, I saw no sign that they were ravaging my pantry or anywhere else. No droppings, no chewed through bags of rice or cereal. I’m taking a guess that the one I saw might have snuck in when I left my back door open for a minute. I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since. So I set one more bait station, refilled the one I had and will just continue to monitor them. Usually, they think they’ve found the food when they find the bait station, eat some, and leave. They are small, about twice the size of a mouse, but nowhere near the size of the river rats we used to see as a kid when the Mississippi overflowed its banks, or even in CT, when the Connecticut River flooded and they would come up the sewer lines into our car wash. I’m grateful these are only about 4” long, not 18” or so. Ugh. Rats.

I have been beating up Dan’s old gong stand to try to get it apart so I can put it away. I sprayed all the nuts and bolts that were stuck with WD-40 as well as the joints that just slid together but won’t unslide. I’ve been banking on the crossbars with a hammer, but don’t wish to dent it. I guess I will have to either ask Dan to come and take it apart, which I am loathe to do, or ask one of my friends (male) to help me. I guess the 2^nd choice is the best one. Dan might take it as a sign I needed him, for other than taking it apart. But I’ll try again for a few days, and then decide if it doesn’t come apart.

I sat out on my deck reading yesterday. The temp is coming back up, and it was a perfectly beautiful afternoon, in the 70’s, though it got quite windy. Today is reaching for 80 and I’m so excited that I can put shorts and flip-flops back on. It is such a shame that we won’t be doing a sound healing tonight on the beach, such a perfect night it will be. Although it is still breezy, and that makes it difficult. The gongs catch the wind and have blown over. Still, the wind usually dies at sunset, so I think it would have been doable.

I went to open mic last night. I almost didn’t go, because I was tired by nighttime, but I needed the camaraderie there. It is there that I met my Gulfport tribe. It’s a perfect place, a seafood joint with really good food, really good staff, very casual, wonderful talent. The sound leaves a little to be desired, and used to drive Dan crazy. There are a few people for whom that’s enough not to want to go. But most of us go not only for the music, but to see each other, and catch up, and support those who perform. Last night two people had celebrated their birthday in the last week, so, as is our custom, someone brought cakes and we all sang happy birthday. I knew there would be cake there, so I ate a tiny dinner, and when I saw two cakes (I’d only expected one) I turned to my friends and said, “Oooh, I’m going to be Marie Antoinette! Having cake for dinner….” It was good. And fun.

Everyone has been asking me where was Dan. I have not wanted to tell people we’d split, because they all loved him too. Dan the actor, not Dan the man. They didn’t really know the man. But they all enjoyed his company. However, last week, I just lied, I said probably watching football, until I was advised that Thursday night football is over. Damn, it never pays to lie. I just wasn’t ready to verbalize it, still hoping we could resolve the issues. This week I just said that we’d split up. And while they were all appropriately sad, I felt relief that now all my close friends, my tribe, all know, and I have nothing to hide. Plus I find I can talk about it now without too much emotion. It is wonderful to have the warm cloak of good friends wrap around me. I am blessed.

Love and light, everyone.

Yesterday I met with my Spirit Girls for the first time in 2 months, really I guess since Thanksgiving.  Between the cruise from hell, and all the trips some of them were making to visit family, we just couldn’t get together.   Again, I was, am reminded what a wonderful circle of friends I have here. I also went to my friend’s (who brought me into Spirit Girls) Tibetan Bowl meditation in the morning. On the short drive over (about a mile) I was thinking a lot about the sound healing which will now have to reorganize and regroup. How much I would miss doing it, and how I have to figure out how I can do it by myself.

I had started out to go, realized I had no water bottle with me, went back to my house, and headed over. I was right on time, but the last one in the door. As I walked in the friend who facilitates this meditation was sitting, ready to play, but said as I walked in, “Oh Deb! These guys have been asking me about the full moon sound healing (which should be this weekend).” She had told them that we would miss January’s full moon, without going into detail as to why. But she said, “They want you to do it by yourself, with just the one gong.” And they all (about 8 or 10) nodded their heads vehemently. One couple in particular, who I did not know, said, “I’m a newbie to this kind of thing. But we went to the December healing at the beach and just LOVED it. Please do it again.” It was a sign to me….that my exact thoughts driving there were verbalized as soon as I got there.

This delighted me. I mean really. When people get it, I always feel that is enough reward, to have people love it like I always did, and to facilitate that, at that venue. So I basically promised them I would try to figure it out for February’s full moon, and my friend promised to help me. She already plays her Tibetan bowls with us, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch for her to add my crystal bowls to them, and do all the bowls. Then I can do the gong, walk through the crowd with the rainstick and ocean drum, and still have the bowls playing while I do.

So, I put up a post on my Good Vibrations FB page saying that I’m sorry about January, but will be back in February. I put up a 2^nd post, offering private sound healings at my home. So things change, and we adjust, right? I refuse to give up things I love just because I have to change the way I do them.

I used to be terrified at the thought of performing. But this….it terrifies me to think of not being able to do it. It’s always been my thing anyway. So, I’ll do it alone. Even someone with stage fright like me can do this, mostly because no one is even looking at me. They are all laying down, deep in meditation by 5 or 10 min. into it.

In other news, I have fruit rats again. UGH. They come in out of the cold, and it’s been dipping below 50 at night for a while now. So my job for today is to go to a place in town for do-it-yourself pest control and get whatever I need to get rid of them. Then I have to find someone who will fix my ductwork in the attic, which the rats chewed through, for less than $3000 (my first quote). They have chewed holes in the metal ducts…they eat anything. Dan fixed the biggest one, but it’s a temporary fix. That estimate of $3K seems absurd for a tiny house (912 sq. feet) and maybe 40 or 50 ft of ductwork if I replace them all. I need to deal with that before anything else I do. The joys of owning a 93 year-old house in Florida.

Well off I go. It looks like I just made a list of stuff I need to do today, lol. Tonight I’ll go to open mic and hang out with my friends. So very lucky to have so many good friends in this town.

Love and light, everyone.

I was discussing the Iran/Iraq situation with my 27-year-old son last night. He is fairly jacked up about what’s happening, probably because he has friends in the military, and I don’t think he’s ever seen (have any of us?) such a scary situation, being led by nincompoops who are chest-beating egomaniacs with no experience. At one point I told him that my emotional state reminds me of when I was 11, in 4^th grade, during the Cuban missile crisis.

I remember all the duck and cover drills we had. Some in the hallway, some under our desks. My father was a Lt. Coronel in the Air Force Reserves, and I guess because he was the highest-ranking officer in our little town in Iowa, he was in charge of the reserves there. But my most vivid memory was of him coming to me, at 11 years old, at some point when that crisis was very tense, and telling me sternly, “If those air-raid sirens go off, I don’t care WHAT they tell you at school. You come home.” He repeated it a few times. I lived about 5 city blocks from the school and if I ran would be home in 10 minutes. The thing was it was one of the few times, maybe only times in my life that I sensed fear in him. I think he was asking me to do that, because I’m guessing that he believed he could get me to someplace safer than a brick hallway or under a desk because of his position in the Reserves. There was no question that I would try as hard as possible to follow his instructions.

The small town in Iowa where I lived had no strategic targets, but down the Mississippi River about 30-40 miles was Rock Island Armory, a huge depot of ammunition. Everyone talked about how it would be a target and back in 1962 I don’t think anyone thought a missile was so accurate that a 30-mile discrepancy over 1000’s of miles was not possible.

I was very very scared, to say the least.

I told my son last night, that as scared as I was then, as an 11-year-old, I had the same gut feeling when the bombs dropped on Iraq last night, and that I was even more fearful because we have a lunatic with his finger on the button, and no generals with any experience in a conflict like this because the lunatic either fired them all or they quit, unable to back him in his lunacy. Back then we had Kennedy, who despite his many flaws, I trusted not to be crazy, not to get us into a war. Those were the days before fake news, before people voted their pocketbooks over their hearts, before egos ran the world, before before before.

My son said he believed we would respond to the attack by Friday, as we repositioned B52’s to Diego Garcia, and called for troops to be increased to 82,000. I said that I just prayed that we would all still be alive by Friday. Then I realized that we had the capability to fire at Iran from anywhere on this earth, a capability they do not currently have. So I suppose that we are insulated in this country from attack, at least from without our borders. But the rest of the world? 1000’s and 1000’s could die if we don’t get this thing toned down. But you know, the maniac in the White House needs a distraction from his impeachment, I really believe that, so here we are. On the brink, with the ground crumbling beneath us.

Each and every one of us has to do what we can. Right now, I think praying, even if you don’t believe, is one of the few options we have. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in a foxhole. But if we make it through this, and in my heart of hearts I believe we will, we need to vote, we need to encourage people in real ways to vote. There can no longer be a silent majority in the country because this is where silence gets us. With leaders who don’t lead, instead of beating their chests with a war cry and blood on their hands.

If not now, when? If not me, who?

The hurt is beginning to dull, and I find myself feeling more free each day. I didn’t realize how much work that relationship was for me. To be constantly prodded to argue, when I had no interest. Rarely a discussion, always an argument, which I hate. I found myself having to constantly reassure the man that he had worth, and value. I gave it my all. I didn’t mind, because I loved him and I could see how, and why, he needed it. Though he would never admit that. It’s whatever.

On Sunday, he came to my house purportedly to get a tool he needed. He knew I would not be home. He not only got his tool, but about half his clothes, the 40” gong (which was his) and the buffalo drum, (also his). He only took his stuff. He also brought most of mine. So yesterday, I packed the rest of his things and a friend came with me for moral support to his house to drop them off. I thought he would be gone, since he’d said he had a dr. appt, but he was not. I just left his stuff on the front stoop of his condo, and left. Not wanting a conversation. His front door was open, but I’m guessing he did not want to talk to me either, because he didn’t acknowledge that he even saw me. That was good, that was what I hoped for. We had nothing to talk about, at that point.

As we (my friend and I) drove away, I was flooded with the sense of relief, that it was done, and that now I could move forward. Oh, there were a couple of things he didn’t bring me, simply because he forgot. But I let go of things quite easily, and none of it was worth knocking on his door to retrieve them. When I divorced my ex, I left with a couple boxes of kitchen stuff, my clothes, a bed, a dresser and a rocking chair. I just let go of the rest of it. Even though we’d been together for nearly 40 years, it just such a relief to be rid of that burden that I easily walked away. This relationship was only 2 ½ years old. Much easier to let go, but the sense of relief is quite similar.

Anyway, I’m hopeful that now I am beginning to move on. I have, obviously, returned to my writing. It’s always been my solace and my joy. My habit has been, for a decade or two, to write in the morning, with my coffee. When I worked I would get up at 5:30 or so, just to have an hour to myself for writing, meditation, coffee….before I left the house at 8:15 for work. When I moved, to Florida it was the same, though over time I started to get up later and stay up a little later. But he resented me being behind the computer at the table, so I stopped writing for the most part in the morning, which meant I didn’t write nearly as much. It was my choice, I picked my battle, and that wasn’t one I would have. I wanted him to feel important, so we would talk, but almost inevitably end up in an argument as his choice of topics was always political, and we rarely agreed on that. And, I frigging hate politics. I know what I believe, it is part of my being, and don’t need to try to convince anyone of anything.

In hindsight, it is probably not a good thing to try to build a relationship with someone who is diametrically opposed to my point of view. We were not James Carvel and Mary Matlin. Ah well, live and learn. Anyway, it is so nice to be back to my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own expression.

I still feel enormously sad for him. I know he did not want us to end up this way, but couldn’t stop himself. So yesterday, when my friend told me her husband wanted his phone number, I was elated. Yes, yes. Please! I would be so happy if someone from our group contacted him, because I know he’s sitting home alone, pretending he’s good with it. But I know he will miss our life, so I am happy if someone is able to include him even on the periphery.

Besides writing, I have decided I need a new computer. I am shutting down and rebooting several times a day to unfreeze my cursor or to keep it from jumping all over the screen. Since I’m writing more, it’s really annoying me. I am also really sad that the sound healing will be over, at least in the old form, since I cannot cart the stuff around in my tiny Nissan Versa. I think I could play by myself, because I only have one gong, but it wouldn’t be easy to handle that with all the other instruments. I think in the meantime, I may offer to do private healings in my house, for up to 5 people at a time. If I charged $50 an hour or $30 for a half-hour, I could possibly save the money for another gong. If it’s inside the house, one gong is plenty, since my house is tiny anyway. So I may put something together, so that eventually I can get back to doing it at the beach, or somewhere for a bigger crowd. I have not even wanted to play the gong for the last few weeks. It was our thing. But I’ve taken a long enough break now, I know the healing power of the gong, and I’m going to start to play it again, just for myself, then maybe for others. We’ll see, but that journey is not one that should end. It should just evolve, and that’s what I will endeavor to do.

The next thing I want to do creatively is to get back to my jewelry making. I’d like to learn some new methods, get active on my Etsy site again. It is an activity that I enjoy and uses another part of my brain. I have not been able to motivate myself for a long while now. I have my ideas about why suddenly I couldn’t imagine what to do with most of the stones I have. At any rate, I would like to return to it.

It appears I am putting my irons back in the fire, after a couple years of being told I should just choose one thing to do creatively. I never understood that frame of mind, at least not for me. Why should I limit my interests? I believe it was his way of justifying the fact that he had no passions of his own. Whatever. I guess I am still trying to understand why this relationship, which had so much promise in the beginning, fell apart. But I hope these posts will dwindle and die as I move on with my life. I don’t like to obsess, and it seems I’m doing just that.

So in the interest of moving ahead, I will end this post now. I thank everyone for reading this, as I walk the labyrinth back to the center.

Love and light to all.

Almost laughable
How you talk incessantly
Except when I ask

By Deborah E. Dayen

I guess my cough is slowly improving. Still there, still very annoying at times. I’m getting down to the last ¼ of my 3^rd bottle of cough syrup. And am halfway through the 3^rd box of Mucinex. I am considering going back to the dr, two weeks later, but since I’ve already had the antibiotics, I am not sure they can do anything for me. I think I just have to wait it out.

I have been alone through this ordeal of sickness. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Dan and I are not together right now. I don’t have any expectation that we will be, but it saddens me. It is not just because I’ve been left to fend for myself. It has been coming on for a long while now, as I’ve watched him withdraw from me, even though he seems to deny it. Or at least, refuse to explain it. There is, was no unfaithfulness involved, just lack of desire. I know this because it’s hard to be unfaithful when you are together 24/7.

But I’m ok. I have learned in my life to accept what is, especially that which I cannot change and I have so tried to change it. But the change is his to make. I think somewhere in his heart, he’d like to but just can’t go there. So, I am back to my writing for the time being, expressing my pain here. Luckily I have an awesome group of friends here, and they keep me busy. I think he will miss being part of this crowd, and though he’s not kicked out of it, I know he won’t allow himself to be part of it if we aren’t together. It’s all his choice. But there’s no way to predict the future, I have told him my door is open if he should find that he’s able to share himself with me. It pains me to see him isolate himself from people who truly like him, truly enjoy his company. I don’t think he wants it, but he’s choosing it.

Enough said. Probably too much. I felt the need to say something, since he’s been front and center in my writing for so long. He probably won’t even find out I wrote this, since he doesn’t read my blog.

Love and light to everyone.