Category Archives: Wisdom

The End of The Line

Posted on by learning to live like water

After I posted my last three blogs yesterday I heard from S via text.  His normal greeting, kind of joking, kidding, laden with sexual innuendo.  I am used to it, but I didn’t play along.  I was not unfriendly, I just don’t want to go there.  Then apparently he read all the blogs while we texted. Or, more correctly while we stopped texting.  When I heard from him again, he was upset over the blogs, tho would give me no specifics.

I told him I wished he would stop reading them.  That his reading them makes me feel like I need to censure what I say for his benefit.  But I don’t..I won’t.  I need to write what is on my mind without fear of repercussion, it is my way of working through things.  But him reading the blogs, and my feelings on our difficult relationship, has caused so many problems.

I got silence.  He did not respond to me.  I knew he was angry.  I re-read them quickly, but really didn’t think they were offensive.  Maybe the reblog of “Exhausted” could be perceived that way.  Had the tables been turned I would have asked questions, but that’s not his way.

He said, “I am gone.”  I said, “Ok, Love always.”

I was not upset.  He has been gone from this relationship in any real way for a long time, and I have accepted that, and given up any expectation that he would ever care for me in the way I did for him.  And I have also become clear in my own head that I don’t want any part of the push pull game that goes on endlessly between us.  Pulling me to him til he has me, then pushing me away til I am gone. Repeat and repeat ad infinitum.

I guess he made the same decision that I did, that this relationship doesn’t work.  But I don’t know, will never know his real reasons for saying he was gone.  I have been pretty gone since the 4 day silence a week ago. That was the ultimate push me phase, and it sent me far from him.  The conversation this weekend was the beginning of the pull me back to him phase, but it wasn’t happening for me.  I don’t know if he thought it was.

I know very little about his thoughts, he does not share them.  This blog is about my feelings, it is about what I see in our relationship.  It is, because it’s my blog, my viewpoint.  I know he sees things differently, but I don’t know much about his viewpoint.  It’s ok, it’s exhausting to have to wrap my head around him and try to make sense of what he wants when he keeps his silence and his emotional distance from me. I can’t do it any more, and apparently neither can he.

It’s all good.  I am fine.  I accepted the end when I was panic stricken over his health and realized he went to New Jersey and was actually refusing to ease my mind. If truth be told, I was at the end the week before, when I was trying to end it, because I was so unhappy, and the health issues came up, only telling me so I wouldn’t leave him.  It was manipulative to do that, it was cruel to leave me hanging.

I loved him well, I will always love him.  I just accept fully that we are not meant to be.  It was fun for awhile, but it’s not any more.  I needed the relationship to evolve.  It was de-volving in my view.  I think we are at the end here this time.

Contentment

Posted on by learning to live like water

I’m working on contentment.  I would like to be content with things as they are, not wishing they were different.  Today, after the chaotic week I had, I actually feel it’s possible.

There’s a cleansing rain falling, been falling since yesterday afternoon.  It’s actually a winter type Nor’easter, having rained about an inch or so in that time.  If it was winter, it would have been a foot of snow.  One of the reasons I want to move to where winter isn’t.  Or at least doesn’t include storms with snow measured in feet.

Content.  Actually, I am feeling pretty content today.  I have started the work on my house to get it ready to sell.  I lost two more pounds this week, which brings me to about 10 lbs since winter, a really good thing.  If I could lose 20 more, I’d be really content!  But two pounds in a week is good, enough to content me.

I am content to know that S is not in imminent danger with his health, and content that he has not communicated with me.  It’s kind of freeing, to get away from the chaotic emotion which has defined our relationship.

I had two 2 hour phone conversations with friends yesterday, close close friends.  It’s unusual for me, to spend that much time on the  phone, but it was what I needed, to feel that close connection with people I love and have known for many years.

I’m going down to the shore today to collect the money from the guy who is renting my boat slip for the season.  That will be nice.  The rain should be over by about noon, I’m going later.  It always does me good to be where I can smell the salt air.  Growing up in the middle of this country, I never dreamed that one day my life would involve being out on the ocean every weekend and vacation of the summer. God, how I loved it.  For the 30 years I was married, summer was about being on the ocean.  Going to sleep to the lapping of the water on the sides of the boat, waking up to gentle rocking, having coffee in the cockpit, listening to the gulls, watching the fishing boats ply the waters.  I miss it…but who knows, maybe it will someday be part of my life again.  We owned our slip at a dockominium complex, and in the divorce, my ex got the boat, and I got the slip.  He has since sold the boat, which made me sad.  It was a lovely boat, I picked it out. But it is what it is. When a marriage goes bad, there’s no where to get away on a boat, and I had to give it up too.

So, contentment, is where I am today.  Accepting what is, happily.  Hopefully with grace.  I would have to say that grace led me to this content place, and I am blessed.

In the Flow

Posted on by learning to live like water

Switched from red wine to rum tonight.  Feeling pretty good.  I got an answer, the only answer I needed.  So, I could let go, knowing there was no eminent danger.  He can do his thing, and I can do mine.  As it should be.

I believe in unconditional love.  It means you don’t get to pick and choose who you love, you don’t get to judge whether or not they are worthy.  You just have to love everyone.  Or it’s not unconditional.

There are people who never experience that.  They live their lives not believing they are worthy of love. They believe that without a bunch of extraneous stuff, they have no value.  My ex was one of these people. I am sure that because he believed he had no intrinsic value, he believed that anyone who loved him must be stupid.  Or trying to get something from him. And so he vacillated between treating me like I was stupid, or as if I was trying to take him for something.  And all I wanted was for him to love me.

I get it now.  He couldn’t.  Poor guy.  He tried, I think he really tried.  But that little voice in his head was too loud, too strong.  “Don’t love her, she will hurt you.”

I’ve seen unconditional love in action.  I’ve seen it save people, once they realized they had value just because they existed.  And so… I love S, unconditionally.  Not to be mistaken for romantic love.  But I love him.  I love my ex.  I wish all good things for them.  I believe completely that they are good men at their center

In the meantime, I have decided not to talk to my ex about our son.  But maybe talk to him, just tell him a little of my plans, find out about his.  See how he is.  To talk to him about our son is not my business.  It’s my son’s business and my ex’s.  So I’ll stay out of it.  That has been my stance all along.  Recently I have been worried about my son having family nearby when I move.  But he’ll have his family of friends, and me at the end of the phone, which is basically how we communicate now.  He will be fine, and if he wants a relationship with his father, he can open that door himself.

Feeling good tonight.  Better than I’ve felt all week. The flow went where I didn’t expect it to, but suddenly it’s all quite clear to me, and it’s all ok.

I ordered new carpet on order for my family room, I scheduled a measuring of my room.  I cleaned my son’s bathroom.  Because waiting for him to do it will mean waiting forever.  Literally.  Got my hair cut and highlighted.  Grocery shopped.  The day was gray, but in the middle of the day,I realized it was gray still, but was also green.  As in the color of life, every tree and shrub and bit of foliage is so green this time of year.  Green, as in the color of the heart chakra….Green.

Ater the Fire Is Out, Sifting Through the Smoldering Remains

Posted on by learning to live like water

Last Friday night when I saw the psychic, my native American spirit guides told me, first thing, first message they gave me, was “Stand your ground, don’t back down.” The medium said she could hear the Tom Petty song. My friends and I knew what that was about, I was trying to end, at that time, the relationship which had become purely physical and was not nourishing me.

The medium said, “You stand it lovingly, not with meanness in your heart.  And with no expectation that this other person is going to go along with it.”  Which was exactly what was happening.  He didn’t want me to break it off, but I was unhappy with it as it was.  She also told me that standing my ground would open doors for me.

Then he brought in his health issues.  Because I loved, and still love, him, i caved, I could only feel love and concern for him  He wouldn’t tell me the possibilities, because he didn’t want that energy out there. And because he thought I would “go ballistic.”

Yes, I would have been upset, but I was already upset.”Ballistic” is not what I would have become however. “Ballistic would be how I might describe a reaction of anger.  I wasn’t angry, I was upset, concerned, in love. Wanted to know what might be in store for the man I loved, and wanted to be able to determine if I could in anyway help him get through this.   Based on the symptoms, there wasn’t one outcome that was better than the other.  He promised when he knew something definite he would tell me.  Until then, he said, “I need you to just be with me.”  And so I was.  I was there when he called, I did what he asked, I didn’t ask him to tell me.  I did tell him that I loved him, I did express concern about him.  Of course.  Not a lot, not often, but when I felt it was appropriate.

So, I did what I could do.  I sent him Reiki, I sent him all the positive energy I could, I sent up prayers to the Universe that he come through it ok.  I kept that to myself, because I felt he preferred that I act like nothinig was wrong.

Apparently, my acquiescing to his wishes gave him license to treat me however he needed to.  And last night’s no show, on the heels of not knowing all week what was wrong, just broke me.  He was scared and in pain he said.  Why is that an excuse to hurt someone?  I don’t know.  If he wasn’t going to tell me the whole story, he shouldn’t have told me any of it.  But he told me what he did, to keep me in his words, not mine, “from dumping” him.

“You’re making it all about you” he said last night.  When you turn my world upside down, it will be, for me, about me, until I right myself again.  Never disrespecting that he has some real serious issues..  But he disrespected me, and my love care and concern for him.

So, contrary to the spirit advice, and what my own gut had told me, I didn’t stand my ground, I did back down.  But this morning, after dealing with the pain of his carelessness last night, I will stand my ground once again.  He asked me to leave him alone, and I will.  I said, do the same for me, please.

It’s what he wanted all along, to be alone.  Now he is.  Me, well…I am alone in a sense that I’m not with him.  But I’m blessed with a life full of people who love me.  I’ll be fine.

The Psychic/Angel Reading

Posted on by learning to live like water

So, I had my psychic reading. It was pretty amazing, and I’d totally do it again.

The medium started out telling me I had two native American guides behind me, (I think that means they kind of have your back…) one male one female. The first thing she did was tell me their advice on something very personal, which I’m not going to put here, but it was lengthy, on target, out of the blue, and believeable. Then she said, “I’m hearing a lot about Florida…”

OMG, my two friends and I jumped! That is so the focus of my life right now. Trying to get my house ready to sell, planning to move to Florida. Hoping my mother will still be around when I do, being near my sister, never ever having to deal with a New England winter again.

She said, “they say it will be a really good thing for you. They say it will offer you many opportunities, and you can choose any or all of them. And it will be easier for you financially there….” It was pretty amazing. She knew nothing about me except my name before this.

Then she had a female presence, over me, which means older than me. She asked if my mother was alive and since she is, we determined this was her mother. She said, “She says she was a good cook, loved to cook from scratch, grow her own vegetables, etc. But never got to pass that information on to your mother or you.” I said, “Because she died when my mother was 4 years old.” Now, considering my mom was born in 1921, this makes my grandmother’s death in 1925, living on an Indiana farm, of course she made everything from scratch and grew her own stuff. The medium said, “She said she didn’t want to leave your mother so young, but that it was part of both of their journeys. It made your mother strong, and able to deal with so many things in her life..” She suggested I pass that along to my mother, and I might when I see her again. I will have to decide if it would be well-receive by my mom, but since it is something her mother asked me to do, I probably will.

Which is what my sisters and I have always said, that Mom is able to adjust to any situation with such grace. Obviously, the one she faces now the hardest, not being able to communicate and being partially paralyzed resulting in the loss of so much of her prized independence. But I do believe that because of her mothers death so young, and subsequently living with a variety of aunts and uncles, that she learned how to adjust to different living situations, and to make friends and make people love her. Because everyone loves her.

The medium said she was showing her two faces, identical…did I look like my mother? No….My mother looked just like her mother. The medium said, “It seems as if it was close enough that people remarked on it.” Oh yes, in fact, it caused problems with my mothers older sister, because everyone commented on how much mom looked like my grandmother, and never mentioned her older sis, who as I understand it, was quite jealous of the fact and the attention it brought Mom.

It was pretty cool to have a communication with my grandmother that I never met. And to know she is with me.

Then she had a male presence which was undoubtedly my father. First off, she had advice on the same personal situation as the native American guides, which validated that it was my father, because it was exactly what he would say to me, lol.

Then the medium said, “I hear someone yelling ‘Fore!!!’ Did your father play golf?” OMG, I jumped, the hair stood up on my arms. “Yes,” I answered. “Every moment that he could.” He once got a hole in one, I think it was his proudest moment next to the birth of his 3 daughters.

She asked if he was part of a group of men, like a club or something because he was with these men and was happy… I could only think of the Air Force, he was in the reserves til a few years before he died in 1988.

It was wonderful to hear from him, she told me how he loves me and is with me. These things I knew, he always made sure we knew he loved us, and I have always known he was with me.

She asked who did the Ancestry.com thing. That is my older sister…she was able to put together about a 4 page family tree. The medium said, “but I hear that you weren’t able to have those family discussions where 3 or 4 generations sit around passing along family stories…” And this was so true. I said, “no, we weren’t but we’ve gotten my mother to write down a lot of her life, and to tag all the photos we can find.” The medium said that there are legacy writers now, who interview elders and then turn their stories into books for them.

Which I think was maybe a message for me about the writing, maybe in conjunction with my 2 sisters, since we all share a love of writing, particularly my older sis and I. I spoke to my sis about it yesterday, that maybe when I move down to Florida, we could collaborate. Just throwing the idea out but she was receptive.

The medium also told us in the beginning that some messages are meant for more than one of us. At one point, she was asking another woman about someone in her family who had a name like a flower, a young person. The woman nodded but didn’t really respond as if she knew exactly who she was talking about. But I think it was meant more for me. My niece who died in a car accident 10 years ago when she was 24….her name was Aster. I had been hoping she’d show up and I think she did. I should have spoken up…I didn’t because it wasn’t my reading, but in hindsight I should have. Next time I will.

So…it was pretty amazing, satisfying, good for my soul. I have no doubt that my loved ones were there, or my guides (how else did she know about Florida??). Looking forward to doing it again sometime.

Stop the Ride! Please!

Posted on by learning to live like water

I keep thinking that I’ve figured out how to get off the merry-go-round.  You know, that feeling, that you’ve been going around and around and not getting anywhere.  Riding a horse that you can close your eyes and with a real good imagination believe it’s real for a moment. Ah, such bliss in that fake horse, for the short time that you make it real.  But, you open your eyes and there you are on a fake horse going nowhere.

Suddenly, you want off.  You have things to do, places to go, people to meet, a reality to deal with.  You just want off.  So, you dig in your heels and try to slow it down so you can get off with out smashing your face into the ground.  You ask the man who runs the throttle to please slow it down, so you can dismount.  But you’re dependent on his good nature, his time-table, you don’t know if the glint in his eye means he enjoys seeing people flying off the horses or if he has some compassion for those that need to leave.

I went to a gong bath Thursday night.  During an exceptional “white noise” tsunami, which is when the gong players play them so loud and hard that the sound and the vibrations absolutely don’t allow a thought, only emotions, I cried out, asking for resolution. I surrendered.  (It’s lovely when you cry out during a tsunami, no one hears you except God, or your inner self….).  I turned it over to the greater powers that be, to resolve how they saw fit, trusting that it would be in my best interest.

I was up all night (thus my poem, Sleepless).  Caused, as usual by expectations, attachment.  (OH Buddha, I can’t figure out how to not be attached. And not having expectations is hard….) I expected a certain outcome, which I thought was realistic, on Wednesday night.  Let’s just say, I was disappointed.  I was suddenly snapped back into the past, with old fears, old issues.

Thursday morning, I was on an emotional edge all day, it wouldn’t have taken much to push me into the abyss, a gentle push, maybe one little finger in the small of my back, as I peered over the edge and idly wondered what was at the bottom.  Of course, I remembered, later.  Grateful that I didn’t make the leap to find out what I already knew. It’s never good down there.

Back to surrender…..and the vibrational healing of the gongs.  I was subdued after the bath, I went home, I was in bed not long after.  I was exhausted, as if I’d been up for days, and carrying a heavy burden while I walked.  I lay down, sure I would pass out and of course, did not.  Until about 4 am.  I sobbed, I cried, i asked. I lay there numb. I got up and walked around, I sat by the window, I put on my meditation music over and over, changing the cd’s at 2 am.  I asked…please get me off this merry-go-round.  Trusting that it would be resolved to my highest good.  To everyone’s highest good.

So, come Friday, I had to go to work on 2 or 3 hours sleep.  Again, still, I had what I thought was a realistic expectation for Friday night.  But the offer I got, was a long way from the one I wanted.  My gut did a flip flop and screamed “NOOOOOO….” and so, I refused it.  Knowing that my gut is much more tied in to what’s better for my highest good than my mind, which toyed for a second or two with accepting far less than I wanted.  Because it would have given me a little pleasure to accept and then a lot of pain.

Listen to your gut, always listen to your gut.

Last night I discussed the offer….with the one who made it.  But I didn’t cry.  I didn’t even get mad or upset.  I’m not angry about it.  I’m disappointed but I am accepting the reality that it is what it is.  Reality.  And I guess this is the way the universe is working it out in my best interest.  So be it.  It seems that there is really no reason to accept less than I dream of, in this one life that I have.  (At least in this lifetime, I only have this one life….) It seems it is dishonest to my inner being to change myself to become what someone else needs.  (Which I know, I have done that before much more blatantly.)

Well, the story is not ended yet.  It isn’t quite over I guess.  I am willing to ride it out, to see where it goes.  But I’m not afraid and I think I have a more realistic expectation of the outcome.

But damn, I didn’t want to go to Florida alone.  Sigh……