Staying Happy

Posted on by learning to live like water

The last two Mondays have been my two best days on WP ever!  Tied for the most views!  I don’t know why, but THANK YOU, dear readers.  I’m delighted to have people read what I write.

I’m still feeling pretty happy.  Like, pretty content with my life, on my own.  I still think about him, but not in a painful way. Just a he was a man I was with for awhile.  Not holding on to any of it now.  Just something that was, and isn’t now.  It ended badly.  Most affairs that end, end badly, I think.

I’m tired tonight, it was a long day at work, I don’t  have much to talk about, so I’ll leave with this thought.

And that’s what I’m in the process of doing.  Letting go…..

Love and light.

 

It’s Supposed To Be This Way, Isn’t It?

Posted on by learning to live like water

Happy-Winter-Solstice-12.png

I always thought the winter solstice was today, the 21st.  But it’s actually tomorrow morning at 4 in the morning, GMT.  But tonight is the longest night of the year.  Tomorrow, the shortest day.

And then, the days get longer.  Sigh.  Dreams of summer begin to float in my mind.

Long days, days at the beach with good friends.  The Beach Whores, we call ourselves. Any Beach Any Time.

I may be moving this summer.  I hope.  Last summer was my last full summer here, and I can thank Scott for making sure it was an unhappy time in my life, playing his narcissistic game.  Except when I was with my friends, which gratefully I was.

However long I am here this summer, even if it’s all summer, I will enjoy the whole thing.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even find someone to sit out on the deck with me and stargaze.

But now, it’s winter, the world sleeps, Christmas is upon us.  Then the New Year.  The short days and long nights give us pause for retrospection and introspection.  What lessons did I learn from the last year? What direction do I now want my life to take?

I’m still kind of on a happiness hangover from having such a good day yesterday.  The gongs brought up some stuff, and I dealt with it Saturday, really just sat with it, and it came up, and it went.  The place where it was, that old sadness and pain, was filled with joy on Sunday.

I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?  The old stuff comes up, and if you don’t try to re-bury it, but honor your feelings, they just dissipate, and we can allow joy to come in.  Because, I think it’s there, just waiting.

Happy solstice everyone.

 

 

Amazing Wonderful Happy Day

Posted on by learning to live like water

happy day.jpg

What a wonderful day.

First of all I managed to sleep until 6 AM, which is a major feat for me.  I sat with my computer for a couple hours, and read and blogged, and thought, and meditated.  Two and a half hours passed without me even noticing, caught up in my own world, in my own passions, in my own thoughts.

Then my son came up from his man-cave in the basement, his (maybe) girlfriend had spent the night. (He’s been seeing her on and off for a long time, and I love this girl.) So I had breakfast with them and that was very nice…since he cooked!

Then I showered and went to my bff’s and we made Christmas cookies, 5 different kinds in 4 1/2 hrs….about 35 or 40 dozen.  It was like a cookie factory, but it was so much fun, we laughed so much, we are like a well oiled machine when we start this.  We’ve been doing it for years.  Her daughter and her daughter’s best friend, college girls now, helped.  That was just added joy and fun.  And I got the belly laughs I have been missing, along with the love of an old, long friendship.

While I was there, another friend texted me and asked me to go out for a drink later, in the late afternoon. Another old, long friendship.  Just a drink,to talk, to catch up.  She also just ended a relationship in which she was so immersed, so crazy about the man.   It was just like mine with Scott’s, anyone and everyone knew it was bad for her….and she finally was able let it go.  She still misses him from time to time, but she knows better now.

So when I got done with the cookies, I came home, got dinner started for my son, and went and sat at the bar at a local watering hole with her, and we laughed, and talked with other people at the bar, and had a GOOD time! What a wonderful way to wrap up the weekend, and begin the week!

Am I, dare I ask, dare I say it, HAPPY????  Maybe???

I came home, I put together dinner, with what I had started for my son (and he ate while I was gone for a couple hours) and put on the Sunday night show on OWN that I love, called Super Soul Sessions.  Last week she had on Brene Brown and Tim Story.  The first hour was a repeat, but honestly, I’ve seen the Brene talk (on the Anatomy of Trust) already a half dozen times and will watch it probably a half dozen more.  The second hour started with Elizabeth Gilbert.  The “Eat Pray Love” author who I idolize (along with Brene Brown, lol).   Liz Gilbert was so profound, she got a standing ovation.  Her subject was on finding and following your curiosity, to find your passion….she is amazing.  She is followed by Michael Beckwith, about participating in your own coming out, your own growth.

God, I am happy.  I have no attachments at the moment, to things that bring me down.  I can see them, and feel compassion, I do not feel the need to get wrapped up in them.  I feel the need, conversely, to be myself, to follow my own path, to listen to the inner voice inside me, to do what feels right to me, in my gut.  To love people….to extend love.

OMG, I AM happy!!!  I AM content. I am in love with my life.  I am happy with where it is going.  I am at peace with the past, and the present, and looking forward to what each day will bring me.

What a wonderful day!  To let go of those things that have dragged you down, and to realize that the possibilities are really, indeed….infinite.  I just heard someone say “Happiness is the joy you feel when you move toward your potential.”

Yeah, I’m happy.  😀

 

 

 

 

A Larger Perspective

Posted on by learning to live like water

perspective

I was looking for a poem I wrote last summer or spring, and in the process, glanced at a lot of my old blogs from that time.

That time when S was playing us both.  I wrote mostly about the pain, mostly about how I missed him, mostly about how he pushed me away and when I was gone, pulled me back.  The only joy I wrote about all summer was when I was with friends.

I didn’t write about when he came to see me much.  I think, I didn’t want anyone to read that I was with him, after he’d been treating me so callously.  I didn’t want to appear weak to anyone, that I allowed him into my bed, when it was obvious that was all he was going to give me.  I was embarrassed by my own weakness.

Why in God’s name did I allow that to just go on?  Damn, I loved that man way beyond what was healthy.  I don’t know why I was so smitten with him, when he obviously had an agenda that didn’t include my happiness, except to give me a few hours of his time every week or two.  Why, why was I so weak?

In between I was not talking him, or trying not to, or telling myself to just let go, to walk away, that what he wanted was not what I wanted.

He was good at the pull back thing.  Sweet, funny, sexy.  It was like he hypnotized me.  As if I was powerless.  I guess what I wanted was him, at the end of the day.   So I allowed it.  Always willing to give it one more try, when I thought he was.

It’s amazing how our perceptions can change.  I made up so many excuses for him, I listened to him make up excuses and believed him.  I was led down the path with him SO many times and disappointed.  I listened and believed his intricate web of lies. I accepted so much less than I deserved.

I don’t know who I was then.  I really don’t.

Geezus.

And him?  Who the hell was he?  A figment of my imagination.  Intriguing I guess, like a puzzle that I wanted put together.  I thought the finished picture would be way different than it was.

I knew he loved Betty at one time.  I just wish he’d been honest with me, and told me she came back.   I would have deferred to that relationship, we’d still be friends, they’d still be together, and everyone would be ok.  Instead, 3 hearts are broken, and 3 lives are ripped apart, because he couldn’t tell me the truth.  If he loved her, which he said to me the last time I talked to him, the day he called me begging me to lie to her for him, why would he dishonor her like that?

He has no idea what real love is.  He thinks it’s a web you catch someone in.

Well, he caught me.  I guess he caught her too.  I cut myself out, patiently allowing the truth to surface, and in the process, created an opening for her to free herself from his web too.

Since I don’t know her, at all….maybe she’ll forgive him one day.  Maybe he’s learned his lesson and will be able to convince her.  .

Personally, I think he is unable to say no to any woman who offers it to him if he thinks he can get away with it.

I would have liked to talk to Betty at some point.  I just would like to know the story from her side.  I’d like to clarify any questions she has.  I’d like to know she will be ok.

A lot of lessons were learned in the 18 months I was with him.  Lessons about trust, mostly, and loving myself first.  About self-respect.  And mostly about being naive.

Yeah, I loved him, and that was real.  And I love him now.  Because, I can’t hate someone I loved that much.  It’s not the same.  I just hope he doesn’t live out his life holding onto pain and hate and anger and sorrow.  But he loves the darkness, it’s where he’s comfortable, and all he’s ever known.

The good thing is…reading old blogs didn’t make me want to go back there.  It made me see how much of myself I was losing, that I lost.  Reading them made me want to get farther away.  I’m feel like I am walking away at light speed now.  Gathering up the lost pieces, and putting them back together, one by one.  Feeling almost whole.

I didn’t mean to dissect this again today.  I am just pleased to see where I’ve come from where I was.  It was all about a greater perspective today, the kind you can only get with distance.  I don’t think I’ll need to revisit it.

Onward…..

This Letting Go Is Hard-Ass Stuff

Posted on by learning to live like water

where the light comes in

As quickly as the melancholy came, it left.  Maybe because I got to have a real adult conversation with my son and his (maybe) girlfriend.  Maybe it’s because I got into making a traditional soup for Christmas.  I used to always make it, it’s my mother-in-law’s recipe, and it made my son happy.

It was probably a lot about the gongs, and what bubbled up, that memory of Scott holding my hand, that had to be let go of.  Often, you don’t feel the work of the gongs, or stop feeling it,  for a few days.  It was all symbolic.  That he wouldn’t let go of my hand, or me.  That I had to let go of him.  And now I have to let go of that memory.  All about letting go.   That’s why I remembered it then….to help me really let go.

I thought about, am thinking about, taking some soup to my ex, leaving it on his doorknob.  But I think he is always there.  I don’t want to run into him, really.  I just feel bad for him, all alone at Christmas.  I know it’s what he wants, I know he set himself up for it.  But he’s been alone at Christmas since 2008.  Even his sister doesn’t want him at her house.  Too much chaos, bullshit, lies.  It’s hard on those who cared about him.  It’s why I don’t want to run into him.

This letting go stuff is hard-ass stuff.  But when you can actually get there….even if it’s not forever, it’s so freeing.  Maybe it’s just one layer, that I managed to let go of today, but I did it.  No worse for the wear and tear.  Better than holding on to a memory that was sweet…and a manipulation to make me believe I mattered.  Realizing that it was Sunday, I realized now that he came to my bed from hers.  Really feeling special about that one….lol.  I don’t suppose she’d be feeling much different than me, if she finds out.  She might…she has the link to my blog, though I don’t feel like she’s reading them anymore.  Whatever.  The hurt, and the beauty, of the moment is gone.  A casualty of the massive deception.

But I’m still here.  I’m still me. I’m still someone with a wonderful life.  He didn’t kill me….Wounded, yes.  But the light got in.

 

 

Saturday Morning, Post-Gong Musings

Posted on by learning to live like water

sun and moon

Today is the first day it’s been cold enough to feel like December.  It’s not going to last either, and is supposed to warm up again next week.  I am delighted at that. Saving so much money on heating bills.  And I haven’t had to break out my heavy coat yet.   With the winter solstice upon us, that’s incredible.

I love the two solstices, winter and summer. For opposite reasons….Winter because it marks the end of shortening days, and the return of the sun.  I’ve always wanted to see the Paul Winter Consort Winter Solstice concert at St. John’s Cathedral in NYC.  I have a friend who has gone many times.  He has brought in a sun gong for the last couple.

I love the summer solstice, because it is the longest day of the year.  I LOVE long days.  I love sitting outside at 9 PM in the twilight, watching fireflies, talking with friends.  I used to love someone who liked to do that too…..  Hopefully I will find someone else who can delight in the simple pleasures that the universe gives us.

I have a cat, who was given to me by my bff when I was living alone after I left my ex, and my son was living with him.  I was fine alone, I didn’t have an issue with it.  It was still better than dealing with the chaos my ex caused moment to moment.  But my friend couldn’t stand that I was coming home to an empty house, and foisted Maggie on me.  She’s never been a lap cat, never been cuddly.  She’ll sit beside me at times, but never on my lap.  This morning, I was doing my meditation, and she climbed up on my chest, and sat there purring.  I don’t know what all that was about, but it was sweet.  My head had been pretty clear of thoughts, and when she did that I just thought “love” over and over.

Trying to keep my emotions in check as we approach Christmas, and I’m alone.  Trying not to miss him.  It seems ludicrous to my mind, to miss him.  But last night at the gongs, I think I realized he really did have affection for me.  I’ll leave it at that.  I just started trying to dissect it again, and backspaced out a whole paragraph.  I don’t need to go there.  I know what it was, and I know what it is.  That’s enough.

As with yesterday, I am grateful for what I do have.  My son is off this weekend, it will be nice to have him around.  My bff and I are making Christmas cookies tomorrow.  We make 5 or 6 or 7 kinds, her daughter will be with us, home from college.  We generally have spiked eggnog or something while we do it, and Christmas carols on, and laughter.  Oh I love the laughter.

Laughter endears a person to me like nothing else.  And I haven’t done enough of it in the last 6 months.  I intend to change that balance, so that laughter is the rule of the day, and pain rarely shows it’s face.

Love and light to all.

Peeling Back the Layers

Posted on by learning to live like water

Wistful

I just got home from a gong meditation.  I had no intention going into it.  But I was tired, I didn’t sleep well last night.  And work this week was beyond crazy.  I was so happy to end the week with the gongs.

This week was another week in letting go of old stuff.  There was the thing with Addie, there was the strong vibe I had about Scott’s health, and then for a few days I felt no connection to him at all.  Which was a relief, because I mostly worry about him when I feel connected.  Which is, I know, kind of crazy, considering he’s the one who caused all this heartache and pain.  I wish I didn’t see his soul so clearly.  But I do, I’m going to have to deal with it somehow.

Tonight at the gong bath,  my friends who put it on suggested because it is the Christmas season, that we (there were about 20 or 25 of us there) say the names, or at least put the names out into the universe, of anyone we know who needs healing of any kind.  I thought of my 94 year old mother, who had a massive stroke over a year ago, leaving her unable to speak, read, write and partially paralyzed.  Yet, she goes on.  She laughs on the phone.  But we all know she’s ready to go on.  Her memory is failing and though she knows who her daughters are, she can barely understand some basic things.  Like my sister makes her get out of her wheel chair so she won’t forget how to walk.

I also thought of my ex, of Scott, of Betty, of Addie.  And sent healing energy to all of them.

I was soon into a deep meditative state…lying there in the dark, snuggled under my blanket.  I wanted to let go of the past, if anything.  But I kept remembering one afternoon last summer when Scott and I feel asleep spooning, and he had reached around me and was holding my hand and wouldn’t let go.  It was in the summer, so he was seeing Betty then on the weekend unbeknownst to me, although that may have been a Sunday, I don’t remember.  I guess it must have been if it was the afternoon.  I don’t know why I couldn’t stop that image while I was so deep.  I guess it was so symbolic, now, of how he wouldn’t let go of me all that time.

I’m not gonna lie, it made me sad to remember that tender afternoon.

I began to say the Ho’oponopono, to myself.  To say I love you, to myself.  To try to become strong enough to let go of that memory, and the rest of it.

I think I regained the stillness I had last night and this morning.  I hope. It wasn’t a voice in my head, it was just a memory, embedded deep in my heart.  I wasn’t holding a conversation about it with myself, I was just remembering it, in living color.  Feeling it again.  There are a lot more where that came from, and I need to let them all go.

I really do feel for Betty.  I don’t know her at all…..but I am pretty sure he convinced her he would never cheat on her again, for her to take him back.  And she had to deal with him being with me too, the whole time he was with her.  That’s hard.

And Addie…trying to fill holes with every woman he meets.  Not letting himself feel what he feels.  He tells me I keep breaking his heart, and I know I have a couple times, because I could not love him the way he wanted me to.  Then instead of allowing himself to heal from that, if it’s true, he jumps into a relationship with the first woman he dates, and the first woman he meets on line.  I know him well….it’s not because I’m on some kind of ego trip about him, I just know how he is.  I know how we were, I know how he buries his pain.  I do believe that he loved me very much.

My ex…I don’t even know what to think about him.  Living in the teeny cottage next door to our old house.  Not working, all alone.  He probably needs healing the most, and is the least likely to ever crawl out of the depths he’s fallen into.

I recognize now, that it was all another layer of pain that I peeled off the onion tonight.  It was not painful, not in the way it has been in the past.  It was more wistful, just some sweet tender memories from before it all blew up.  Before the explosion of emotions that ended in such destruction.  I’m glad to have a few real moments to remember besides all the sadness in the months leading up to to that explosion.

I am grateful to have the gong meditations to work through this stuff.  Since I was going through my divorce, it has been my biggest healing tool.  To go there, and let whatever is ready to come up, come up, and for me to see it, feel it, honor it, and let it go.

The End of the Fireworks

Posted on by learning to live like water

the end

My book club is reading “The Untethered Soul” by Mark Singer.  I have seen him on OWN, on Super Soul Sunday and liked him.  I just started the book, but he begins by talking about the voice in our heads.

He asks why we  discuss with ourselves, in our heads, situations and things that we know.  I thought about how I keep re-running the chaos that ended the relationship with Scott, and replaying it in my head.  Why??  do I do that to myself?

I know what it was, I know how it hurt, but I’ll never really get past it if I keep re-living it in my head, or here on the page.  I know what happened, I know how I loved him, I know all the red flags that I ignored, I know what he did to me, to her.  I know how he is now, there’s nothing that needs to be figured out.

I would like to shut that conversation down permanently.  I don’t want to forget, I just don’t want to be obsessing about it.  It was traumatic, yes.  At my age, I’d never experienced it before, and was blindsided that it happened.  But I need to let it all go.  Why give all that bad news my continued attention?

Gratitude is a better place to go. This morning I woke up after a poor night’s sleep and thought about all the things I do have.  My great son, a lovely home, a lot of friends, a decent job, the real possibility of retiring and moving closer to family.  I’m grateful for our incredibly mild winter so far.  I’m grateful to have a few things I love to do passionately.

If I think about my relationship with him, I am going to be grateful that I found out I can love passionately, despite my long abusive marriage.  I honestly never thought I would when I left it.  That I chose the wrong man, is secondary to the fact that I was able to passionately love someone.

I guess a relationship that was so passionate, was probably not going to end quietly.  It was bound to go down in a huge explosion of emotion.  We were night and day, just as he said in the poem he wrote me. When we occupied the same space for a short time, there were fireworks in the sky like the blazing colors of dusk and dawn.  Sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes the display was terrifying.  Now  all the fireworks are spent and I am going to just let the memories fade, pack up my stuff and go home.

I have a lot of good years to live yet.  I don’t want to waste any more of my days trying to make sense of that chaos.  It will be an effort at first, because I think it’s a habit now.  But I’ve never been an addictive person, and I can change that.

With gratitude, and a conscious effort to extend love and compassion wherever I go.