Category Archives: sadness

Out of Sight

Posted on by learning to live like water

leaf

Leaf blowing in the autumn wind
Chased, for it’s beauty
Glowing the bright colors of the earth.

She chased it, with all her breath
Racing with the wind
To catch up with the apparition.

It slowed, and she almost caught it.
Teasing, a sudden gust blew it
Just out of her reach.

Across golden fields she ran
Through dark forests,
Obscured by the fog.

Up hills strewn with rocks
Through meadows fragrant with flower
She chased the dream of holding the leaf.

Always, just out of her reach.
Finally, exhausted
She let go the desire

To hold the leaf, to feel every facet
To know it was real.
She watched, as it blew out of sight.

Dawn’s Silent Song

Posted on by learning to live like water

dawns-song

There is only the silence of the dawn
Singing gently in my ears.
Singing a song that takes me back
To sweet, and sad, memories,
Early morning coffee and conversation
Wrapped in snugly blankets
To keep winter’s cold off bare skin.

Dawn’s same song says there’s more to come
Different, but loving
Unsure, but hopeful
Sweetness, without the sadness.
A chance to love again.

Sing the song, beautiful dawn.
Lead me to that place of knowing
Help me to find joy from within
And a true lover to share it with.

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.

Exorcising The Ghosts

Posted on by learning to live like water

I took a walk on the beach alone this morning. I have only been twice now, because I was gone for the weekend. My sis went with me last time. It seemed I had some emotional processing to do, when I got there.

It was low tide. My head kept echoing “Low Tie…..” Which was what S always called it, from his days fishing.

I had a hard time silencing his voice in my head. I took pictures, of waves breaking on the sand bars. Of the waves breaking on the shore, leaving shells, broken sand dollars, pieces of coral and coquina. I took this picture, and also a video, which I can’t seem to get to transfer here..

IMG_2247

I kept wanting to send the video to him, with the sound of the waves breaking, and just say, “Lo Tie….” He would have appreciated it I think. At least for a moment, before he deleted it.

I walked along the dunes, remembering last March, when I was there. We had broken up, because of the prison whore. I had been seeing Addison. S was working all his magic on me, while I was gone, to take me back from Addie. I was walking on the beach, I was talking to him, I was falling so in love with him again, missing him so much. He was sweet, contrite, he wanted me. There was no her, there was nothing but he and I. Addie….loved me, like crazy. But I never stopped loving S.

We planned for S to come over the night after I got back. To talk, to see if we could repair the damage that had been done by the prison whore episode. But in my head, I already knew who it was that I wanted to be with.

Addison was picking me up at the airport at midnight. He had my car, there was no way around it. He expected to spend the night with me. “Please don’t sleep with him Deb.” “I won’t have sex, S. He’ll just sleep there, it’s going to be late.” “Even sleeping together is intimate….”

I knew it was, I knew that it wasn’t fair to Addie to sleep with him when my head and heart were with S.  I really didn’t want to either.  I knew I had to tell him on the ride home from the airport. I was dreading breaking that sweet man’s heart.

God that was a hard  beach walk. I guess there were a few ghosts here anyway, even though he never came here with me.

Anyway, I was overcome with the desire to communicate with him, and of course. I mean how could I remember all that and not want to just say hi. Just let him know that I was thinking kindly of him after all that ugliness last week.

I tried to send him the video, just as I’d imagined.

I say tried, because it couldn’t be delivered. The cell reception here was not good enough.

I let it go. I just acknowledged, it wasn’t supposed to go.

And I thought, “thank you universe, for watching out for me.” Because no good would have come from sending it, from opening the communication back up. None.

I said to myself, well, last year you were here, falling in love with him all over again. This year you are here, letting him go again.

The breeze blew gently, blew my hair off my neck, the sun shone on my face, the sand was soft, the sky was blue, and I turned to walk back to the bank of cubbies that are there to hold your flip-flops when you walk on the sand.

By the time I got there, I was just so grateful it didn’t get sent. I didn’t want it sent. I would have been horrified with myself if it had gone through. All it would have done, even if there was not response, or even a positive one, would have been to reconnect all the connections I have tried so hard to break. I would have undone weeks, months worth of work.

I had thought, while doing it, that I might unblock his phone. I hadn’t decided yet. When I got my flip-flops back, I sat on the bench nearby to dust the sand off my feet. I looked at my phone, and deleted the text to him. I put my flip-flops on and began the walk home, 2 blocks. Grateful, ever so grateful, that the universe stopped me from doing something that would have damaged my psyche again, and set me back so far. That would have in the end caused me more pain that I already have around that man.

I was able to remember his callousness. The way he now tried to negate memories like that one.  His last advice, “why don’t you focus on finding Mr. right?” As if, as if, you can just stop loving someone you love and replace him with another. He of all people should know. It was a stupid thing for him to say. “I’m sorry” might have been better. I know what a shit he is. I know how unreliable, how self-absorbed, how disingenuous he is. I know he uses people, and makes the wrong decisions all the time. I know all his bad traits.

Just, today, I remembered “low tie” and “high tie” and those moments when he wouldn’t be any of that shitty stuff, and how he could make me feel like he loved me. Those times when the light I always saw would break through, and blind me from its pure beauty.

But I made it through, by the grace of God, back to myself, back to my path, away from that pain. Away from all the craziness, the chaos, the mixed signals, the drama. Away from him and the darkness he spread into my life.

I made it.

15 Minutes

Posted on by learning to live like water

alone

I don’t drink much.  If I do, it’s usually wine, and I vacillate between white and red, and usually a glass is plenty.  Sometimes a 2nd one, but more often than not, I can’t finish a 2nd glass.  But tonight….I wanted something to take the edge of my nerves, which are frayed to a fine, gossamer filament which could break any moment.  But not wine.  Wine would sour my stomach tonight.

I’m picky tonight. Holding on…..just holding on.  As someone said to me once, just for the next 15 minutes.  I need some help.  I would like to be numbed, just a little.  Enough to round the sharp corners in my psyche, in my heart.  Not enough to open the floodgates.

It’s a fine line.  I have to be vigilant.

My liquor cabinet (which is a box on the floor of my pantry) has in it a half bottle, half a 5th, (what’s that?  A 10th?) of Gosling’s Dark Rum, and a bottle of Amaretto, which I buy every year to make a raspberry Amaretto sauce for my Christmas cake, and maybe a shot or two of Vodka, which I keep here for my BFF.

Not a lot of choices.

So….I took a small glass, like a juice glass, and put what looked like maybe a shot of amaretto in it, and a shot of rum.  Of course, I could be totally off, I don’t have a shot glass.  I had one.  Just one.  And my son somehow managed to get it into the garbage disposal and I didn’t know it, and turned the disposal on.

He’s lucky my friend’s son knew how to take the disposal apart.  I paid him $50.

So, I guess now, if I need to measure.  Not that it mattered, I was only serving myself, a made up drink.  Because rum is not that easy to drink by itself, even on ice, and even rich dark rum from the royal Navy, and Amaretto is too sweet by itself.  Combined, it’s not really too bad.  And I couldn’t do Vodka straight no matter how much I needed a drink.

I think it will do what I need it to.

And first I took two ibuprofen for the massive headache I have.  I’m not sure that two was enough.  I’m thinking another one might be in order.

It will be a ride, this one.  Hope it doesn’t last too long.

Still Waiting…..

Posted on by learning to live like water

Waiting-

Maybe I’m just tired tonight. It’s getting late for me, because I’m up so early. Maybe it’s because I was alone all day.

But I’m sad. Just, sad. I miss him, and I don’t. I remember how I loved him and I don’t anymore, but I miss loving him. I used to be able to call his name in my head, and I’d hear from him. I don’t now. I think about calling him that way, and then every version of the conversation that could possibly take place runs through my head and it’s never good, it never serves any purpose except to re-open old wounds.

I wish I could just let go. I wish I had no connection to him except the 18 months that I knew him. I wish I never knew what he felt, and I wish I had never called his name and had him answer. I wish he’d never said to me, “if something happened to you, I’d know. I’d just know.” Because if that’s true, he knows right now how my heart aches. And I believe it’s true, that he knows. Because I know when his does.

Right now, I know he doesn’t blame me, he doesn’t hate me. But he never wants to talk to me again, because it reminds him of how utterly stupid and self-absorbed and self-centered he is. And what he lost because of it. He knows he cannot hide from me, because he knows that my soul and his recognize each other over the lifetimes, even if he says, “We can’t know that…” Instead of me reminding him of the light that shines somewhere under all those layers of darkness that he hides under, I remind him of how he put his own interests ahead of everyone, and ended up with nothing and no one. A barren landscape that once held so much promise.  I never wanted to bring him shame. 

Why do I even care? I am strong, independent. I have created my life so that I can live it out the way I want to, and don’t need anyone. But I wanted him, I think that has gone on for a very long time. I knew this when we met, I knew that I already knew him.

I read a couple of old blogs from the 3 days over which the truth became known in November. I don’t know why I read them, maybe I was just trying to keep the memory of my disgust, my amazement at the depth of what he did, alive so I wouldn’t miss him, so I’d see how utterly without conscience he was.

I remembered all of that, but then I also remembered when I loved him. I also remembered when the end started, and I also remembered how I kept asking him to just let me go. I remembered how it unraveled slowly all summer and then he let it build back up, he pretended we were going to be together in the way I’d dreamed of for months. He let my emotions crescendo, maybe because he wanted to feel how much I loved him just one last time, just before he destroyed me.  It’s hard for me to imagine that he didn’t purposefully cause me all that pain.

I found this poem I wrote one week after I last talked to him, the day that she got my letter and I told him he was dead to me.  I’m going to put it here again, because I think it’s pertinent to the way I feel tonight. It’s called “Awaiting Transformation”

Day dawns,

First light glows the horizon

Soft pink

Where heaven meets earth.

The sky still indigo directly above,

With one solitary star still visible

On this cold clear November morning.

The trees are bare,

The earth in New England settles down

For a long winter nap.

All of the the past year’s leaves and flowers

Lay on the ground

Ready to begin their transformation.

We mourn their passing,

Yet

At the same time

We know at the first breath of spring

They will arise to become

something once again beautiful.

I will rest with them

Let my heart

Heal in the warm unconditional love

of the universe

All the pieces I have so carefully put back together,

And the ones I have not found yet,

Will meld together again,

Become whole once more.

I will leave the old hurts in the ground with the leaves

Covered in the blankets of snow

Knowing that the spring will come.

Awaiting transformation.

 

Let Me Go, Set Me Free

Posted on by learning to live like water

set me free

The middle of the night is a lonely place, in my bed, alone, remembering him next to me, and then not.  His blue eyes laughing, sparkling, smiling. And then cold, like the blue of a glacier, floating in a cold ocean. Unfeeling, uncaring. Waiting for me to blindly crash into him and sink.  Missing him, why?

The hole he left in my heart….he filled it with ugliness.  Why in the world would I miss someone who used and abused me for his own pleasure?

I beg the archangels, cut these energetic cords with him. The cords that cross centuries, the cords that cross lifetimes.  I don’t want them anymore. I don’t want any in this lifetime.  I don’t want the old ones to pull me in and make me ache for what I don’t even know, or understand.

Cut them from my head, from my hands, from my heart.  Or pull them out, by the roots.  Send them back to him, or out into the universe.  There are times I don’t even know if I’m feeling my own emotions or his.  Cut them, protect me from them.  Let me know that the pain I feel is my own.  I don’t want to have to deal with his pain.  If I am.  My own pain is sufficient burden to carry.

Let me forget.  Forget the emotions which make me remember the lost dreams, the love I lavished on him. That make me remember the lies, the deception he lay in my path, to stumble across as I ran down it, my eyes blinded by my own tears, and fall flat on my face, broken, bruised and bleeding, with no hand to help me up but my own.

But to hold space, for him….because I can’t not love him, but I can’t be hurt anymore.  I can’t wake in the night any more and miss him.  I can’t continue to have emotions about him that defy the reality in which I live.

I have sat with these emotions long enough.  I beg the loving energy of the universe:  let me go, set me free.

 

Random Memories Wreaking Havoc

Posted on by learning to live like water

Warning:  This is pretty raw……

Today was difficult.  I had that random rogue wave memory hit me today, while I was working.  (See last blog)  I had to go to the ladies room to keep from crying at my desk.  I just don’t understand the mentality.

When he did the prison whore, he called me two days later and couldn’t wait to tell me.  He didn’t want the weight of it on him.  He said “I did something and it’s gonna hurt.”  But he still had to tell me.  He had to do the right thing.  That was February.

In May, he had me over to his house on a Sunday.  Not of course, Saturday night.  I had been there in April, a couple weeks before, the night his friend died. (I had been sitting at home, and was overcome with a feeling from him…I called and asked if he was ok.  He said “funny you should ask.   Gus died last night.”  I was there in a few hours.  He was sad….really sad. But Ok.)  I didn’t think anything of the fact that I hadn’t been with him the night before, now two weeks or so later.  He’d had the memorial service for his friend the day/night before. I got there late morning, I think.  We made love, we were sitting naked, he on his couch and me in one of his recliners, and he told me he was thinking maybe we didn’t need to see each other every weekend.  I remember saying, “I think I want to get dressed.”

He was most likely in her bed the night before, or maybe she had been there and left.  More likely he was at her house…which is why I was not at his house the night before.  I think Saturday that weekend he might have gone to the memorial get together for his friend who died.  I bet she went with him.  She knew the friend too.  I think they first connected when she commented on his picture on FB.  Maybe he even called her to tell her. Since she wasn’t really married……  Maybe he spent the night with her.  Maybe their first night together again.  Maybe not.  Maybe he came home and texted me about it. I can’t remember, it was 7 months ago.  But I’m sure he started seeing her then.  And then he had me over Sunday.

He just said he wanted to focus on himself, on his house, his yardwork, he’d been in a relationship for all his life, he wanted to see what it was like alone…..He still wanted to see me, just not as often for awhile.

Because he had her now.

(This is only a rough timeline.  I didn’t always write about it when I was with him, apparently.  I know I was the weekend of March 30.  I know that was not the last time I was at his house, so I think this is approximately right.)

But he didn’t respect me or his relationship with her enough to tell me the truth.  He could tell me the truth about Samantha the prison whore, but not Betty.  He couldn’t tell me the truth about her until I was ready to come down there and find her there. He disregarded everything either of us ever said to him about not wanting any part of a relationship like that.

All summer he tried to get me to be part of an intense physical relationship, but nothing else.  Because we had a great physical relationship.  When I began to realize that’s what he wanted, I told him to let me go.  Not to come see me if he didn’t want to stay.  A couple of times he spent the night, I don’t know how that worked with her, that I got him on a Saturday night.  Maybe they were fighting.  Maybe she went away.  Maybe he lied to her.  Who the hell knows?  But he gave me just enough to hold on.

Now I get why in early May he was excited to go to Florida with me in early June and suddenly did a 180° turn.  I knew something was up then, but I couldn’t figure it out.  I was angry about it though.  He’d found cheap tickets for us, we’d talked about what we’d do…etc. He was going to rent a car so we could fly into Tampa and then he’d have a car while I visited my mom.  And suddenly he wouldn’t go.  Broke my heart then.  And I got over it, because I fucking loved him.

Sometimes I’d agree, “if that’s the only way I can see you then ok….”  More and more often the answer became “…..Let me go if that’s what you want.  It’s not what I want.”  He wouldn’t do that either.   I’d say, “You wanting to find yourself and be alone is fine, but it doesn’t mean I’m sitting in the wings waiting for you whenever you get the urge.  If you want to be alone, then be alone.”

Of course, he wasn’t, alone. He had her.  But he wouldn’t say so.  He wanted us both, hanging around.  I could see him anytime from Sunday afternoon til Saturday morning.  He could easily, apparently, go from her bed to mine, or mine to hers.

I remember the day of the eclipse, end of September, Sunday night of the weekend before he dropped his bomb.  We were texting…I was telling him that the reason our sex life was so good was because I loved him so much.  That I couldn’t even participate if I didn’t love him.  He suddenly seemed to hear me….he was going to come here and watch the eclipse.  He was getting ready to leave and fell down his stairs and couldn’t move.  He was laying on the floor on his back.  He had been half-thinking of spending the night because I can go into work late on Monday.

And then he couldn’t come.  I think that was true…He had been planning to leave when he called me me from the floor.  She wouldn’t have been around on a Sunday night, and never would have known if he came over and spent the night.

So we sat on our own decks and watched it, texting occasionally.  We both saw the same shooting star.  We texted all week from early in the morning til we went to bed.  During work. During lunch.   Close, intimate, sweet, sexy.

Right up til we went to bed Friday night.  I felt he heard and understood me for the first time in ages.  I felt close…he said he did too.  He texted me at 4 AM when he woke up “for no reason”.   Turns out for plenty of reason. At 10:30 he texted me that he was going to be with her.

Set up.  So set up.  So set up all summer for him to devastate me.  At the moment I loved him the most, he brought me down, he crushed me.

I’ve been pretty good lately.  It doesn’t hurt much anymore.  Angers me more than hurts.   But today, all these random memories from last spring have been just barging into my mind, not knocking at the door, not ringing the doorbell, not asking if they could come in. Slapping my face, ripping open scars, spitting in my face.

All that time.  He could tell me about the prison whore, who meant nothing to him.  But he couldn’t tell me about Betty, who he claims now, he loved.  He couldn’t even honor her by telling me the truth.  He couldn’t respect her wishes.   He couldn’t honor me or respect me and my wishes.  What did I do to deserve that?  I loved him so much, I was always there for him.  I asked very little of him.  Whatever he wanted.  We had fun together, we played, we flirted, but for me…it was always within the confines of just us.  It was just two people who cared for each other being intimate.

I want to get back to forgiveness.  I’m happier there, but tonight I’m hurting.  It won’t take so long, it won’t hurt as deep this time but it hurts.  He’ll read this, and he’ll hide away from me.  What does he care, he didn’t care for those 6 months.  He’s probably hiding from Betty too.  Why should he wonder if the women whose lives he ripped up for his own pleasure are ok?  He can’t do anything about it, but if it was me, I’d still want to know that they were not still laying on the ground bleeding.

I know he’s a sick man.  I mean, mentally ill, to do this to anyone.  I also know he’s not going to do anything about it.  He’s not going to face his demons, he’s going to let them have free rein.  He’s going to go to his grave believing that he was hurt by all this.  All this that he created, and he set up, and he caused with his lies and deception to feed his own ego.  Eventually, I’ll feel sorry for him. Eventually.

Not tonight.  Tonight, I’d like to know that he feels the depth of my pain.  Tonight I’d like to know he has even a modicum of remorse for the way he shattered me, and left me lying there in pieces.  Tonight I’d like to know that it all meant something to him, something more than great sex.  I wonder if he knows how much audacity he had to ask me to help him with Betty, after he ripped my heart out and chewed it up and spit it out in a bloody mess.  He wanted me to help him deal with the lies and deception of another woman, without any consideration as to what those lies and deception did to me.  As if I should just understand, because he didn’t love me, he loved her.  As if that somehow made my pain less intense.  You’d be hard pressed to make me believe he loved anyone but himself.  Playing two women all summer, lying to them both, deceiving them both.  That’s not love S.  That’s self gratification, like jerking off.  One was an old fuck, one was a new one.  But we were both just a fuck for you.  We both know it.

I know I’ll never get what I wish I’d gotten even a little of.  I’m left to dry my own tears, and put my own self back together, and start walking again, away from him, toward a new life.

 

 

 

Wanting, or Needing? I Know My Answer

Posted on by learning to live like water

It was late. The pain was still raw, as if I’d had surgery done on my heart. The anger visceral, because it covered the pain. Demons gnawed at my very sinew, baring their bloody teeth. Some of them churned my stomach, like a hurricane in the middle of my body. My breath, my very breath, was being stolen from me. I could feel the fury coursing through my veins, my eyes and head and heart pounding in an evil dance.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t want to get in.” I said, to nobody. “Maybe I’ll go sleep on the couch. Then I won’t think of him. Sleeping with her, never with me again.” Although loathe to sleep in my bed, I knew I had to do put one leg in, then the other. Lay on the pillows that we used to share. I had to be comfortable in my own bed.

But first, I put on a nightgown. So I wouldn’t have visions of him, not next to me naked. Next to her naked. So I wouldn’t feel the luxury of the sheets on my skin. So I could avoid the worst pain.

I sat on the edge of the bed again. I had to know. “Is she sleeping in your bed?” I asked. “No.” I drew out some more anger, to mask the pain.

Sleeping pills and wine… I got a little sleep somehow.

I woke 2 hours later, it was 3 AM. I called him, but he wouldn’t answer. I wanted to know. I needed to know. How long had I been the fool?

I’m still the fool. Because I still let it hurt me. Because I still allow the anger to consume me. Because he’s not worth it, he’s never given me back anything. Yet, I sat there, sit here, empty. Wanting him to fill the void.

I guess I always did, and because he was here with me, I thought some day he would.

There’s always a lesson. Some people can’t. Just can’t, fill an emotional void. Some people run from the emotions. They don’t want to feel. So they numb. Numb with drugs, numb with alcohol, numb with cigarettes, numb with food. Some people numb the present by living in the past, because, you can rewrite your past. You can make a nightmare into a dream. Or a dream into a nightmare. And believe it.

I’m kind of getting it. Having someone who needs you to take care of them, keeps you from having to invest in them emotionally. “See, see what I did for you. How can you question my love for you?” “I gave you a kitchen, I bought you a car. Of course I love you.”

But something made her run, into the arms of another man. Who, of course, she didn’t even know, let alone love. A grown woman? No, an emotional teenager. And now she wants out, and of course, he will take care of it for her. Of course. It will prove that he loves her. Of course, it doesn’t prove that she loves him. It only proves that she needs  him.  Then when she runs again, after she is free….he can wear his pain like a badge, “All women hurt me. I don’t ever want to love again.”

All women, except me. I didn’t hurt him. But I didn’t want anything either. Except his love. That was it, that was all.  The one thing that he gives no one.  Not even himself.

But I’ll be gone. I’ll be in the arms and bed of someone who wants me, and doesn’t need to take care of me.

I don’t want to need anyone, nor do I want to be needed. But want, oh what a glorious thing that is, to want someone, and have them want you back. I’ll find him.

Disclaimer:  I don’t know for a fact that any of that about her is true.  It is my intuitions best guess.  Only time will tell.