Category Archives: moving on

When Is An Apology Real?

Posted on by learning to live like water

I just got home from a long day trying to prepare the art center for the grand opening tomorrow. Hanging more art, and cataloging all of it, organizing the spreadsheets so that the we can know which gallery each piece of art hangs in. I am just amazed at the scope of this project, how much participation they have received, the volumes of art that is on display. I felt guilty leaving tonight, but my feet and ankles were just done after 8 or 9 hours of continuously being on them. So I went home, and hopefully will be of more use to them tomorrow than I could be if I stayed later tonight.

Most of the work I did today was fairly mindless, really, though. So I had a lot of time to think. I heard from the nameless one again….I know, I know. Ridiculous. I just kept thinking about how he keeps behaving in ways for which he has to apologize.  Why he can’t change his behavior, but he can’t. An apology which says, “I agree with everything you said” doesn’t mean a whole lot when you’ve heard it so many times. The behavior stays the same….I’ve begged him to leave me alone, and maybe he will now. I also actually feel genuine compassion for B. My anger with him had nothing to do with her, because I knew what he was up to.  He just managed to piss me off royally just by his arrogance, and his narcissism, and I just am so sick of it.  I was sick of it in December.  Didn’t talk to him for a couple months, but then the damn smoke alarm thing, geezus.   However, B didn’t know, apparently (even though I’d mentioned it before in my blog)…and he was telling her something else, from what I gather. I don’t know exactly what he was telling her, and I don’t want to know=. I was told he was not with her, but I guess she believed he was trying to turn over a new leaf. While he was not, while he was continuing with the same behavior he did 18 months ago, and it’s been pretty much on-going since I moved.  The only saving grace was that I am now 1500 miles away, and none of our conversations could be acted on.

Oh, I’m running on, just trying to think my way through the tangled web of lies, that somehow caught my leg and pulled me in. I just feel for her, to be blindsided yet again. But I’m so happy to be out of that triangle, and game that he plays. I feel bad for him, to not be able to change such self destructive behavior.

And I’m so happy to be having such a cool guy as L make me dinner next week. Such a big difference.

So tomorrow will be busy, and fun. Gonna get some dinner and rest. Love and light, everyone.

4 AM Introspection

Posted on by learning to live like water

Awake at 4 Am, out of bed at 5. Not really a whole lot on my mind, except reflection of where I’ve been, and where I’m headed.

I thought a lot about the two men I’ve loved, my ex and S. I clearly saw how I fell in love with them, and why and how both relationships turned out to be so unhealthy for me. I thought about the article on Metta Buddhism, about how you can’t, just can’t, care for anothers happiness at the expense of your own. Any more than you should care for your own happiness at the expense of someone else.

So many of us were brought up to be pleasers, wanting to make everyone happy. Which is ok, as long as you include yourself in that equation. But when a relationship is making someone else happy,or even just filling a need of the other person, but bringing you a lot of discomfort….it’s time to let it go. I stayed in my marriage WAY too long, in the end it brought me only discomfort.  In trying to be the woman he wanted me to be, I lost myself.  It took me years to remember who I was.  Even now, that’s all that talking to him does, so thankfully, I don’t do it often. And S….yeah, I should have let that relationship go long before I knew the truth. It started bringing discomfort to me within the first year, even before his ex came back into the picture and he began the grand betrayal of both of us.  It was always a push-pull game, and I’m really not much of a player. I don’t understand the rules. Nor do I want to.  Again, I filled some egoic need of his, but he was careful not to allow himself to give too much to me.

Both relationships were a matter of me thinking that I could please them enough eventually, and they’d love me the way I loved them. In retrospect, with time and distance, I don’t think either man is capable of that kind of love, mostly because neither one of them loves themselves.

It was just an observation this morning. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

I get “Notes from the Universe” in my email every day Monday through Friday. (www.tut.com) They are written by Mike Dooley, who some of you might recognize from his work with the Law of Attraction. Everyone gets the same note. This was today’s note, which seemed to speak to the observations I was making in the dark, under my comforter.

“Just do it, Debbie.

Everything you need to know, you know, and everything you need to have, you have. Everything!

Time and Space is a primitive school. There are bigger challenges “out there,” bigger adventures, and lots more friends, but you gotta do what you gotta do, here and now. You gotta live the truths you’ve discovered, apply the principles, and never again think, “Why isn’t it working?” “It’s hard,” “I don’t know,” because such thoughts are like hitting the replay button for whatever you’ve just been through.

Look ahead with your dreams in mind and give thanks, because you know exactly what to do.

Tallyho,
The Universe”

I read this, thinking, I know this. I KNOW this. So…gonna try to do this more now. Not forgetting the lessons of the past, but incorporating them into my vision of the future. I hate covering the same ground twice, so I need to stop putting myself in a position where I’m doing that, going forward.

I guess some needed introspection was why I woke up at 4 AM, clear-headed and rested. I guess I needed to put this stuff in it’s place in my psyche

Love and light to everyone.


Leaving

Posted on by learning to live like water

leaving

Asking for strength
To get through the next days.
Friends buoy me,
Mark my channel.
Keep me centered
Grounded,
In the flow.

Looking back at my life
Here
for so many years.
Easy to have regrets
But I balk at regrets.
Lessons, not regrets.
Things I needed to learn
To grow my soul.

In the end,
I have loved,
much more than
I have hated.
I have laughed
More than I’ve cried.
Joy has filled
What pain tried to take away.

So young when I came here
Just legal age.
I leave 44 years later
The largest part of my life behind me.
At least, of this life.
Time for change,
For the next great adventure.

Love and light.

By Deborah E. Dayen

Picture from Google Images

Off, But Not Quite Running

Posted on by learning to live like water

Nice to be sitting in my family room, sipping on a cup of coffee again. Yes, I miss my kid, but I’m not devastated by it. At least, not most of the time. Because I know he made the very best choice possible to live the kind of life he wants. I know he’s happy.

We were talking about when we could see each other again. He was saying to come maybe at Christmas, or in January, because he already has so many people coming for Christmas. I said, “Um…I don’t think I want to come in the winter!” LOL. He said, “Oh well, I thought you might just miss snow since you won’t see it any more.” I laughed and said, “Oh maybe some day. But I’m not there yet….” He laughed. I said when he can put together a 3 or 4 day weekend after he’s done with his initial training, he can come see me. I want him to see my little house, and my new life. So we’ll see. If I miss him too much maybe I’ll brave the snow, lol. But fact is, I hope to be working before Christmas too. We’ll just have to see how it works out.

So much to do today. And every day until I leave next Thursday. I woke up in the middle of the night making lists again, Grrrr. Finally I read for awhile, and managed to get back to sleep for a few more hours. I hope I don’t keep doing that all week! Geezus.

My friend Susan who is driving with me to Florida and I talked last night. She said she’s happy to drive us to the Tappanzee Bridge in NYC, because she’s from New Jersey and has been that way so many times, as long as I can navigate us through the other side of the Hudson River. We’ll have GPS but it always wants to put you on I-95, and we definitely don’t want to go that way. That would take us through all the traffic of NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and DC. Um, no. lol. So I’ll see if I can get the GPS to take us another way. The friend who picked me up last night told me to get the app WAZE, and it will show all the routes, and updates in real time for traffic and speed traps!

I can’t believe I’m gonna get back in the car for 2 ½ days, in 6 days. Yikes. It will be fun with Susan. We’re trying to pick audible books to listen to. She was part of my book club.

Well, off and not quite running yet. But I will be, I have to be.

Love and light, all.

Gaining Perspective Through Transition

Posted on by learning to live like water

This feels so strange. Sitting in the house where my son will live, not with me. But it’s a nice house. It’s a nice room. It’s a neighborhood much like ours at home. The landlady is, like me, quite spiritual. Loves gemstones and rocks like me. Has a wealth of metaphysical books. She doesn’t seem invasive. I’m not leaving him in her care, of course. He’s 24. He doesn’t need a caregiver. But I do think it’s a good step-down from living with me. It’s only for 3 months, then he and his friends will get an apartment.

There are two parks a within a mile of his house.  Big parks with bike paths, and a lake.  Hiking trails all over.  He and his friends were making plans to go hiking this coming weekend.  There is so much to do here.  It’s seriously unbelievable.

It’s amazing how distance, physical distance, can give one perspective on things. I have been able to look at where my life has been for the last couple years objectively. I can see why I made the choices I did, and what I learned from them. It seems easier, when I’m not sitting in the scene of the crime, lol. There is no energy attachment here, to things. There is still to people, of course. Just, when I think about my relationship with Scott, I’m not sitting in the bedroom, family room, or deck where all the lies were perpetrated. It has helped me detach from him emotionally, completely. Spiritually, I think he and I will always have a connection, because I think we always have had one, and I’m sure we will meet again in another life. But that’s ok. It doesn’t make me long for him. I just have to acknowledge the connection that is obvious.

I am quite ready when I get back to move on with my life. To finish packing, to finish saying my goodbyes, to get the contents of my house on the moving van and drive away with my friend. I have been imagining what will happen there for so long, I know that it will manifest. I feel sure of it. Same way I knew that the perfect house would manifest when I bought the house I’ve just sold.

Son and I are going shopping today, for food, a clothes hamper, a few other things, to finish setting him up. I am kind of hoping we can go somewhere to watch the sunset before I leave. I met his friends yesterday, what a nice bunch of guys. They have all done what he has done, moved here from CT. They are really trying to make the transition easy for him. I know Thursday when he takes me to the airport will be difficult for both of us. But I know we both will be fine.

Transitions are hard, this will be one of my hardest ever. Maybe my hardest one ever. But I’ll get through it. I’m strong. I will break like a little girl, to use someone else’s words. But I put myself back together like a woman.

Love and light, all.

One Last Gong Bath Tonight

Posted on by learning to live like water

gong bath

Last night I sent a friend in Scotland Reiki. I only sent it for about 15 minutes, because I was so tired from getting up at 4:30 am yesterday that I started to fall asleep. (Sorry, Ogden, lol) But it did me good, which is the cool thing about giving reiki, you get it too, as it passes through you. I got the first 8 hours of sleep that I have gotten in about a week. I hope it helped him too.

I did my meditation this morning, as usual. Trying to prepare myself emotionally for this long trip I begin tomorrow. I realized at some point during the meditation that I can probably finish everything I need to finish to leave tomorrow, and still have time to go to the gong bath tonight. That would be the best thing for me.

I have been holding so much emotion in my sacral and solar plexus chakras. Every morning I wake up and have that nervous feeling in my stomach. I work with it throughout the day, but still, it’s there. And from time to time it overwhelms me, to drive such a long distance and then leave my son there. It’s just a mom thing I guess. I spent so many years trying to protect him from his fathers wrath and biting tongue, and then so much time freeing him, and then the last 8 years trying to help him heal. Making him believe that he is worthy of love and belonging just because he exists in this world, and just because he is my son, and I think that I’ve been successful on that count.

It’s just hard. We are so close. I am so happy and proud of him, that he’s set this new life up all on his own. I’ve tried to help, of course, financially a little, contributing to new tires and car alignment, and I’ll help him set up his place in CO, but he’s done all the work himself to find a place to live, and to get a decent job.

But anyway, I think the gong bath will help me to release a lot of the angst I have over the whole thing.

Not to mention all the people I’ve been saying goodbye to. There will be a ton more when I get back from CO too. I love this place I live, except in winter, lol, it is beautiful. But it’s the people who are in my life on a regular basis that will be in my heart.

So gonging I will go. I sent my friend Linda an email telling her I was now intending to come. Just once more to lay on the floor and let the tsunami pf the vibrations of all Peter and Linda’s gongs carry me where I need to go.

Working through it this morning.

Love and light…..

Note:  the picture at the top is not the gong bath I go to, but is very similar.  (Pic is from Google Images.)  We also have 8 gongs and all kinds of other vibrational instruments.  And most of us lay on the floor, it’s my preferred position.

First Monday of Not Working

Posted on by learning to live like water

My son asked me Saturday how my first day of retirement was. I said, “Well, it’s Saturday and I wouldn’t have been at work anyway, so it feels the same.” This morning is Monday, and I woke up early as usual. I tried to go back to sleep, but no such luck. Lists and plans and things that need doing kept stirring around my mind and finally I stopped fighting it and got up.

Now, sitting here in the early dawn, with my coffee, in the quiet, it does occur to me that, no, I don’t have to go to work today. I do wish I could sit on my deck in the cool morning air, but I don’t have a chair I can put out there. So, I opened the slider to let the cool air in, and listen to the birds.

My friend made me a spectacular Maine lobster dinner last night, 2 lobsters each. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten two, but I did these. Also salad, backed potatoes, green beans. I was shocked. Just feel so blessed that they wanted to do that for me. God I will miss this family. But they said they will come to visit, and will also give me a room next summer. Really lucky to have such close friends.

Feeling a little nostalgic, a little sad this morning, I suppose because I saw last night how much I will miss my people here. It’s certainly an emotional roller coaster. I think I’ll be fine when I get on the road to Florida, but this morning, the distance between now and then seems so great. So many people I want to see before I leave here.

I’ll get through it, as I always do.

When I got home my son informed me that the front door lock was broken. The deadbolt has been unable to be locked from the inside for awhile. There’s another lock in the door handle, which we really never use. But apparently, unknown to me, my son has been and now it doesn’t work either. It feels stuck, so I’m going to go buy a can of WD40 and spray it this morning. I sure hate to call a locksmith when I’ll only be here two more weeks. Seems ridiculous. But I can’t leave it unlocked for the week I’ll be gone.

My son also told me he thinks there’s a skunk living under my deck. I said, “OMG, I better get some repellent or something.” He said, “No….leave it for the new people.” LOL. He’s mad at the $5k they took from me too, lol. I will have to get my friend Peter’s big extension ladder out from underneath the deck though. I hope the skunk is not in residence when we try to do that!

Feeling pretty good this morning. A little tentative, but ok. I’m usually better as the day wears on and I get things accomplished. Moving along…

Love and light everyone.

Life IS Surely Calling Me

Posted on by learning to live like water

I was so tired when I got home last night. I wrote, because I wanted, as always, to try to record it while it was still fresh. This morning I remembered a couple other things that were kinda cool yesterday, and actually just coincidental, but then there aren’t any coincidences, so think what you will….

On the way to work I take the back roads through the town I live in, because they’re paving the main road and the pavement is a mess. But going this way, which is a road around the lake in town, there is a spot where they have closed the road down to one lane for construction. They have a stop sign at either end and the one lane section is about 50′ with jersey barriers on either side. Generally you stop and take turns with the cars lined up on the other side. Yesterday however, they had a cop there directing the flow of traffic and he was waving the whole line through. He was a big guy, and I’m gonna guess in his 50’s. At least, from a quick glance obviously not a kid. As he waved me through, making that “come on” motion with his hand, I looked at him. He changed his hand motion to an actual wave, with a big smile. The kind of smile that made me giggle, lol. I thought what a nice way to start the day, having some random man kind of flirt with me, lol! At my age you take it where you can get it, lol.

The other thing was that last night when I got into my car to drive to the restaurant where we were all meeting, I plugged my phone into the stereo as I always do. I always have all my music on shuffle, so it just plays in random order all the time. But I thought it was so cool, and really, such a message from the universe, that when I put it on, as I drove out of work for the last time, Beth Hart’s song called Life is Calling began to play. How friggin’ perfect is that?

I got to the restaurant in a couple of minutes, it’s very close to work. And sat in the car til the song ended. As it ended and I got out of the car, my dear dear friend who retired in January was walking up to the car, with a gift bag of goodies.

It’s been a long time since I spent a day feeling loved, and loving back. I hope it becomes the norm, because what a lift it gave me.

Just wanted to remember those two things too, about yesterday. I’ve put the song “Life is Calling” up before, but am putting it again, since I feel like it’s absolutely how I feel.

Love and light.

Life Without My Stuff

Posted on by learning to live like water

(I had such a hard time titling this post.  I kept wanting to call it Breaking My Life Into Pieces but thought that sounded too much like a sad love affair, and I’ve surely written enough of those, lol.  Athough the emotion is not dissimilar, strangely.  Big change comes hard, most times, whether it’s a love affair, your kid moving out, or you moving away.  There is always some degree of loss, and some degree of gain.)

The people who bought my deck furniture two weeks ago finally came back and got it last night. The wife is very excited to have it, which makes me feel good. But now, I can’t sit outside in the morning and write and have my coffee and listen to the birds and feel the cool morning air because there is no place to sit. I can’t even take a chair from my kitchen table out because I sold the kitchen table.

It feels like watching my life get broken into pieces and sold off, or given away. I was able to schedule the Salvation Army to come pick up my son’s couches on Sept 12. I’ll give them a bunch of other stuff that I have that’s in decent shape. I have to call a guy whose name a friend gave me, to take a bunch of stuff to the dump for me. I have a large collection of half burned candles I want to give away….Good Yankee candles for the most part. But I think I’ll have to throw them out.

I never thought I was attached to things. Really. My ex is attached to things, he can’t let go of anything even when it drags him under. I’m not attached like that, I can divest myself of what I don’t want to take with me, but it is harder than I expected to walk through my house without all the stuff that is normally there, just part of my life. I am a bit shaken by it.

I’ll be glad in a few weeks, when I can start putting it back in a place I want it, in Florida. When I can again have my house with my stuff, and feel like, yeah, it’s my house when I come through the door. Right now, even my bedroom is beginning to look strange to me. The nightstands almost cleared off, the closet with nothing in it except shoes, and my summer clothes. Drawers have been emptied out.

I’m making lists of what has to be done yet. Call the insurance co, call the utilities, call the cable company, call the garbage pick up. I wish honestly I’d quit working last Friday. I just have so much to do before I take off for Denver.

Which is another stressor altogether. I should be down about 10 lbs by the time this is over. I know my friend, my bff, is planning a goodbye party of some kind when I get back from Denver. She invited me to dinner the 9th. But I KNOW her. Besides her nephew said to me last time I saw him, “Well, we are having that party for you anyway, right?” LOL. Gave it away, lol. But I’m not telling her, I will fake it and be surprised. That will be nice, really, to see everyone one last time before I go.

I’m sure my blogs are getting kind of boring, just about the stress, and the angst, and things I have to do to accomplish this. Let me say it is WAY more stress than leaving my ex-husband was. For one thing, I was running full-tilt boogie from a life that was killing me, literally. I couldn’t wait to get out of the pressure-cooker of that house, away from him and his lying power trip. I couldn’t wait to live somewhere where I could wake up and everything was the same as when I went to bed. I didn’t take much with me, and I was going a mile and a half away.

This move…the life I have here is wonderful, and I don’t particularly want to leave it. I just want to stop working and I can’t, and live here. And I am sick to death of winter. It’s so difficult when you are on your own, and have to deal with all the snow, and cold and heating bills by yourself. I’m sick of driving to work and/or home in snow, shoveling my car off, getting snow in my shoes, when I leave work. But mostly sick of having to go to work anyway, lol.

My life….I’m just blessed. My son and I are happy sharing the same space while we both have our own lives. I have a ton of friends, so I’m not usually alone unless I choose to be. But I can’t keep this house if I don’t work, and I don’t want to work, so off I go to my mortgage free bungalow in Florida. It will all be good, but the transition is difficult, really difficult.

Time to get this day underway. Love and light, all.

Emotional Packing

Posted on by learning to live like water

 

packing

I’ve found I can only pack and sort things for about 2 or 3 hours a day. I just get too emotional. So attached to some things, which it would be stupid to take, but it’s so hard to let them go. One of them….well, I just stuffed it in a box. It was a huge teddy bear that was a Christmas gift to my son for his first Christmas. I just couldn’t let it go. It’s been sitting in the rocking chair in my room since forever, even before I left his father.

So many other things. I had emails between S and I that I’d printed out, I had pieces of writing from 20 years ago, I had memories, memories. So hard. I managed to throw most of that stuff out, but it made me melancholy, to be leaving everything I have known as an adult. I lay down on the chaise in my living room and cried for a few minutes. I laid down on my bed, and just closed my eyes to process all that has happened to me in the 40 years I’ve lived here.Everything that has brought me to this moment, of packing up my life of 40 years, and sorting out the things I want to take with me.  Lay there for about an hour.

My son asked me twice today what was wrong. I just said, “You know, it’s just big changes…so many big changes.” But I decided that I was done packing and sorting for the day. I changed my clothes, put on some makeup and went to the store to get laundry detergent and limes so I could have a drink when I got back, maybe read a book or something.

I got to the store, and as the universe does, I walked through the parking lot right into my bff who I am able to tell anything to, and told her how my morning was. She knows me, she gets it. She is always, has always been there for me. Even when I didn’t listen to her about S, she stuck with me while I figured it out. So we talked, it was the best thing that could have happened to me to run into her. She said she’d pick me up at the airport on the 8th when I get home. Awesome.

When I got home, instead of making the drink I was going to, I made a frozen peach strawberry daiquiri for my son and myself. It wasn’t bad, considering it was the first time I’ve made one in maybe 20 years, lol. Then I sat on the couch and began really mapping out our trip to Denver. We’re going to do somewhere around 500 miles a day, and then the last day only have about 350 to do. I got hotel phone numbers so we can call and make reservations.

Then I did the same for the trip to Florida which is a full day shorter.

Then a girl which whom he is close friends came over, had the last of the daiquiris and they decided they’d make me dinner. 🙂  Good kids.

I think I’m at the point I can stop obsessing about making sure everything is packed up for my mover’s date. I think I’m well ahead of the game now. When I stop working next weekend, I’ll have all week to get most of the house finished. I will leave the kitchen until I get back from Denver.

It gets more real every day. Most everyone I know I’ll see again. They’ll be down to see me, or I’ll be up to see them. There are some people I won’t see again though, and some I won’t get to say goodbye to. I guess I just have to do the best I can. The love I have for them will always be. I think they know that.

Love and light, all.