Fingers of doubt reach out
Trying to get a grip.
Touching my skin,
I tremble at their old familiar touch
Unwelcome sensations
Fingers of distrust
poke through the landscape
screaming across empty plains
and still forests
Trying to shake my resolve
I stand my ground
Give them nothing to hold onto.
There are no receptacles for their inept warnings.
Safe, because I know who I am
My center is grounded
And aware.
The fingers of doubt and distrust
withdraw and dissolve
When we don’t need the answers
To everything
Now.
Live like water and let life flow through us.
I woke in the middle of the night last night, which is not unusual. For some reason, Brene Brown’s anagram, “B R A V I N G” trust came into my head, and particularly, the last letter of it, G, for generosity.
If you have not seen Brene’s video, The Anatomy of Trust, which is well worth watching, you might ask what generosity has to do with trust. It refers to generosity of spirit. That when someone does or says something that you could take as hurtful, you don’t. Instead, you extend generosity of spirit to that person, and say something like, “you know, what you just said kind of stung, but I know you didn’t mean to sting me, and we’re ok. I just wanted you to know that’s what I was thinking.”
Be generous. Remember that we are all flawed, and we all say and do things that don’t exactly reflect what we want to reflect, and we all accidentally hurt others, and we don’t mean to. It’s a very human flaw.
It’s good to say something, and include the generosity. Why say something? Because it allows growth for both people, to put it on the table.
I know for a fact that I have not always been generous in my thoughts of what people have said. I still have that hyper-vigilance thing going on, where I want to defend myself from all attacks. But sometimes, I’m tilting at windmills, you know? Sometimes what was said was only in jest, or perhaps without a lot of thought, but was not meant to hurt me. There was no evil intent. I was wasting my time fighting something that was never meant to cause me harm. And in the process, hurting others with my accusations.
I think the thought about generosity came to me in the middle of the night because maybe it was just time for me to learn it, to understand it, to see it, to own it. And to realize that I don’t need to take everything that’s ever said with such seriousness.
And maybe it came to me because there are 4 planets in retrograde, or going into retrograde or coming out of retrograde shortly. Who knows? It came when it was supposed to. Lesson learned.
I see my old friend Pat sleeping on my couch, in deep sleep and I think how nice it would be, to be able to just sleep anywhere. She’s one of those people who can. My mom used to be able to do that. My mother-in-law fell asleep at an NHL hockey game once. You know it was not quiet there, lol.
I went right to sleep last night, and well I should have. 3 hours sleep the night before, 2 rum and cokes at the restaurant, and we had a little smoke when we got home. I slept for a couple of hours, and then woke up, and of course, couldn’t get back to sleep. It’s getting old, this not sleeping thing. I had taken a full Ambien, just to make sure I slept, but there you go. So at 1 AM I took a Benedryl. That’s ridiculous I know. I am aghast at myself for putting so much crap in my body, but I am craving sleep and it is just evading me.
Lately when I’m like this I have to get up and write. Stream of consciousness…just let out whatever it is. Last night I felt very comfortable with my friends sleeping here. I was not overstimulated. When I went to bed I was only looking forward to climbing in between my sheets in that bed I love. But there I was, awake at 1:30 AM.
I picked up my laptop, opened it up and began to write.
What came out was, all the tentative hope I had for this relationship with Tim. He sent me an email this morning. Telling me about his night, and that he can’t wait to see me. Not gushing, just loving. He included a poem, I don’t know if he wrote it. I don’t think so, it was in quotes but the author not id’d.
I also realized that I still miss things about S, which I wish I didn’t. But that is always overridden now with his ability to play games with me and others, and the way I am always the big loser with him, that there is nothing to be gained from him. I guess when you love someone you always love some parts of them. The funny, smart, sexy parts. But they aren’t worth the brokenness, the chaos, the confusion.
I know where I stand with Tim, and it is so reassuring. I also am physically attracted to him, and that too is reassuring to me that we can get to that place eventually. He’s not overbearing, but likes to stay in touch. He’s not demanding, but expresses himself. He is not afraid to put his arm around me, he is not afraid to take my hand and talk to me seriously. He is not overly demonstrative, but is demonstrative. And he’s also smart, and has an artsy side. He loved his wife, who died after a 7 year battle of cancer. He was her caregiver all that time. And happy for the job.
What do I not like about him? Well, he has a drawl, lol, and my mind always clicks to a redneck when I hear a drawl. But he’s so not. He is so much an aging hippie like me, even though he’s an ex-firefighter, and ex-cop.
So, I have hope that this will go somewhere. He’s a really good man. I am cautious, too cautious with him. Like I should have been with S, and wasn’t, jumping in with both feet. I resolved not to do that again. To let things grow, to fill the marble jar, before giving myself over completely. S would always put 5 marbles in the jar, and then dump it over and just watch the marbles roll out. It’s just too hard to retrieve yourself, when someone breaks your heart. Jumping in set me up for heartbreak over and over again. I can’t imagine Tim willfully breaking my heart. Nor me his. I’ve broken a man’s heart before, but not willfully. It was just that I could not match his emotions for me. That man was needy, and I am so not. I love to be in love, but not with just anyone.
So that dichotomy, between the two men, that chaotic jumble of emotions, is what was keeping me up. Tomorrow Tim and I will go manatee watching, sunset watching and really see if we connect. I’m looking forward to the growth of the seed that’s been planted.
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
Sometimes the love just comes back around.
The passion rises high
And spins my head
And my heart.
Puts a smile on my face,
To remember how it was
How it felt.
Happiness for what was
In my life.
And for what is, now.
Embracing the moment
With my whole heart.
Detachment
At first a scary idea.
Now, a peaceful one.
Life is happier
With no attachment
To outcomes
No expectations.
Joy in each moment.
Let people,
Relationships
Fly on their own.
No need to force anything
Anymore.
No need to pull to me
What resists.
No need to hunt down
That which I don’t have.
If it’s meant to be
It will be.
Everything that happens to us
Brings us to where we are.
Do you like where you are?
It’s yours to keep,
Or change.
No expectations
No attachment.
Only love for myself
And those in my life.
Love always, and all ways.
I woke at 4:15 this morning. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because I was asleep at 9:30. I lay in bed for about 45 minutes, just thinking about things. Moving, the foundation cracks, lol, the men I’ve loved.
The moving, the house selling, it will all be over soon. So, I just have to make my way through each day, and do what needs to be done. Taking it one thing at a time, I’m sure I’ll get it all done, easily.
The men, idk. I was thinking about my ex. His name is the same as my son’s so I don’t use it on here, because I don’t want to confuse anyone. But it’s Bruce. I was thinking about the fondness I still feel for S, and how I have none for my ex, who I was with for 40 years. I guess the difference is my ex, B, eroded that love every day for years with his control and abuse of me, and my son. I don’t wish him any ill, I don’t have to, lol. He’s done a damn fine job of fucking up his life with no help from me. I wish him love and light, all good things, but I know with his last breath he will blame me for his problems.
I thought about how, when he was in control, he used to occasionally have these 2 or 3 day brain-washing sessions with me, before my son was born. He would brow beat me, and yell at me, and threaten me for days. I couldn’t leave the house. I was his captive scapegoat for all the ills in his life. And back then we had very few ills. We had enough money, a decent home, a yacht, but still he had to make me feel less than human anytime I began to feel happy and secure. And then he’d say, “I love you, I would think you’d listen to me, knowing it was for your own good.” Geezus. It was for his. To have himself a servant who would do everything, who was dancing around trying to win his favor.
One particular time, during one of those brain-washing sessions, he decided that I did not deserve my 1 1/3 carat heart shaped diamond. He ordered me to give it to him. I refused. He got up from the couch as I sobbed, went in the kitchen and got a pair of pliers out of a drawer where he kept a few tools. He came back, and grabbed my hand and broke the setting, so that the diamond fell out. I am sure, 100% positive, that if I’d fought him he would have broken my hand. He was 6’2”, about 240 lbs, and had arms like most people’s thighs. Very strong, he was a nationally ranked swimmer at one time.
He put the diamond and the broken setting in an envelope and put it in a kind of jewelry box in our bedroom. Folded up tight, so it was about a 1” square. I always knew where it was. I believed that some day he’d realize what a good wife I was, and how I was trying so hard to do everything he asked (while he did nothing at all for me, but I guess I believed I didn’t deserve it) and he’d get it reset one day.
He never did.
When I moved out of the house in 2007, I opened the envelope and took the diamond. I left him the broken setting.
But that just illustrates how dysfunctional he was, and I was, and we were. That we managed to have my son after that is amazing. But thank God, my son is a blessing to me borne of that pain.
S…..well, he betrayed me when I loved him the most. My love for him didn’t die over time. It never had a chance to die a natural death. I grieved and grieved, and still do some days. It’s easier when I never hear from him, I’m much more able to see the dysfunction that surrounds him, and was part of our relationship so much more clearly. I know it would never have lasted, even if there were no B, because I wanted more that he’s capable of giving. It’s been almost 2 months now since I’ve heard from him, and I am fine with it. I have some fond memories, tempered by the reality of his nature. I can love him, who he was to me, I can be grateful for that time in my life. I am so happy to know that after my long miserable marriage, (and long miserable divorce) I can still love someone so passionately, so intensely.
I don’t think he and I can be friends, though. I’d like to be, but I don’t think B will allow it. Even if I’m in FL, 1500 miles away, she would be jealous. He says she’s not, I say, you don’t see it. She’s a master of the passive aggressive stuff. Never wants to talk to him again, until I do. Then she does. Never wants to be with him again, until I am, then she still loves him. Whatever.
I know that I can’t go there again. I can say never say never, but I gotta be real. He is never going to want to make the changes that I’d like to see in him. I think he is much more comfortable with the game playing, the push pull thing, and with misery and unhappiness than happiness, because he sabotages his own life constantly in an effort to prove to himself he’s not worthy. I will always tell him he is. I would, am, always here for him if he wants to talk. But I know he can’t trust himself, so he doesn’t trust me.
I will say, one reason I loved him so, was because he let me be me. All the time. Even though I talked too much, lol. He knew how to quiet me down. Take me to the beach, or somewhere, tell me a story, put on some music that was new to me and tell me about it, or take me to bed. But the freedom I felt with him, after being with a man who tried to control what I said, wore, how I wore my hair, how I walked, yada yada yada, was blissful for me. For that I will always love him. Now that I know what that’s like, I intend to find it again, in a man who is capable of loving, who seeks the light, and is happy and likes himself.
All good lessons with these men. Painful, but good. I know myself, I’ve found myself through the pain that I experienced with them both. I can say to my ex, I love you and I wish all good things for him, he is making himself pay for sins he thinks he must have committed, I am sure. I can say to S, love always and all ways, because that too is true. Because I do. I will. All the betrayal, really, that S orchestrated, was him, sabotaging himself, setting himself up to fail. He hurt me, yes, but for me it’s temporary. I can find my way out. I don’t look into the abyss. I walk away from it, even if I’m on my hands and knees crawling.
At peace this lovely morning. Nice to put things into perspective.
I walked with my cousin this morning, a short walk, just a couple of miles. The rain stopped, it was cloudy, and though it was very humid, it was cooler, not quite 80. It was a pleasant change. It’s was that way all day, til a short time ago.
We talk, deep and honest, always. I talked to her about moving, and when I talked about leaving my son in Denver, I started crying. Geezus.
The walk was nice, but I can’t even talk about that without losing it. I don’t know how I’m going to actually do it.
Then I went to the grocery store this afternoon. I ran into one of my best friends there. We have known each other 22 years, since our kids were 2 and in Story Hour at the library together. Her daughter and my son were born on the same day. My son is older, lol, by 3 hours. A fact he never let her daughter forget. She was part of our small book club.
She had just come home from a big family vacation to Ireland and England, with some side trips, one to Paris for a few days, I think. I had called her to see if she wanted to go for a walk about 3 or 4 weeks ago and she said, “Um…I’m in Ireland.” LOL. I said, “Oh, I guess you don’t want to go then…..” And laughed. We talked a little, texted a little.
So it was good to see her, and just catch up briefly. I told her I sold the house while she was gone, and she looked happy and sad in the same moment. We talked about it briefly, because she had an engagement she had to get to, but I choked up again, talking about taking son to CO. I am a basket case. I so wish he had a father. Or I should say, a father who wasn’t a sociopath. Anyway, we are going to try to get the book club together to say goodbye the week after next.
I truly can’t believe I’ll be out of here in 6 weeks. I’ve feel like I’ve been talking about it forever. It’s been so often, my final escape from so much drama in my life, from men who can’t love, or won’t, who have caused me so much pain. Men who have taken all I would give, and given me back nothing except pain, and heartache, and lies.
Now I look at it as just an awesome thing I get to do. I’m so over all of that. I think about it, and I think, the drama goes on, I’m sure. Just without me. Because, really….how could there ever be any trust there? Yeah, she lied, a small tiny lie to make him stop lying to her, to make him believe he’d been caught red-handed. I seriously only objected to it because she involved me, and it just wasn’t true. But really, he’s the one who cannot tell the truth. How could she ever ever trust her heart to him again? So much like my ex. Just cannot talk without trying to manipulate someone.
I feel like, she’s just in her comfort zone with him, and willing to put up with his bullshit. She was never going to talk to him again, twice now, til I did. So she did. What kind of foundation for a relationship is that? If I’d told him to come here that night 6 weeks ago when he asked me so many times….what would she have done then? Wanted him back? I was leaving anyway….who knows? Such a game they play.
Whatever. It’s none of my business. Sometimes I just go off on a tangent, it was part of my life way too long. I still feel connected to him on some level, it’s weird. But it doesn’t stop me from living this life. If we are connected through past lives, which I feels sure we are, we will bump into each other again. But this life time….I don’t think so.
The whole point, now, is….I get to retire. I don’t have to work, unless I want to. I intend to find a part-time job, grocery money. I get to live by the water, which has always been my other home. I get to do the things I love to do, that I have a passion for, and not spend the bulk of my time at a stressful job. I will be so free. As hard as it will be to say goodbye to my son, the fact that he’s not going to be living with me, makes me all the more free.
I didn’t do any packing today. Just normal house chores. Laundry, shopping, making some food so we’ll have food to eat during the week. Now I’m outside in the sacred space, lol. With a dark rum and diet coke and half a lime squeezed into it. Feeling pretty content. Sun is out, and it’s breezy. This mornings humidity is blowing away.
As are the last years tears, and pain, and drama. Blowing away, leaving cool, clean energy in it’s place. Life is so good.
For years I was such a bad sleeper. I guess that’s normal, living with a sociopath whose purpose in life was to create chaos in yours, and your sons. Never knowing what you might wake up to. Wondering if the earth would tilt on its axis by morning. I took over the counter sleep aids for years on end. Never went to bed without some sort of help, and often, they didn’t help. I’ve taken 4 Tylenol PM and not gone to sleep.
I often wonder if I did any damage to my body all those years. I figure not sleeping probably would have done more.
Since I moved out of that house, it’s been rare that I take anything. It took some time to wean myself off of the fear of not sleeping. I wasn’t physically addicted to the sleep aids, but I had a lot of fear of not sleeping at all, and having to go to work and be functional the next day. Now, I know if I don’t sleep one night, I will sleep the next. So I don’t generally take them.
Last summer though, when the carpal tunnel was really bad, I got prescription Ambien which helped me to sleep through some of the pain. That particular ailment gives you the most pain when you are sleeping. I’d have to get up multiple times during the night to run my hand under warm water, to relieve the throbbing. The Ambien got it down to just once usually.
As soon as I was through the surgery and the carpal tunnel was no longer an issue, I found out about Betty Boop. Which sent me into another tailspin, in which heartbreak combines with trust issues, mostly, not trusting myself. After all, there were myriad flags flying, and I chose to believe the obvious lies I was being told, and not to see the truth that had been slapping me in the face all summer trying to wake me up.
If you follow my blog, you know that relationship did not end there. You know that he tried to keep me in the periphery of his life, that he could not let me go, even though he’d chosen her. He continued to break my heart on a regular basis until really, about 6 weeks ago, when he asked to come see me after leaving me about a dozen voice mails and I finally talked to him and said, no. No, we aren’t going there again.
I reclaimed myself.
I have not talked to him since. I had some short communications with Betty Boop, but then blocked her so I won’t even see another email from her. She made up a lie, for her own benefit, telling him I’d done something I had not done. It wasn’t a big thing, but it just doesn’t sit well with me. She and he are welcome to play all the games they want, and feed each other the lies they need to hear, but leave me out of it. I’m not angry, I just can’t get drawn into that childish adolescent stuff again.
I realized last night that when I called him and left a voice mail just telling him that it was a lie, I’d unblocked him, and had not reblocked him. I reblocked him again last night. Again, not because I’m angry. Not because I have any bad feelings at all for him. But because I am moving on, I don’t want to be part of that little drama any longer. He loves the triangulation. He’ll have to find another 3rd leg to make her jealous with.
The point is….after I did it, I slept a solid 7 hours. I’ve done that a lot lately. Even with all the agita over the hot water heater, and trying to find a mover, and trying to train 2 people at work, I’ve been able to sleep. Because none of it is emotional. None of it makes me question who I am. I’m beginning to trust myself again.
Today I woke refreshed from a good night’s sleep. There is a very gentle rain falling outside, so I can’t sit out there, but I opened the slider to my deck to let the fresh air in, and listen to the peace of it. The stillness.
I am beginning to absorb, assimilate, that my dream of moving to Florida and retiring is manifesting. I guess there is always a ying yang with it, and the yang to that ying is that my son won’t be with me any longer. I know it’s time for him to fly on his own, I know he will love Colorado. I know it’s an adventure for him. I know I’ll still talk to him every day, and that our bond can never be broken.
But God, I will miss his chaotic energy in my life, his youthful exuberance, the plethora of friends and young people constantly running through my house.
I’ll get through it. I’m trying to just look forward to driving cross country with him. That will be a wonderful way to say goodbye to our old life.
I’ll keep the Ambien by my bed, for those few nights when it’s hard.
The rest of the time, I’ll just sleep. I’ll have my life back, completely. There will be no triggers down there to remind me of what I thought I had, and didn’t, nothing to remind me of all the pain I endured. I will just enjoy the fruits of my work to heal, and continue that process in my “Avalon”. My place of healing and new beginnings.
A blog I follow, Edge of Humanity Magazine, put up a post linking to a video of Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane singing “Need Somebody to Love” at Woodstock. (https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/23191541/posts/1034769613 The quality of the recording is not so good, but it’s Woodstock, and the performance is iconic.
It reminded me of the time back in maybe 1974 or 1975, my ex was driving to Boston in his new Jaguar XKE 12 cylinder convertible. British racing green. He had a CB radio. He pulled up alongside a tractor-trailer. The graphics on the side of it were “Jefferson Airplane”. It was their stuff, being hauled to Boston for a concert. He got on his radio, and managed to hail the driver of the truck. They talked for awhile, and he finally asked if anyone in the band was in the cab with the driver.
“Yeah,” the driver said, “Paul Kantner is here.” Then Kanter got on the radio and talked to my ex for awhile. When he found out my ex was driving the Jag, he asked him if he could pull into a service area, and Paul could ride the rest of the way to Boston with him. Then he invited ex to the concert, backstage, to meet the rest of the band, etc., etc.
My ex had a business appointment in Boston that day. To do what Kantner asked, he would have had to blow it off. So, he declined the invitation.
That was when he was 25 years old, lol. And trying to build a future. But what an opportunity he missed! I was frankly surprised when he got home later that day and told me about it, and that he’d said no. I thought he was so dedicated, to us, to our future, I was impressed. We’d been together by then about 5 years. We weren’t married, but we had a life together. Still.. I was surprised. He could have made up an excuse to the appointment, and had a night that he never would have forgotten. It might have changed his life forever, who knows?
Years later, when I thought of it every once in awhile, I thought and still think about 25 years later when he made excuse after excuse about why he couldn’t get into work on any given day, how he had so much to do. It was our own business by then, and I was there, running it, handling it, enabling him, to sit home and do nothing, except become a seriously abusive alcoholic. God forbid I should ever question him. God forbid I should ever object. Doing that could end up with no dishes left unbroken in the cabinet and food all over the floor. To question him was an unforgivable sin.
Well, I did, finally, when I left him. When I got a job outside the business so that we could eat, because his disinterest in running his own business over the years caused the business to go from gross sales of about $2 million, down to about 10% of that. But getting that job enabled me to execute a plan to leave him, to get away from his abusive ass, and get my son away, and salvage the rest of my life.
Another instance of misplaced trust. Because he did big things, like not miss an appointment in exchange for a chance to meet the Jefferson Airplane, I trusted him to be working toward a nice life for us. I guess he did for years. Just like I trusted Scott because he told me about the prison whore, showed remorse, tried to repair the damage. I thought, if he’ll be honest about something like that, he’d never lie about smaller little things.
But it’s the little, insignificant things that count. Being there, listening to you, wanting to know how you are, if you’re ok, respect, taking an interest, being proud to be seen with you,….I could go on, and on.
My ex was all those things in the beginning. As he began to withdraw into alcoholism and became more and more abusive, sociopathic…he began to isolate himself and his family. Scott…always had isolated us, I kept waiting for him to open up. I kept waiting for him to make me part of his whole life, not just one facet of it.
I could beat myself up over that. It seems so stupid in hindsight. It was such a red flag flying. But when we were together, it was so often magical, it was fun, it was loving (even though he denied that later). I honestly thought he was just afraid, I believed him, that he was afraid of getting hurt again.
My ex….is just such a sad story. He’s just destroyed his life. But he abused us so badly, when I left him I was completely out of love with him. It took me years to work through the anger at what he tried to do to me. I guess I didn’t completely work through it, because I fell in love with a man a lot like him, a pathological liar who could deceive much more expertly than my ex could. My ex actually tried for years not to be who he became. Scott worked at it his whole life, and it shows.
I learned about trust. With both of them. It will be a long time before I trust a man again. I am grateful to Brene Brown for dissecting trust, and showing us how almost every moment in a relationship is either an opportunity to connect or an opportunity to betray. Every small little moment. The few large moments that these two men didn’t betray should not have outweighed all the small, every day, seemingly insignificant moments where they did. Over and over.
I saw my ex do it to everyone, lie and betray their trust. I blew it off for a long time. When he began to do it to my son is when my eyes began to open. It was the unconditional love I had for my son that opened my eyes to the truth. It was a gradual understanding that everything he said was a lie.
Scott, I didn’t see until it all hit me in the face, and knocked me down and broke me into thousands of teeny pieces. His well crafted deceptive screen blew apart in explosions, and ripped me apart. I had no idea, and then….I had to deal with and accept that everything for the last 6 months or so of our relationship was a lie. A manipulation. A deception. I still work at comprehending the depths to which he pulled me. Or tried to. I guess he did pull me there for awhile. I can only thank God that I found a way to get back up, from being flat on my face in the dirt, bleeding and bruised, to my knees, to a crouch, to finally a fully standing position again.
I don’t talk to either one of them now. They both remind me of times in my life I’d rather forget. I’d rather leave them in the past. I can’t help either one. I love them both, I love the light I always saw. I love their potential. But their reality, I can’t be anywhere near. It’s one of the things I will be gladdest about when I move to Florida. To be 1500 miles away from the scene of their crimes.
Sunday morning musings. How I got where I am. What karmic lessons I have learned. I know that these two men were my best teachers. These lessons are not textbook type lessons, they are part of my being now. Part of who I am. I have evolved because of them. For that reason, I am able to be grateful for the experience of them in my life. Now, I’ll take those lessons with me, and perhaps in the last quarter of my life, find the love that can last.
Love and light, everyone.
Thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for the link below.
In a comment to my last post, “To Lay Me Down” my good friend Survived Narc brought up a good point about holding back just a little, until you can trust. Which is really another whole blog, so here goes.
How do we give our all once we’re in love, but still, make sure we can trust before we allow ourselves to fall? That’s the question, for me, the big question.
Brene Brown, in her book Rising Strong, and her talk “The Anatomy of Trust” (http://www.supersoul.tv/supersoul-sessions/the-anatomy-of-trust) breaks down in plain, clear, logical language how trust is created. I’ve learned so much from her, and I think that I now understand how I was so betrayed by Scott. I trusted him for all the wrong reasons, and thus, allowed myself to love him unbelievably intensely and dangerously.
I don’t know how to balance the two. Trust and love. Him….I felt like I knew him, felt like I loved him before we even met. I assumed he was trustworthy, I assumed it because of all the wrong reasons. Because he told me “secrets” which he swore he’d never told anyone else, but turns out he had. He lied, so much that it boggles my mind, but I believed him. Mostly, because so many of the lies were unnecessary. He didn’t need to tell me that his ex girlfriend was married. It would have made no difference to me why they broke up, or how, or what she did. He just lied. Of course, if he told me that he was waiting for her to come to her senses, and come back to him, it might have stopped me. But after months, neither he nor I thought she was coming back. I foolishly thought he and I had something too, because of the lies he told me. Things like “I said I didn’t want to be in love with you, Deb, but I didn’t say I wasn’t.” “You scare me, because I have a lot of feelings for you, and I don’t want to be in love….” “in my own way, I love you too.”
Well, needless to say, I learned my lesson.
I think that while love and trust are two separate things, they go hand in hand if you want to have a strong healthy relationship. So while I stand by my belief that not holding back in a relationship, if I love someone, maybe I would temper that statement by saying, I would let that love grow much more slowly, in tandem with my trust for the person. Just, not jump in with both feet until, as Brene says, they have filled my marble jar. Filled it without periodically dumping all the marbles out of it.
Loving without trust is walking the edge. My heart is not strong enough for that any more. I want solid ground, which means, I will give my all, but give it appropriately for where the relationship is at the moment. I won’t jump in believing it’s more than it is. But I won’t hold back either. I’ll just stay in the moment, and let both love and trust grow simultaneously.
I guess my thoughts that I am willing to be vulnerable is still valid, because I am. I am willing to say “I love you” first. But if it’s never said back to me, ever, or always qualified, or quantified, then the relationship will stall, not for lack of love but for lack of trust.
I used to say love was a choice, to fall in love was a choice. I never felt like loving Scott was a choice. It just was, it was from the first time we met. I don’t know what that was, why it was. I still believe we have past history, in another life. He used to believe that too, though I’m sure he denies it now. But he used to read me, just like I read him. Even with the limited contact of the last 6 months, I have known every time I have heard from him, that I would hear from him before I did. Even if it’s just to have him call and hang up, leaving no message. Or to leave me a voice mail. But I do know that if I ever feel that love at first sight thing again, a big “Slow Zone” sign will pop up in my head. A big question mark, following the question, “Can you trust him??? I know now that I can love unconditionally, but not let that person in my life unless and until I can trust them.
It’s a balance….to love, to be vulnerable, to trust, to build trust. It’s all a balancing act. Complicated and simple. A conundrum, of the human condition, lol.
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