I don’t know why
It took so long to see
To understand
The truth.
Why I put myself through that
Again and again.
Asked for it,
Begged for it.
Suddenly, I was sick of it.
I couldn’t bear another minute
Games games games
Didn’t you get tired of it?
The last game you played,
the last words you said,
Slammed my door shut
With hurricane force winds.
The love that hung on the walls of my heart
Broke free of its hooks
Setting my heart free.
No more, it sang, no more.
By Deborah E. Dayen
I woke at 5 am this morning, listening to the peacocks behind the house with their loud cawing. It was first I’d heard them, and I smiled, knowing “I’m in Florida now for sure.” Not that there are peacocks everywhere in Florida, but they seem to flourish in this old historic neighborhood.
I had plenty of time to get to the town dock for the sunrise. There were 5 or 6 of us this morning, and it didn’t disappoint. The sky was glowing pink when I left my house for the 3 minute walk to the dock. It was breathtaking. I got a couple of shots.
Then as it came up over the horizon, due to the cloud cover it was a perfect, well-defined golden orb, not unlike a full moon.
It felt like a sacred experience, for a few moments. I thought about how every incident in my life brought me to this place at this time. I’m grateful for it all. Even the last few days, as unpleasant as they were, gave me clarity, and definition. About what I want, what I want to attract into my life, and what I want to let go of and never experience again. A new day dawns, ripe and ready for all the good things in life to come a little closer to us all, if we allow it in.
I know that still, everyone does the best from the level of consciousness that they are in at the time. I have been frustrated and angry that my life, my history, my memories have been toyed with by someone else, for purely egoic reasons. And denied, to please the one with the big ego. It is dysfunction at it’s highest. I allowed it to wrap around my level for a time, and bring it down. I have let go, unwrapped it, cut the cords binding it, and rise again.
I still have to recognize that that’s where they are, and that I can’t expect more, nor stay angry about it. It’s done, it won’t happen again. I feel like I was a distraction to them, that they could agree on. Like Brene Brown calls it “common enemy bonding.” It’s not real, it’s not lasting. There are still lies that haven’t surfaced, but they just don’t matter now. Who cares? The issue with the lies is between them, I am removed from it, thankfully. I always say the truth will float to the top at some point. My life moves on, theirs does too, and how that story ends is anyone’s guess, and I’ll never know. Nor will I care. I don’t know that I’ve gotten to a state of forgiveness over it yet, it’s a little fresh, but I know I’ll get there. I work at that, it’s something I want to achieve, so I can go on without holding onto the anger and negative emotions of a past which really has no bearing on me or my life now.
I’m going to my high school friend’s today for a couple of nights. I’m so excited. We don’t know what we’re going to do, but I know we’ll have fun. I know even though we haven’t seen each other for a couple of years, we will fall in like we were never apart. These girls know how to laugh, and love and have a great time, and bring in the goodness of life. WE’ve been friends since we were 13 or 14. It is going to be a welcome change, as it has been with my sister here.
It’s all been exactly what I needed. I’m looking out my sis’s window, at the bouganvilla cascading from an old intricately woven tree stump. And reminded how much beauty is in the world, and that that’s what I want to focus on now.
Life is good. Really, it is. Love and light. And laughter.
Funny, every time I get an email from B, something about it niggles at me all day. I was at the beach and figured out what it was today.
She said “you’re right, he did care for you. Not in the way you wanted and hoped for, but I know it was more than sex. You tried really hard, too hard for your own good really. Maybe it had deteriorated to nothing more than sex, and anger and heartbreak or seems that way.”
First of all, how in the world can she speak to what I wanted or hoped for. I’ve never opened that up for discussion. And how can she speak to how he felt? She wasn’t there. She wasn’t in that relationship. I find it arrogant and passive aggressive at best for her to be speaking for me, and for him. Let him speak for him, let her stop qualifying our relationship to make it suit her emotional state, or need to assure herself that it wasn’t up to the level of hers. For all she knows,it was way past that, and I know it was in many ways, but couldn’t maintain that level with a liar. She has no idea, and shouldn’t pretend to me or herself or anyone else that she does. As for it deteriorating, she has no fucking clue what she’s talking about, and I resent that she even has the audacity to attempt it. All I know is he cared for me, I don’t need it qualified by her in any way, and in fact resent it. She has no fucking idea what she’s talking about. She’s hoping that’s what it was. That may be what S told her. A proven and bonafide liar. To regurgitate that to me in an email is ludicrous, insensitive and again, passive aggressive.
In one of her earlier emails, she said she would “let S respond to it.” Well isn’t that fucking big of her, to let S respond to my email about the BS that he tried to shove down my throat. As if she owns him. When I was with him, his mantra was, “Don’t tell me what to do.” And I didn’t want a man I could tell what to do. I wanted one who could stand on his own two feet.
She’s letting him speak, how nice. And she’s speaking for him. How not nice. And for me. Pisses me right off.
So, I’ve taken steps to assure that it won’t happen again, that I won’t have to listen to one more word of BS from either of them. And hopefully, this will be my last post about them. so that I can erase them and this incredible amount of BS from my life.
As they say in Looney Toons, That’s All Folks. The end.
Maybe I tried too hard to dig down and let stuff go last night, because he’s been in my head all day. Not all good, not all bad, just is there. It could be just those bottom layers, coming up, needing to be sat with before they will depart for good. IDK. You’d think with all the work, and cord cutting he’d be gone from me. It scares me to think I may never be rid of this connection with him.
I’m cleaning the house, and once again, ridding it of things that remind me of him. I need to put away the prism light he gave me, taken out when he came to see the day after my mother died. I was so bereft, and he offered, and I was so glad to see him, and have him here. His presence was comforting, and sweet, and caring. We didn’t intend to do what we did, but I guess it’s’ just how we are. I remember putting my hands over my face, wondering what I was doing, but not stopping. It felt like I was undoing some of the torture from the way we ended last October. I remember not wanting him to leave.
I have to put away the coaster I put back on his side of my bed, taken out when he spent the night here a few days later. And used again, a few days after that.
Small things…..that’s all I have are small things. Except memories. None of them are small enough.
I wasn’t looking for a commitment. I knew he was confused, hell, I was SO confused, and he professed to love her but be mad at her for “running”, after telling him she could deal with whatever was in my blogs. She couldn’t, not many women could. I told him that. I was just happy to be with him. We felt close, he confided so much in me, I talked him down, I made him see that all might not be lost. I probably also thought, how much could he love her, if he’s in my bed a week after she leaves him? But never said so, I didn’t want to know the answer. I was in the moment, I loved him, I wanted nothing but his happiness, and to be with him. I saw him in pain over her, and tried to help. It wasn’t even hard to do. We pledged our close friendship always.
And then he turned on me, when she found out that the following weekend I’d spent it at his house with him. He’d already said he wanted to cool it between us, he needed time to think. I was ok with that. But I wasn’t ok when he found out she was hurt by it, and said he hadn’t wanted me there. That I was pushing. That was so untrue, that was such an attempt to rewrite history. He wanted me there, just like he wanted to come up here the week before. 3 times in a week. Even that day, that he found out that she knew. Hours before that he’d asked me to call him and wake him from a nap. So, I did, and he kept saying how he wished I was there. To negate that there was something between us, because she was hurt, was so disingenuous, so hurtful, such a betrayal, again. It wasn’t all lust. We spent hours talking, literally hours. More than ever before. Every night, texting in the day, and suddenly he’s telling me I was pushing and he didn’t want me there. It angered me more than hurt me, because I had no expectations of a future with him. I’m moving, he’s a mess….I just didn’t expect him to disown whatever it was that we had. It wasn’t what he had with her, but it was something. It meant something to both of us.
So, today, I will put these things away. I’ll get out my sage smudge sticks and cleanse the energy in the house, and also around me. Someone told me to ask for my aura to be protected from his energy, so I’ll do that too.
I’m going out with a friend tonight. Food, drinks, a band. It will be good to be around people, it will bring me back to this moment, the present moment. To the good life that I have. I’ll remember how little joy there is with him, in the long run, it always ends up being painful, I always end up hurt. I will walk, not run, away. Just walk at my own pace, there’s nothing chasing me, even though I’ve been looking over my shoulder, wondering. I need to remember there’s no joy in the place I’m walking away from. So stop looking back.
It seems crazy, I mean really mind-bending crazy, to say I miss him at all. Because every thing I think about that I miss about him, is now tainted with the deception and the lies.
I miss sitting outside, on my deck, and talking till the wee hours or in the wee hours of the morning. About anything….and just talking, and laughing. And flirting. Flirting until we wanted to go back upstairs to my room…..
I miss that.
But now I know that a lot of those nights last summer, he had come to me from her, or was going from me to her. So it’s tainted, and now it hurts to remember. Or makes me angry. Or some of both. And I’d just rather not feel any of that, so I just shut the door.
I miss our intimate sexual conversations. But they too are tainted. When Betty found out, he tried to say we were just kidding around, that he wasn’t serious.
But he was. Then. But now he denies it. He dishonors it. He makes me feel dirty, and stupid. He says it meant nothing to him.
But it did. Then.
I remember quickly, that he denied her to me. Just exactly as he denied me to her. So it’s just who he is. The narcissist who plays women for all he can personally get from them.
He used to say, in general, why can’t people remain friends when they break up? So they had some bad stuff, they couldn’t make it together. Does that have to negate all the good times they had.
I think, that in this case…. Yes. It does mean that. Because when lies and deception undercut a relationship enough to destroy it, it also undercuts everything about that relationship. All the things you valued, all the things that made you excited to see each other, that made you want each other, that made you enjoy each others company, that made you laugh til you couldn’t breathe, and then make love the same way, are all undercut by the lies, by the deceit. None of it seems real anymore. It seems like it was all a lie. It was all just a deception on someone’s part.
Not mine.
So, we have to let it all go. We can’t just let go the actual incidents that caused the break-up, we can’t just let go of the pain that caused our hearts to stop beating, at least for the seconds around the moment when we realized the truth.
We can’t keep the parts we wanted to remember forever. I can’t remember being on the beach in Matunuck or driving around in the car, or Watch Hill, or East Beach, not my deck or his or my bed or his, or any of it, not one second, without a question mark at the end of my memory. Was he playing me then? I wonder. Then? What about then? Why did he take me there, and tell me it was his special place….and make me feel so honored he took me there. Why did he share so much of himself? Was it even true, or just a ploy to make an empathetic loving soul have one more reason to love him? So that now, I have a beautiful, tainted memory that I have to let go of. That I’m not sure of.
I’m letting it all go, I’m almost done. Really. It doesn’t hurt much anymore, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t keep any of it, and think it’s real. It all is pretty meaningless now. I didn’t want it that way, but he did. Or he wouldn’t have…..done what he did.
So I’ll live like water, I’ll go with the flow, and I’ll let it all go. Because that’s the way it has to be, to move on.
My book club is reading “The Untethered Soul” by Mark Singer. I have seen him on OWN, on Super Soul Sunday and liked him. I just started the book, but he begins by talking about the voice in our heads.
He asks why we discuss with ourselves, in our heads, situations and things that we know. I thought about how I keep re-running the chaos that ended the relationship with Scott, and replaying it in my head. Why?? do I do that to myself?
I know what it was, I know how it hurt, but I’ll never really get past it if I keep re-living it in my head, or here on the page. I know what happened, I know how I loved him, I know all the red flags that I ignored, I know what he did to me, to her. I know how he is now, there’s nothing that needs to be figured out.
I would like to shut that conversation down permanently. I don’t want to forget, I just don’t want to be obsessing about it. It was traumatic, yes. At my age, I’d never experienced it before, and was blindsided that it happened. But I need to let it all go. Why give all that bad news my continued attention?
Gratitude is a better place to go. This morning I woke up after a poor night’s sleep and thought about all the things I do have. My great son, a lovely home, a lot of friends, a decent job, the real possibility of retiring and moving closer to family. I’m grateful for our incredibly mild winter so far. I’m grateful to have a few things I love to do passionately.
If I think about my relationship with him, I am going to be grateful that I found out I can love passionately, despite my long abusive marriage. I honestly never thought I would when I left it. That I chose the wrong man, is secondary to the fact that I was able to passionately love someone.
I guess a relationship that was so passionate, was probably not going to end quietly. It was bound to go down in a huge explosion of emotion. We were night and day, just as he said in the poem he wrote me. When we occupied the same space for a short time, there were fireworks in the sky like the blazing colors of dusk and dawn. Sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes the display was terrifying. Now all the fireworks are spent and I am going to just let the memories fade, pack up my stuff and go home.
I have a lot of good years to live yet. I don’t want to waste any more of my days trying to make sense of that chaos. It will be an effort at first, because I think it’s a habit now. But I’ve never been an addictive person, and I can change that.
With gratitude, and a conscious effort to extend love and compassion wherever I go.
A few days distance from the lies, and the waves of my emotions are returning to a place I am more comfortable with. Gentle swells on the ocean, rhythmic rising and falling. My head has stopped spinning and the heavy weight of so many lies and such deceit has been passed from me to the universe, where it will be righted, and atoned.
I have so often espoused unconditional love in my blog. Last night, I suddenly felt a wave of deep sorrow, not for myself or Betty, but for S. I just cannot imagine living a life in which I thought I had to lie and deceive to keep people in my life. I have this same feeling about my ex, I cannot imagine feeling so unworthy of love and belonging that I felt the only way to keep people in my life was to control and abuse them.
That being said, I know it is the journey of both men to discover that they too have a center in their soul which is an expression of God. I cannot help them. If they don’t want to find it, they will not. Free will….lets them choose.
If only they knew the joy that lay in letting that light shine.
I know my ex, when he was young, was trying to let it shine. He tried to do the right thing. I have to say, he was faithful to me and never lay with another woman. But he was unfaithful to me, in his lies and dishonor and disrespect, his anger, his self-centeredness.
I still feel that when I met S, and he was just out of chemo, he was grateful to be alive. He was trying to live his life in gratitude. While he didn’t disabuse me of the notion that Betty had done him horribly wrong, he didn’t talk much about it, and only said occasionally he didn’t know how he could have been so wrong about someone. He added no other lies to his repertoire that I know of during that time. There was the prison whore, but he did come to me, look me in the eye and tell me he knew he wanted to be with other women. The fact was that he couldn’t take my sorrow and my sadness. I think he was shocked to see the depth of the love I had for him. He told me he would rethink it, and we continued on. But the desire was in his heart, and he did the prison whore a couple of weeks later, and told me. Then he came to me, and told me about it from where he stood, and I understood him, and I forgave him.
The point is, he was trying to be honest then. That’s when I fell madly in love with him.
And a month later, when Betty came back into his life, the lies began. Based on the man I knew and loved, why would I have even suspected? Maybe he just reverted, maybe the pull to his younger self was too strong, the energetic ties there too strong for his newly found honesty and gratitude to survive. There was so much history there to remind him, at the deepest level, of who he used to be, and he succumbed.
I think he liked the drama. He loved living on the edge. Once he told me about being rescued off a ship by helicopter. I asked if he was afraid. He said no, that he felt the most alive when he was living on the edge. Every time he was with one of us, and we hadn’t figured out that the other existed, he felt had walked on the edge and survived.
Sadly, I think the only time he felt loved was when someone was crying over him. And maybe when one of us took him to our bed and adored him.
The only time he felt alive was when he was risking it all.
Therein lies his work, if he chooses to do it.
What do I do about my belief that the love never dies, that my love for him was unconditional? It is, it was, it will always be. But that doesn’t mean that I accept his behavior. It doesn’t mean I would ever subject myself to the possibility of that kind of pain again.
But I look at him, and still see that child’s soul, just wanting to be loved for simply existing, but never receiving it. Never having his own soul’s beauty validated. He became what he believed he was, he lived up to the expectations of other damaged people.
I hope he will go within, if he remains alone. Or even if he doesn’t. I hope he will try to learn to love himself, and let that light, that I glimpsed for a few lovely months, shine. I hope he will own his own story and see the incredible lessons he can learn from it. It’s not too late for him, even at age 66 he can redeem himself. He can still evolve.
I’m just much more comfortable with love than hate. I am more comfortable hoping for the best in his future, than dwelling on the ugly in his past. Who more than S, needs unconditional love? He is in my prayers.
Not that I want his future to include me. My path has gone far from him, but he will always be a big part of who I am. I learned so much from this experience. Hard lessons, and some happy ones. The one I am happiest about is that I am capable of loving someone so intensely. That I am not afraid to be seen, regardless of what the outcome will be. Obviously, the outcome here was not one I wanted. But I trust that there is a reason for that, for my higher good, and everyone else’s. I trust that I needed to learn these lessons to be ready for the outcome I want. I have faith that it will manifest one day with someone more closely aligned to my vibration.
The hard lessons, well, we all know what they are. I’ve talked about them enough.
Looking for balance this morning, I guess. I know this much is true….The love never dies. It has become like water, transformed into a cloud, and will rain down somewhere else soon.
Here’s the problem. I went to bed last night and thought, without thinking, this is S’s side. I get a pizza, and think of ordering it the way S liked. I get dressed, and he liked me in this. None of them are conscious thoughts, they are just there. Permeating every thought. My text alert goes off, and I think it’s him. I put him on “do not disturb” do I still get them, but there is no alert so they don’t make my heart stop. I will just see that he’s texted when I open my phone. It’s a small step, but it helped a little yesterday. There probably won’t be anymore texts anyway. I think he’s done, he’s not going to try to pull me back. He knows my mind is made up. I know he thinks I shouldn’t care about her being in his life….but he knows I do. I’m not sure he understands how he irretrievably broke my trust, because that would mean he had to look at what he did to figure out why.
Whatever.
This morning is easier. Every second takes me farther from him. Every second that passes dims the memories, the hopes, the desire. And anyway, when it gets bad for me, I can visibly see him Monday night, watching me suffer and not giving a damn. Just drama to him. Feelings aren’t real to him, he doesn’t have any, even though he declares he does. He kept saying that, “I have feelings too”. I said “but no one knows what they are. You never talk about them.” So…whatever they are, that might have soothed my soul to know he could feel something about the end of our relationship, will forever remain his secret.
It’s his way. It’s why we can’t be together. I just wish he hadn’t drawn me back in so many times. I wish he’d just let me go the 4 or 5 times I tried over the summer. Even when HE was the one who said he needed to go off and find out who he was, when I said, then go, S, find out. You can check in with me whenever you want., he would be drawing me back a couple days later. For a guy who wanted to be alone, he made a pretty concerted effort to keep me in his life. I drew the line at having a purely physical relationship, so I didn’t see him much. But I was there, every day, all day, texting, sharing…every day.
I guess that’s what i will miss if I ever get past the hurt, is his funny quirky sense of humor. He says it was different when we could sit on the deck and talk. Of course it was. There wasn’t a third person in the relationship. Of course it was. I wasn’t expected to share him.
He calls it a green-eyed monster. As if there is one woman in the world who would be ok with being dumped hours before she expected to see her man, dumped for another woman?? Is there anyone out there that would think it’s ok for him to see her Saturday and me Sunday? Seriously?
Ii just wish the ache in my heart would go away. Time, distance….right now it feels like I need to travel to Mars to get away.
I saw S last night. It was a kind of swan song, I guess, though not so graceful as a swan. We got a take out pizza and took it up to a park and ate it outside, it was nice out, about 70. He had been asking me to talk to me, so I finally relented, having things of my own to ask, and to say.
I wrote a blog last night, and then took it down. I wrote another shorter one, and put it up, but it’s not here this morning, so I don’t know what happened to that one. No big deal. I had just begun to process what happened anyway, and I felt confused, disjointed. I still do, I will for some time.
He says he is not “with” her. That he still does not want some intense loving relationship with anyone. Ok, I can buy that. But he’s spent part of the last two weekends with her, so he obviously would rather be with her than me. I suppose, because I do feel intensely about him. There is nothing about me that is not passionate. The way I loved him, the way I love the ocean, the way I write, the way I feel about anything. She and he don’t talk all week, they never did, he told me that when I met him. He likes that. They would get together on the weekend, for some of the time. I can’t even fathom, a 12 year relationship in which i didn’t communicate with my significant other all week, but got together on the weekend for some semblance of intimacy. I could not even consider it a relationship, to bed someone that I was not involved with 5 days a week, and then suddenly saw on the weekend. It would be like being with a stranger.
He always complained I talked too much. I think he and she occupy the same space at times, but don’t have much to say. He buries his feelings, they are not up for discussion. My feelings…well, my heart is on my sleeve. No one ever has to wonder how i feel. It’s the only way to be connected to the rest of the human race. I know it is the only way to allow love into my life, and creativity, and joy, and trust. I know now that not everyone deserves to hear my story, to have my trust. But still, I will only temper the ease with which I lean into vulnerability, I won’t change it. I think all humans crave connection, I agree with Brene Brown that it is basic to the human psyche.
To fall in love with a man who wished no real connection….well, it was not something I ever considered, that there are people who freely admit they don’t want that deep, rich, full connection with others. In this way, I understand that part of why he is “with” her, or not “with” her, as he says. She wants no connection, nor does he. They are acquaintances, who share some physical intimacy at times, but not really connection, because then they go their separate ways and have no interest in maintaining the tie for the next week. No deepening of it, no reveling in it. Just do it, enjoy it, and go home. It’s a lifestyle I can’t fathom, and can walk away from, and leave it to them.
Personally I think she wanted more, which is why she cheated on him and left him. Perhaps, in practicing disconnect all those year, she was unable to put herself out for someone else, and after the infatuation wore off, she couldn’t connect with her new husband. She also went back to what she was comfortable with. I would expect that she is a lot like S, with walls up to keep people out, and herself walled in. The fact that she could leave him when he was dying, and take all she could from him, is another thing altogether.
I still don’t understand, why he would invite back into his life, someone who did what she did to him. He said he wipes the slate clean, he doesn’t hold a grudge. I said, I don’t hold one with my ex either, I have forgiven him for what he did to me. But would I welcome him, and that, back into my life? No, never. I know what chaos he can cause…I know he hasn’t changed. I know what he would bring. It’s one thing to forgive, it’s quite another to ask to be taken down again by inviting it back in. But it’s not my cross to bear, and I won’t be there to pick up the pieces for him when she does it again.
In the meantime, he has the relationship with which he is comfortable. Physical need fulfilled when he needs it, and not to have to give anything up.
The whole thing makes it much easier to let go. I can love the man, I will always love the time we spent together on my deck, in my bed, driving around on excursions, our funny flirty texts. But knowing that what drives him is an intense desire to be alone, even when he is with someone, just allows me to let go. It is the opposite of what drives me.
I love connection. I love intimacy, emotional, spiritual and physical intimacy. I know there are men out there who love it too. I now look forward to finding one, and putting S into the “someone that I once loved” category. It’s where he wants to be.
He said, “Can we still know each other, can’t I still call you and see how you’re doing in Florida?” I suppose, maybe someday, his voice won’t hurt me, it won’t remind me how I loved a man who wanted no part of it. Maybe someday we can be “friends”. The trouble is I will never be that disconnected. The love I feel for him will always be there between us, even when it’s buried, and I have let a new love into my heart, and built a relationship with someone who wants to reciprocate, I’m not sure I can ever talk to him without remembering.
Right now, I am looking forward to moving on, but I’m not moved on yet. I still feel wrecked, broken, confused, rejected. I had hoped for some tenderness from him last night, I guess that’s why I went, hoping he’d at least own the fact that his actions devastated me. But there was none. There was more him telling me it was my own fault, that he was honest with me. He was….but he knew how I felt, and did nothing to mitigate the pain that what he was doing caused me. I can own the fact that I loved him without limit, knowing he didn’t want to, and didn’t feel the same. But so what, he knew. He spent time with me knowing how I felt. He pulled me back to him in every time I tried to leave. Why he did that I don’t know. It was dishonest. There is something abusive about that, being pulled in, just to fulfill his ego, with no intention. “I don’t want you to dump me” he said to me back then. So, he wanted my adoration, he wanted what I did for him. And he used me, and threw me out.
Last night I realized that I am left by myself to find my way back. He says he has feelings too. And he’s all about what he’s feeling, making sure I understand what they are, but he’s not able to feel empathy for me. Disconnect. Walling oneself in, so no one can get in, and you can’t get out, and the only thing that matters is what you feel. As I can’t comprehend the disconnect he has, he cannot fathom the love I felt.
He watched me cry and shake. He made no move to comfort me. He had no remorse, no empathy. Cold.
It was a little hard to take.
But he is who he is. Like I said, I can much more easily let go. I knew when I met with him, that if nothing else, I would get clarity. And really, that’s all I got. But it’s something. It is positive motion. Pretty soon, I’ll stop writing about him. This blog will anger him I’m sure, but that seems to be all he can feel with me anyway. Anger because I wanted to be with him, anger that I loved him and wanted him to love me back. Anger that I wasn’t satisfied with the non-loving relationship he’s been trying to push on me for 6 months now. Anger that I can write so openly about him and I. Don’t worry S, no one will ever know who you are. She walked back into his life, and he could suddenly have that disconnected, shallow relationship that he wants, where he doesn’t have to give anything of himself. Oh, maybe money, maybe things, but not anything of himself.
It was me who finally said, “We really don’t have anything to talk about” and got up to walk to the car. There was no hug and kiss goodbye, there was nothing said. I gave him the pizza I’d bought, that i didn’t eat one piece of. We just each got in our car, and drove home, knowing that there really was no way back.
Disconnected. Over. Done.
Onward, as Liz Gilbert says. Onward.
Add-on: I just remembered, when I talked to him on that fateful Saturday, when he told me he was going to be with her, I asked him if she knew that he texted me at 4 am, that he asked for pictures of me the night before. He said, no. I said “well tell her, she deserves to know the truth. ” When he objected, I said, you tell her, or I will do everything in my power to tell her myself.” At that, he got furious, and threatened me, enough so that I screen-shot the text, for my own protection. So, that he’s not “with” her seems to be her doing, not his. He clearly thought he was “with” her when he spoke to me that morning, and didn’t want any interference of the truth to change it. And now he rewrites history.
I’m up early this morning. I have been out on the deck since the very first rays of sunlight edged the eastern horizon. It’s still, the birds are not even singing yet. And it’s cool, I’m wrapped in a blanket. It promises to be a beautiful day.
I’d thought I was going to the beach today, but that didn’t work out. It’s ok, though. I am going for a walk with a friend this morning, just back from Martha’s Vineyard where she has a summer home. It will be good to catch up. My son will be home from his music festival in the early afternoon, and it will be good to see him, have his somewhat chaotic energy back in the house. And his help in finding and getting rid of the snake!
I am better this morning. I have a selenite healing wand with a fluorite tip on it. The two stones are very healing. I held it to my heart last night. One of selenite’s metaphysical properties is that it helps to break up patterns, and I felt it was exactly what I needed to get over S. I need to break up the pattern that my mind and heart go through when I think of him. I held it there, and repeated “detach” like a mantra. Focusing on the word, on visually seeing the energetic cords break off and fall away. I fell asleep with it that way. I think it helped. Because this morning when I think of him, I remember all the ways we did not get along, all the reasons I tried to break it off with him all summer, and he kept drawing me back in.
Looking back, I suppose he just didn’t want to be alone. I don’t think that he thought that, purposefully. Just, he really has so few people in his life. His daughter and son, and one good friend that I know of. He wasn’t in love with me, but he liked the fact that I was.
I am putting that in the past tense. I think I can just begin to feel the transformation of what I felt for him, becoming something else. Something less painful, something more like the words of that song “You’re just someone that I used to love.” No mean intent, just that I can feel the first tendrils of moving my heart away from him, and the pain and chaos loving him has cost me.
I’ve known for months we were not meant to be. We never saw each other for one, which was his decision. Not mine. But I stopped fighting it long ago. I saw him maybe 4 times all summer. So why is it such a big deal that he is not with me now? Because he’s with someone else, and it feels like rejection. Because I am jealous, I would have liked to be someone he wanted to spend more time with, but I never was, so I need to stop making it out to be like he ever wanted to be with me anyway. He just liked keeping me on the periphery of his life, liked knowing there was someone out there who adored him.
Well, I don’t, adore him at the moment. I’m not mad, but this morning I am real. His relationships are all pretty dysfunctional. He has been healing the one with his daughter, but Betty Boop will probably reverse that in a big hurry. Too bad.
I have lived such a dysfunctional life with my ex, that I was comfortable with S’s ability to create a dysfunctional relationship with me. I realized that this summer, there are probably 3 or 4 blogs about how I tried to end it with him, and he talked me out of it. Most notably, the time in maybe July, where he had just pulled me back in with the possibility of him being very sick, and then disappeared on me for 4 days. I mean, literally, on the weekend, he called and asked me not to “dump” him, and told me how he is sick and the constant pain of his headaches was making him behave poorly, and so I didn’t, and I think he came up to my house that weekend, maybe. Then the next weekend his mother died and he disappeared to New Jersey, without a word, and I was calling the hospitals here to see if he’d been admitted, because I was afraid he had an aneurysm. I was so terrified. He came home and texted me like it was nothing.
Dysfunction.
I don’t need that. He once told me that he and his ex gf used to fight passionately, and make up passionately, and that there had been many times when they had separated for months at a time. This was when we first met, and I thought, I don’t want any fighting passionately. When a fight begins, I run. I was the runner. I have had more than my share of hard fought, blood and guts fights in my life, and I don’t like them. Back then, he didn’t yet know she had married within months of leaving him. I think he thought it was just another temporary break up. One day she messaged him, after I’d been seeing him for a couple of months, said she wanted to see him. Of course, I was terrified, and he was kinder then, than now. He told me to not worry, that I was taking him out of the equation, that he was just going to talk to her, and it didn’t mean he was going back to her. Turns out she wanted to meet with him to tell him face to face she was married. He disappeared then for 2 days. Wouldn’t talk to me, or answer my texts, left me hanging out to dry, just kind of like this weekend. The difference was he gave our relationship no consideration this time, He just said, “she’s back in my life.” After 18 months. He let go of me so fast, that it’s taken me days just to get up on my own two feet again. I was blindsided, not only by Betty Boop’s appearance in his life, and mine by extension, but by how easily and quickly he threw our relationship to the wind.
Well, it’s all moot now. She’s back, and I am letting go. I think about all the hurt, all the times he disregarded my feelings because he couldn’t cope with his own. When I am in a relationship with someone, him included, generally I consider their feelings first. He and I both were dysfunctional, we could not figure out how to make it work.
It was a bad relationship. It is good that something happened to make it actually end, to create an ending that there is no bridge from to get back to where we were. Where we were was not a good place anyway. I know there are much better places ahead of me, than behind me.
I’m going to have a good day today. The knot in my stomach has unraveled some. I made a pot of chili yesterday, but couldn’t eat any of it. We’ll have it today, with some good bread. I’ll work at opening the door for something “magnificent” to walk through. I know the rest of my life will be wonderful, I know what I want, and where I’m going and what I’m going to do when I get there. S is beginning to fade, and I can imagine, for the first time, that a day is coming where I don’t think of him wistfully. Maybe kind of, he was kind of a cool guy but so messed up. I’d like to remember him fondly, but not painfully. Someday.
Not there yet, but like I say, I know where I’m going and what I want, and that’s what I want. Just to let go of it all, say I loved him once, we had some fun, but we had more pain, and we let it go.
The end.
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