Category Archives: Abuse

That Ugly Power and Control Gene

Posted on by learning to live like water

I shared a post on FB of the cover of the latest New Yorker mag. It’s a very unflattering caricature of the Cheetoman, hitting golf balls at the White House, breaking windows. It’s pretty funny. Someone commented that he is such an “unqualified” public servant. I replied, “he’s not a public servant, he’s a public nuisance.” Seriously……he only serves himself. Jimmy Kimmel had a video up from his show where he shows how the tweeter-in-chief has a habit of moving things when he sits down. At dinner, at his desk, or coffee table, at a conference…what ever. I think my ex used to do that a lot, especially when he was trying to show that he was working. Control issues, both of them. Gotta re-arrange the table setting to show it’s never right.

Then I saw a video, on FB, of Cheetoman in a ceremony to sign a bill, with everyone there, and then he walked out of the room without signing it. He thanked everyone, said we’d see some immediate changes, and then left the room. Pence tried to get him to come back, and DJT told him to bring the bill with him. He’s starting to lose his shit, really. It’s wild, but kind of scary to see someone in that position who is seriously losinig it.

Every day, there is more stuff about this mans inability to deal with his job. After dealing with my ex last week so much, I can’t really watch him much because I swear, he even looks like my ex. Same facial expressions, when I know he was trying to fool everyone that he actually had a clue what was going on, but didn’t. I really hate to listen to him. So most of the videos I just watch and shut the sound off.

It’s scary really, when someone is so hell-bent on power and control that they will lose everything, like my ex did. But to see that same personality type….with their fingers on the nuclear codes….and randomly tweeting in the middle of the night, constantly disrespecting our allies. Crazy scary shit.

I learned a lot about power and control when I left my marriage. I had no idea what had happened to me until I was in an online community for abuser survivors. Then, I found Brene Brown, among others, but it was her TED talk on vulnerability that really broke it down for me. I wonder if the orange one’s father berated and belittled him his whole life, like my ex did my son. Like my father-in-law did to my ex. And all of tRumps wealth and running for a job for which he is clearly unqualified, to say the least, was to prove to his father he was worthy. And I bet he’s still not. This is just random musing on my part, but he sure fits the bill.

What I’ve learned is that these people never can change. They will go down with the ship. You can’t save someone hell bent for terror. I tried, I kept thinking that one day he’d snap out of it, one day he’d see what he was doing. but he just consistently became more deeply imbedded in it. My ex would rather have lost everything than admit being abusive. The stories he makes up now, I just have to pick my jaw up off the floor. I gave up a long time ago setting his record straight. It only creates an argument to tell him, for example, that he had 16 years with our son, not just 6 or 7. He made up this outlandish statement to try to explain why his son wouldn’t talk to him, rather than face that fact that he was horribly abusive to him. Just made up a story, that he can tell people, so he’s not at fault, so he doesn’t have to face the shame.  I am so glad I had my moment of realization that he was never going to be able to change, and was never going to allow my family to live a normal life, and moved on.  Because, look at the life I have now.  It was worth 4 years in court, to salvage the rest of my life.  It was even more worthwhile, to see how well my son is doing, because I gave him a chance to see a different way of living.  Not in fear but in love.

DJT too, just tries to cover one lie with another. He’s a bully, to hide his own fear rather than face it.

Well, it’s whatever. I guess I’m a little retrospective today. That power and control gene is a tough one.

I have a nice day planned. Going out to the “Frankie and Johnny” show tonight to hear my good friend sing. Might even put a dress on for it, lol. It’s a beautiful day today, 80° and sunny. I probably need to do some baking for my son in the next day or two. And maybe for our new writer’s group. That should be fun. Think I’ll take a nap this afternoon too. I was up in the middle of the night again last night, and finally took an Ambien. I guess I got some sleep. You know those nights when you wake up and you don’t think you’ve been asleep, but the clock shows the passage of hours….That was me. I don’t want to be falling asleep at the show tonight.

Love and light everyone.

My Pot Boileth Over

Posted on by learning to live like water

Do you ever have so much to say, and know you should just keep your mouth shut, so you don’t start WWIII?? That’s me, right now. All day. I’ve been a simmering pot, which is on the verge of boiling over. So I’m here, letting off a little more steam, trying to keep the mess to a minimum as I deal with a whole bunch of crap.

I have so much I’d like to say about the lie and the liar who told it to me last night. Unwittingly, because the liar forgot that lie had already been told to me once, and tried to lie about it again. Like, really? Didn’t that happen oh, 18 months ago? No?????? Oh well, you said it did. You actually confirmed it on two separate occasions. And now, you have lied so much to so many people, you can’t remember that you already used that one on me. So which one was a lie? I think the 18 months ago… Not the one last night.

There is smoke fuming out of my nose. And my ears, and my mouth and my eyes. There is a volcano bubbling up and I’m gonna have to find some external method to stop it from bubbling over. Anger is slow to rise with me, then it sets on fire, then it subsides, all pretty quickly. Usually. In this case, it may take awhile.

Maybe because before the lie, earlier in the day, I’d been informed there was a shopping spree on, and I might get chosen for a test ride, mabye even purchased, like what a cool thing that would be!! Wouldn’t anyone love to think of themselves as a product on a shelf for someone else’s enjoyment? As if I was lucky enough to be in the running for the final choice? Yeah…..I was already pretty pissed off about that. Really really pissed off.

Some people are just depraved. Really. I turned a blind eye to it, made excuses for it, for way way too long. But really, how can I continue being deaf, dumb and blind to that kind of sickness when it creeps into my life over and over, in different disguises but the delivery person is always the same one? I can’t, I just can’t. I have to sweep it from my life, from my psyche for one last time. I have no words left to describe what I think of an individual who can actually do and think this kind of stuff, and actually justify it in their sick head. I think it will be easy this time, to keep the house of my psyche clean, as soon as my anger subsides. Writing this out helped.

Ex Triggers

Posted on by learning to live like water

Talk about getting triggered.

Normally my very rare conversations with my ex are short. A few minutes. Last night he talked and talked, for 20 minutes. 20 minutes trying to rewrite history.

I woke in the middle of the night, remembering. I couldn’t get back to sleep, revisiting the hell-hole that was marriage to that man. So I wrote the poem, Too Close, on my phone in the middle of the night. I finally got back to sleep. And hope I’m done with that little foray into the past. There’s still some PTSD left from him. It only rears its head when I have to deal with him.

I hope I don’t ever need to go there again.

I’m really glad we are not going to the wedding of his niece this weekend. I can’t imagine how hard that would have been. I forget when I am not around him. Don’t have to talk to him. At least I didn’t get drawn into some argument with him. Let him think whatever he wants to think. Let him rewrite history to make himself feel better, to take the blame off of himself.

I talked to my son about him, and son just can’t go there. Just can’t do it. He knows what his father will trigger in him. Not thinking that rift will ever heal, because his father will never acknowledge what he did to my son.

It certainly isn’t just S’s betrayal that I will be healing from in Avalon though.  I’ll be 1500 miles away from my ex, and hopefully that distance is sufficient.  S…..what he did was not so pre-meditated, nor systematic.  He flies by the seat of his pants and makes bad decisions because he has an inability to see the bigger picture, and a real inability to discern right from wrong.  He is such a narcissist, “right” for him is what he wants.  No matter what it does to someone else. He loves walking the edge, wondering if and when his footing will give way and he’ll be tumbling into the abyss again.  That’s as pathetic as my ex, though, and I’m just glad I only had 18 months of it to recover from, not years and years.  I just wish I didn’t still feel the energetic connection with him, but I do.  Strong as ever.  I’m learning how to ignore it.

In other news, I’m taking my car into the shop this morning to have them make sure it’s up for a 1500 mile trip. I have feeling it will need brakes. The car has 80,000 miles and the original brakes. They aren’t making any noise, but still…that’s a lot of miles for brakes.

I sent out my retirement announcement at work yesterday to customers and vendors and colleagues. It felt weird, just really really weird.

My friend who’s driving with me to FL is coming over on Thursday night, so we can plan our trip a little. She is 20 years younger than me. She keeps saying we can drive straight through from my sisters in VA, that she’ll drive. But it’s about 15 hours from there, I don’t think I want to do that. We’d get there so late at night. I’ll talk her out of it, lol.

So all is well. I survived the interaction with my ex. So much to do. Onward…..

Love and light.

Too Close

Posted on by learning to live like water

Too close to the abuse tonight
Again.

Too many memories
Flood my heart like a coastal storm at high tide.

Pictures of my sons chest black and blue
His eyes cast downward
As his father cast his own shame into his son.
The biting words, intended to inflict misery.

The way he used my son to make me do what he wanted.
Hurting my son unconscionably if I didn’t follow his sick commands.
I did what he wanted.
He’d brag about it. “See what a little pressure can do?”

How I had to leave my son there,
to forge a way to create a new life for us both.
Scared to death,
but the other choice was to die there, in his locked, sick, dark world.

I wake up, remembering that dark and fearful place.
Remembering what I wished, hoped, had been forgotten.

Remembering now that we made it.
Ten years later, life is bright and beautiful.
Grateful.

Getting From There to Here

Posted on by learning to live like water

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.

Wednesday

Posted on by learning to live like water

God, I was so angry for a good part of the day over him showing her my writing.  Talk about a delayed reaction. I guess if I tried to react all at once from the BS that came from both sides of that equation all at once, I’d be pulling my hair out.   I wrote a scathing blog and saved it in draft.  Right now, I don’t think I’ll publish it, because…to what end?  They’re both low-life fuck-ups, and I just want them out of my life.  I vented it, it’s all I needed to do. I just wish stuff like this would stop popping up.  I will be so glad to be leaving these two in the cold and dark.

I don’t even know if they’re together.   Don’t care.  They are both blocked, on the phone, on email, on FB, and will remain that way.  I can’t stop him from leaving me a voice mail, but I don’t have to listen to it, or respond.  So far he hasn’t tried.

I’m meeting Alec for lunch tomorrow.  He is a retired CPA who ran his own practice with 25 employees and did a lot of forensic accounting for family court.  He called me tonight, to say hi, and to tell me he’d looked up my divorce records, he hoped I didn’t mind.  He said, “Boy you REALLY went through a lot.  You really did .”  I said, “yes, I always take the cake for the ugliest divorce among anyone I know who’s been through it.”  He hemmed and hawed a moment, and said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”  He knows my atty, has worked with her a lot and likes her.

It did kind of creep me out that he looked it up.  I guess he found out I told him the truth.  I hadn’t expected to hear from him tonight.  But it was nice, to have someone just want to hear my voice.  And acknowledge what I went through.  I suppose, being the left-brained analytical type, that he wanted to see if I was just sour grapes or real.  He found out I was real.  He found out I can stand in my story.  He found out just how hard I got knocked down, and sees that I got back up.

And he doesn’t know about Scott, yet.  Not sure I’ll tell him.

I don’t feel a really close connection though. I’m so frigging right-brained.  I’m afraid he’s gonna be like Addison and fall crazy in love.  I hope not.  I just want a friend.  No romantic entanglements.

I took my son out to eat tonight.  Vietnamese.  He loves Pho, the soup.  It’s a really nice place, one of our favorites.  It was good to catch up with him.

I’m falling asleep.  I better wrap it up and go to bed.

Love and light.

A Trying Kind of Day

Posted on by learning to live like water

at-least-i-tried

It was a trying day. Like the kind of day where you’re trying really hard not to quit your job. Grrr. But it’s over.

Since I put up that post about “how long can your sign hold a grudge” I’ve been looking into my Aries traits. I have never been really into astrology, but honestly, everything I read about Aries is on the money with me. Strong, quick tempered but just as quick to get over it and forgive. Energetic. Extroverted. Passionate. Tonight I was looking up my best matches, lol. And whether or not my ex and I, or Scott and I were a good match.  Just informative, I wasn’t doing anything but a little retro-analysis for fun.  Just to see.

My ex was a Pisces. Honestly my Aries traits were so subdued with him, because I was always trying to figure out how to be so he’d be happy. So he’d approve and not loose that vitriolic tongue on me. So whether or not we’d have been a good match if he wasn’t an abusive sociopath, remains to be seen. The site I was reading said Pisces are gentle and intuitive….Well, not my ex. I guess he was in bed, but that was the only place.

But I think when you add all the facets of an abuser to any sign, the rest of the traits are lost, really.

Scott was an Aquarian, and man, he is the quintessential Aquarian. This site said “The relationship of Aries and Aquarius is very exciting, adventurous and interesting. They will enjoy each other’s company as both of them love fun and freedom. Although they share the same personality traits Aquarians need more space than Arians which may create a tiff between them. An Aquarian will always support the spontaneity of an Arian and in turn the Arian will also admire the creativity and innovative ideas of an Aquarian.” Damn, so true….he loved his space (of course, I didn’t know it ws filled with Betty…..) He was creative, and innovative, and I loved those things about him. That his creativity led him to creatively deceive two women….lol. Well, let’s just say, I’m not interested in pursuing that any longer!

I had to laugh….Betty is a Scorpio, supposedly the worst match for an Aquarius. “Scorpio’s moodiness, jealousy, and possessiveness will eventually make Aquarius feel trapped and possibly ignite the water bearer’s roving eye.” Um, maybe…….LOL. Sounds like a match made in, um….heaven? Lol. Well, she should know, she’s known him long enough.

Makes me laugh, how he projected the jealousy thing onto me. Yeah, when he did the prison whore…I was jealous for a moment.  I was more pissed, and appalled and devastated.  He devastated me for a hooker?   Jealousy was a small part of it. When he dumped me by telling me he was going to be with Betty after leading me on all week, I was jealous. But not that much after, I figured he knew what he wanted, and I just missed him.  And still loved him.  When I saw him in January and he was crying to me about her, I wasn’t jealous at all.  Apparently she was, though, when she found out he was with me.  Whatever.  It’s just that I kept wondering why he kept telling me he hated my jealousy when I really wasn’t, have never been, jealous.  I won’t share, but that’s not jealousy.  Hell, I always laughed at the way he flirted with the cashiers and the waitresses, he was funny as hell.  I’ve always known who I am, and that I have value, and if you don’t like it or want it, I’ll find someone who does.

Interesting though. But ’nuff said. Just anecdotal now.

I called my ex this morning, to ask him what would be a good time to drop off all the cassettes I have that I’m gonna give to him, because I can’t play them. He was appropriately grateful. Then he asked how our son was.

I said, “Oh he’s fine. I know he keeps saying he is going to call you but hasn’t done it.” He started to tell me how he thought about it for 3 days, searched his heart….he doesn’t work, and has no friends, so he’s got nothing else to do. Anyway, he came up with the reason my son won’t talk to him (It’s been maybe 6 years or so….) is because my son could never understand why his father and I couldn’t get along and he had to grow up in that bad relationship. Was it ok if he talked to my son about that?

I wanted to laugh. I mean really. But all I said was, “You can talk to him about whatever you want. But you are barking up the wrong tree. The reason he doesn’t talk to you has nothing to do with our relationship or with me.”

Of course he got mad. Got his defensive back up, lol. Idiot. My son won’t talk to him because he physically, emotionally and verbally abused the kid his whole life. Duh. I didn’t say that. I just said, ok, you believe what you want to. I gotta go.

And ended the conversation.

Maybe he’ll call a couple more people who don’t know my son, and haven’t spoken to me in 10 years for some advice. He’s lost his business, his home, his boat, his family. And it’s all someone else’s fault I guess. Probably mine…..

So with that conversation, I became more sure that they will never have a relationship. Even if my son called him, talked to him, the minute his father started on him with this bullshit, son would get pissed and walk away.

His father will never own up to the damage he did. It’s clear.

It’s sad, for my son. I’d love him to have a father. But not one like that, that can’t see the truth, can’t own what he has done, can’t recognize, feel remorse and repair the damage. Nope. My 23 year old son can do that. His 65 year old father cannot.

Sad. It’s sad for my ex. He’s gonna live his life out in this 500 sq. ft cottage, in the shadow of the life he could have had, right next door…..It’s actually kinda creepy…..

So, I’m thinking, it snowed today. I talked to my ex and he was the asshole I’ve always known and loved. Work was beyond chaotic today.

But I did try…..with my ex, to get somewhere with him. He told me he doesn’t want my thoughts on how to resolve his relationship with my son. So he won’t get them.

Love and light to all. Even him…..

 

Sorting, Cleaning, and Organizing a Shift in My Thinking

Posted on by learning to live like water

change-thoughts

This picture at the top is a description of what happened to me today. I’m having a glass of wine, after spending the day cleaning, sorting, tossing, organizing. My nightstands were first. Put the stack of books next to my bed into a box of books that will go with me. Put away the prism light, tho not too far away. Both my nightstands are covered in crystals, which I love. I’ll put them away for the pictures, but then bring them back out.

My dresser, yikes. I have so much jewelry! All but a few odd pieces are things I made. Necklaces, bracelets, wire-wrapped pendants, earrings. How to organize it, so I can still use it, and so it can be hidden for the pictures. I think I figured it out, we’ll see.

Then I went to the spare bedroom closets. I cleaned them out of junk awhile back. But today I pulled out pants and sweaters that I haven’t worn, mostly too big, and won’t need in Florida. Two garbage bags full. Probably take them to Savers, the proceeds all go to Big Brothers and Sisters.

Then I went after two ginormous stacks of papers in one closet, all from my divorce. I can’t tell you how much paper there was, for a divorce that lasted 4 years, went to the Supreme Court. There were filings, depositions, motions, decisions, appeals, agreements (that’s a laugh….every one of them agreed to, none of the agreements kept by my ex), bank records, personal and our business, accounting records, spreadsheets, tax returns, yada yada yada.

It made me unbelievably sad. I found the mortgage deed to our first house, paid in full after 15 years. Our cute little cape cod house, with the slate roof, and 150′ of lake front. The promise was so sweet, we had the world by the tail. Except for the occasional outburst that would land dishes and food on the floor, broken and sprayed all over, for me to clean up. We had a set of collector plates, all Normal Rockwell plates, $40 each I think. He broke every one of them one night. I always thought it was my fault, I’d caused it, that’s what he told me. Sociopaths can be very convincing.

It’s all gone now. He fought to keep my name off the deed of that house, and it was a blessing in the end, because once the first mortgage was paid off, none of the debt that caused him to lose the house in foreclosure was mine. His little plan for power and control backfired.I The universe is self-correcting….

Then I found piles of my old journals. Hand-written on legal pads and spiral notebooks. I wrote them because I couldn’t talk to anyone about what was happening to me, and to my son. I was embarrassed, ashamed, I thought it was my fault. I had to at least write it down, I had to at least release it to the universe. I’d never heard of blogging then.

While I was going through this, as if on cue, my phone started playing “The Prayer”. “Lead us to a place, guide us with your grace, to a place where we’ll be safe.” He did……

I went from the sweet promise of our first home, to hating every minute in that house. Hating to come home from work, never knowing what I’d walk into.

I found the mortgage papers for this house where I live now, after I found the demand letters from my atty to his, saying ok, the Supreme Court says pay her, so pay her. Thank God I left when I did, before he had gone through all the money we spent all those years working for. He still blew his portion, which was more than half. But I got enough to start over, and for that I am eternally grateful to the Universe.

I’ve been so happy here. My son has been so happy here. We had five good years here. Full of love and light and joy. Friends, and family. Spontaneous get-togethers. I think even Scott liked the energy here, he used to love to sit on the deck and talk til the wee hours our first summer together. Even our second summer, we still sat out there talking, though it was not as often, he had Betty then. I will be sad to leave here, but look forward to my future life.

Funny though, when I found all the stuff about my ex, the divorce papers, the journals….I just wanted to pitch them. Been holding onto them all these years, and now, I wanted that part of my life over. And I thought, I think it’s time to say the same about my loving Scott. I need for that to be over too, in my head. It’s still fresh, and I’m still attached by the energy, but it’s over. Today I realized that at the end of the day, I don’t feel much different about him than I do my ex. Sad for them, sad for the promise that never blossomed.

I had a bunch of cassette tapes I took with me when I left my ex. I put them all in a bag today when I came across them and I’m going to give them to him. I have nowhere to play them, he has a cassette player in all three of his cars. I also have a bunch of LP’s that I took with me. Vinyl records. But I’m keeping them, I want to get a turn-table some day.

My sister called me today. So full of excitement about my house, she got me refreshed as to the good things that I have in front of me. She’s scoped out windows for the house, she says her hubby is itching to go do work on the little house. I have gone to sleep thinking about my cute little yellow Florida house with the orange shutters and green trim, and the palm tree at the corner of the house. She can’t wait to help me landscape the yard, she has such good knowledge of what plants will do well, which ones won’t. She is a great gardener. We’ll take lunch breaks on the beach. 🙂 🙂

We talked about how fun it will be for us to live close to each other. We haven’t lived near each other since we left home. She exclaimed…. “I love your little town, I’ll be coming over there all the time!!!” I am looking so forward to being able to say “Hey why don’t you come over for dinner tonight…” Or lunch, or whatever. Just to hang out with my sis, my family. To be able to run to Long Boat and watch the sun go down with her and her hubby over the Gulf.

I’ve been chatting with a man all week, a different kind of guy. He knows I’m moving. He is kind, centered, from what I can tell, spiritual. We have spoken on the phone. He isn’t pressing for anything, except a friendship, meaning, he seems willing to let things happen in their own time. I have not told him of my recent heartache, it seems irrelevant to our very budding relationship. I’m not looking for a relationship. Just someone to do things with maybe and have some fun. It’s nice to talk to a man without an agenda.

I’ve run the gamut of emotions today, covering my life, really, my whole adult life today, in the cleaning out and organizing and shedding of those things which no longer serve me. The men I loved, I still love. Some more than others, for sure. I wish good things for them. I hope my ex can find some joy. I hope Scott does too. My life moves onward. Joyfully.

Love and light…..