Tag Archives: acceptance

Acceptance Comes Slowly

Posted on by learning to live like water

So dawns a new day.  I still have not heard a peep from him.  I left another voicemail, I have texted him.  It is unlike him to hold a grudge with me, especially when I am so obviously trying to find my way back to him.  But this morning, acceptance is setting in.

I had a nightmare about him last night. And now I’m trying to see if I can logically understand why he is silent.  So far these are my choices.

1.  He’s still angry with me for being so hurt the other night.  He cannot stand being the bad guy.  All it  required was an “I’m sorry”. We all make mistakes, he made one in not telling me he was not going to come.  He made one in underestimating how much it meant to me.  But a heartfelt “I’m sorry” would have gone a long way.  A phone call would have been nice.

2. He read the blogs I wrote after, “Crash and Burn” and “Sifting through the smoldering ruins” and was furious.  He dislikes i when I write about him, us.  When we are published on the internet.  No one knows me, or him.  He says, “yes, but when your book is published they will know who you are, and then who I am….”  That’s still such a long shot. But I have to write about me.  I have told him any blog I write is a snapshot in time of how I am feeling at that moment.  So why don’t I just journal it, why publish?  Because when I am in pain, confused, fearful I long for feedback from my peers.  The community helps me through it, helps me not to feel so alone.  I am quite able, obviously, when my feelings change, or circumstances change, to own it, and correct it here.  I rue the day I ever gave him the link to this blog.  It puts a bracket on my freedom to write what I feel here.

3.  Maybe he is too sick to communicate with me.  I can’t know that he actually went to work yesterday.  I do know that he wasn’t in the hospital.  I do know that he didn’t die, because I checked the obits this morning.  Sounds morbid, I know, but if he had an aneurism, which could kill him instantly, I would never know, I would never be told by anyone because no one knows of me. So it was some kind of black comfort not to see his name there. Maybe he is just in too much pain to add the stress of talking to me to it.  But…he doesn’t have to talk with me.  Just to tell me how he is, in a text or an email, and then ask me to continue to leave him alone, and I will.  Just to ease my mind.

4. I have occasionally, thought, what if his ex girlfriend leaves her new husband (that she found within 4 months of breaking up with him after 12 years) and wants him back?  He told me many times he was not over her, that he thought she was the one.  I asked him not that long ago, maybe a couple months, what he would do if that happened.  He said he didn’t know.  Which didn’t help me feel secure with him at all, obviously.  There is no making sense of who we choose to love, he says he loved her, and she took him for so much…..  I just don’t know.  But it is what it is.  I mean, I still love him after all the ups and downs we have had, when it is quite obvious to me that this is not a healthy relationship.  This #4 reason leads me to the nightmare.

I dreamed he finally called me.  We were, in the dream, on the phone, but I could see him at his house as well.  He told me he was in love. His voice was odd, kind of a falsetto.  He has in reality a deep, sexy voice.  I kept asking with who?  And he just kept telling me it was real, he was finally in love. (He constantly told me he didn’t want to be in love.) Then I could see his ex girlfriend in his jacuzzi.  And I said, “tell me who it is or I’m hanging up.”  He got mad at that threat and started yelling back at me on the phone.  I hung up, I woke up.

This morning I can’t help but wonder if the universe was telling me something.  I don’t even know what to look up on dreammoods.com.  It is so unusual for me to dream about him, about anyone I know, and to remember it, though I am sure I remember it because it woke me.

So where am I at this morning?  Still  numb, thankfully, from the wine and an Ambien.  It’s nice how the two combine to knock you out on a night when you’d not have slept otherwise.  Especially after the dream.  I am accepting that I can’t do anything about his refusal to communicate.  I can call the hospitals again, and make sure he’s not there.  I considered calling his ex-wife, who doesn’t know me, and asking her to check on him.  Because I am pretty sure, that unless he goes in the hospital, he has not told his family about  his health issues either.  By family I mean ex-wife and kids. But then I think, in my best Byron Katie mind, no don’t do that.  Then you are in HIS business.  (you know, there are three kinds of business:  Mine, other peoples, and God’s)

So to try to stay in my business, only mine today, I won’t try to reach him but just let it be, as he used to tell me all the time.  Maybe he’ll be in touch when he feels up to it.  Maybe he never will be again.  My business is to go on with my life.  So, I’m going to go get my hair done, go to the grocery store, go get 2 new tires for my car and maybe talk to my ex husband about our son while they put the tires on, since his business is right next door to the tire place.  But his business is weather related and we are supposed to have a huge storm this afternoon (of course, it’s Saturday) so he might not be there.  That should keep me clear of him until tonight.

Acceptance of what you truly don’t want to have to accept is such a mind-fuck  But again, it’s reality.  He is not communicating with me, and I need to respect that is how he wants it, for whatever reason.  I can’t put too much energy into that thought, the lump in my throat begins to grow again.

Slowly taking steps to move beyond this pain.

Peace, Out

Posted on by learning to live like water

My heart feels a little heavy this morning.  Maybe too much red wine last night.  Maybe not.  I feel guilty that my friend is going through this health issue alone.   That I am not with him.  But then again, he’s made it clear that that’s how he wants it, and I need to quit projecting onto him how I would feel about it.  I think he knows, or should know, anyway, that energetically I am there.

And then again….while I am with him energetically, the actual not being there, physically, emotionally….I don’t feel bad about.  Because I was broken, once more, and the pieces are not put back together.  I don’t know if they can be.  I think too many times I’ve been broken.  Broken when he fucked the prison whore, broken when he would come have sex and leave, or tell me after that we needed not to see each other so much. Broken when he would ignore my needs.  And broken, now, by a week of not knowing what was wrong wit him, meanwhile trying to do as he asked while I waited until he could or would tell me, broken by him not showing up and not even telling me he wasn’t coming.  He was capable.  He has been going to work, if he can work, he is certainly capable of realizing he should have let me know, and at least, the very least, texting me to say he wasn’t coming.  The blatant disregard was just more than I could deal with on top of his refusal to tell me what is wrong with his health.  I was teetering on the edge of the abyss, that was all that I needed to push me in.

It just occurred to me, he thinks that it was about my temper, about me being angry. He doesn’t understand the concept of hurt, I guess.  It was pain, on my part. Not anger. It was me crying out in pain. It was a broken, yet again, heart. 

I guess he can’t imagine the depth of the feeling I had, and have for him.  I need to let it go.

But now I have no idea how he is.  Is he in the hospital?  Is he still in pain? Is he having surgery? Is he scared? Does he want me there now?  Now, that he’s pushed me away?  I can’t ask, I can’t know.  I need to move on.

It was never mine to deal with, I was never included, I was never in the loop.  He always preferred to be alone.  I need to move on.

I’ll continue to ask the universe to take care of him. I’ll continue to send him love and light and healing energy.  My soul and his, I know are connected in ways I can’t explain and sometimes wish weren’t, because it makes the letting go so hard, when I know the cord which connects us in that way is strong.

But I need to let go and move on, and not change who he is by asking to be brought into his life.

Peace, out.

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.

Staying In the Flow

Posted on by learning to live like water

Life can sure take some crazy twists.  You think you have an idea what’s going on, but often times you don’t.  Trying to go with the flow on this one, because there’s nothing else I can do, besides send prayers and positive energy.  There are two people in my life facing some real challenges.  For both of them, the journey is theirs to complete, I can only stand beside them and be there for them, with them  if they want me.  One of them I know does.  The other one has pushed me away, gently, even though I know that person cares for me.  It’s what that person has to do to face the battle which is theirs to fight. It’s hard to not be holding their hand.  But it’s what was asked of me, so it’s what I’ll do.

I love them both.  I’ll help the one I can, I’ll stay on the sidelines with the one I can’t, and wait.  Waiting is hard.  But not as hard as facing the challenges.

Today, living like water is just going with the flow.  I hope I can stay afloat.

Post Script Note:  The one that wants my help tho I am not close enough to help her much, is my mother, and by proxy, my sister, on whose shoulders all care decisions for my mother fall.  I was so messed up writing this this morning that I realize now how cryptic it sounded. 

Peace

Posted on by learning to live like water

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In the stillness of the early morning

In the cool rays of a rising sun

The echoes of the crickets not yet stopped their chirping

There is peace.

In the expansiveness of a quiet mind

In the depth of a waking soul

In the beauty seen with eyes closed

There is peace.

In the hope of worlds unspoken

In the joy of dreams unseen

In the love that is unconditional

There is peace.

Stuff on My Mind

Posted on by learning to live like water

Stuff on my mind lately. Important stuff, to me.  Don’t really know what to do about it.  Don’t really feel like writing about it.  I think it’s best just to sit with it.  I don’t feel pressed to make any kind of decision about it.  I need  a little distance from the “event” that pulled it all to the top.

While I would always describe myself as a  happy person, there is an aspect of my life that seems to be deliriously happy or very unhappy.  Lately more unhappy than happy, even though the happy moments have been grandiose.

Feeling like I wish I could just retire, sell my house and move to Florida, buy myself a cute little house and disappear into the landscape.  In the next 5 days.  Nothing like a dream…

Sometimes it might be way easier not to know what I want.  But all that time I spent figuring out who I was when I left my marriage enabled me to create a vision.  And generally, everything is coming into focus with what envisioned.  Except this one thing…..

Sigh.  Gonna go to bed, sleep on it.  Maybe do a little bit of Byron Katie’s inquiry on it.  It would help to just accept reality I think.  As long as I was sure I knew what that was.

Reality Check

Posted on by learning to live like water

Reality is the conjectured state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. – Wikipedia

Image result for reality

Trying to sort through memories, dreams, visions, events, people who came and left in the last year.  How much of it was real?  How much of it was conjecture on my part?

What was real, aside from putting my head on my own pillow at night, by myself.  The chaotic energy of my son in the house. The morning meditations.  The mundane household tasks.

How much of love was real?  How much of the passion was real?  How much of it was just created.  Just me trying so hard to get what I wanted.

So…how much of the ugly was real?  If the love maybe wasn’t completely real, maybe all the ugly wasn’t either.

I’ve been reading Byron Katie’s books on The Work.  The four questions….

1. Is it true?  2. Can you know absolutely that it’s true? 3. How do you react, how do you feel, when you think that thought? 4. Who would you be without that thought?

Answers:  1. I don’t know.  I thought so, but maybe not. 2. No. No. NO.  3. I am emotional.  4. Relaxed, happy, non-judgmental.

I don’t know what was real, and what wasn’t.  But I do know this.

Love never hurts. It never makes you feel bad about yourself. It never makes you insecure.  If it’s doing that 75% of the time, and bringing you joy 25% of the time, it’s not love.  Especially, when you’re the only one whose thinking it is.

Well….whether or not it was love isn’t really important now, because the love, if that’s what it was, is gone.  Poof!  In a big cloud of epithets cast for reasons not fully understood, it’s gone.

I think though,  it’s floating around in the universe, waiting to come back where it’s real.

On Being a Safe Place

Posted on by learning to live like water

I took today and pretty much wasted the day. It felt luxurious.

I went on the deck when I got up, with my coffee, my meditation, my lap top.  I had a friend over for awhile, I stayed outside all day.

Meditation was on “Honoring Your True Self”. I chose that one from my Deepak Chopra app on my phone, because, I have not felt that I was honoring myself. Others also were not. But….I don’t really care whether others do or not, as long as I do.

I have been beating myself up for making stupid choices. For ignoring signs. For doing that thing that we are so warned about: Not believing someone when they tell us who they are.

S would occasionally tell me I should dump him, and run, because he was going to hurt me. He told me that last January….and then went and fucked the prison whore. I took him back, I couldn’t let go.

Why? I don’t know. I think that more than being driven by love, I was driven by the uncanny connection we have had, reading each other’s emotions from a great distance, knowing what each other felt when we had not been talking and had no knowledge. I have never had that kind of connection with another person, and it seemed something worth holding onto.

Now…he has been pulling away since spring. I have been pulling him back. For the same reason. It is clear he did not ever, nor would ever love me. At least, not in the way I needed. I think he did, in his own way and in his own time.

Did I love him, really?

I don’t know. I enjoyed his company, and I could read him, if I was with him, or if I was not. I think I mistook that for love.

I have unconditional love for almost everyone, at least, I try. So, for him too. When he told me his secrets, I forgave him. I still do, even tho some of the things he told me many people would judge as unforgivable. Things he never told another soul.

Why me? I don’t know. The connection, I guess. He felt it too. He felt I understood him, I would guess, though he never said that. He did this early on in our relationship. He told me things he had not told either of his ex-wives or his ex gf.

He had developed a personna for them, trying to be who he wanted to be, who he hoped to be, I guess. For me, he didn’t feel the need.

I’m not angry with him now. I think he had a need, now, in his life, to have someone in the background, who knew his secrets. With whom he could fully be himself without pretense. Our connection enabled that. So…I’m not mad about his playing me, his keeping me a secret now, because I think I understand what my place was in his life as far as he was concerned. It was not done maliciously. It was a need he had, that I fulfilled.

It just wasn’t what I wanted out of the relationship. I wanted a man in my life, who could and would grow to love me. Who would let me share his life, as he shared mine.

S couldn’t do that, because if he let me into his life, his kids, his friends…..then I was no longer that safe place for him. I might see the difference in who they thought he was, vs who I thought he was. I might slip….and let them somehow know he wasn’t the man they thought he was.

I get it. I really do.

He had a need to be real to someone, because he holds his cards so close to his chest, because he has created a personna for others that was not really the authentic hm, that was greater than his need for honesty with me.

I’m still not mad about it. I don’t want him in my life, now, because I see that what I want will never ever be possible. If I stayed with him, I would have to remain his secret place to go, so he could feel some relief from the act he needed to put on for people every day.

I love him kind of unconditionally. I feel sorry for him, that he’s felt he had to do this with his life. He’s been doing it all his life, and doesn’t know how not to. It’s not romantic love when you feel the unconditional love for someone, it’s acceptance of who they are.

So, after all is said and done, after I’ve sat with my sadness and my anger, I feel for the guy. I needed more…I want more….he can’t give it. He has to keep showing up at the ex’s BBQ’s and maintain the personna that everyone believes is him.

Everyone but me.

I don’t look at him as a bad man, or a good man, just a man. Just a man I knew and once loved. I wish him peace. I don’t know what will become of the connection that we have had. I don’t suppose it will disappear, but I think I need to try to ignore it. It leads me in the wrong direction, away from the things I want out of the rest of my life. I’m not sure I CAN ignore it, but for the time being, while my heart heals, with this kind of new epiphany of understanding I have, I need to ignore it, and honor my own true self.

On Vulnerability and Love

Posted on by learning to live like water

The morning was gray, and quiet. I sat on my deck, having coffee, reading blogs, reading email. Doing some pensive introspection. About myself. About S. About vulnerability.

I have been a champion of vulnerability. I have watched Brene Brown’s TED talk on vulnerability maybe a dozen times. She speaks to what I have always known, but did not form into a cohesive thought until I saw her speak.

I have never been afraid to be vulnerable. Not with my friends, not with strangers, not with the men in my life. Not in my blogs, or my book, or with my son. I do believe that you don’t give someone all your secrets, until they have proven the right to hear them.  I give it out a little at a time, but I give it.  I will initiate it.  I am not afraid of it.

I believe it is the only way to have a real, fulfilling, human experience. I believe, as Brene does, that it is the birthplace of creativity, of joy. It is the ying of the yang. You can’t know joy if you don’t risk something. You can’t be creative if you are afraid of failure. You can’t expect someone to open up to you their deepest darkest secrets if you won’t share in kind.

Vulnerability means that you take a risk, you put yourself out there. Not knowing what the outcome will be, if you think that there might be a reward that makes it worthwhile. There is no risk-free existence. You can’t imagine that just because you love someone they will always love you back. You can’t believe that everything will always stay the same. Change happens. And when it happens, and you hurt from it, instead of closing your heart, you have to thank God you are able to love so passionately, so fully. Because it means you are alive. If you hurt….it is the ying to the yang. There is no great reward without great suffering.

Ram Dass tells a story about his guru, who when given the option of love vs. suffering, chose suffering, because it was then that he would grow. Learn about himself.

So, we wish those who cause us to suffer, love and light. We let them go on their way, in their life, and hope that they find joy. We find ourselves better prepared to go on with LIFE, and LIVING, because we have a deeper understanding of what brings us joy, and peace.

One of my favorite quotes is from Khalil Gibran. It states:

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

I have a friend who was devastated by an ex. This persons heart is closed now, for the most part. They do not want to love again, to risk giving of themselves because the pain is so great. I see cracks in the wall occasionally. But the person quickly fills them in, and retreats behind the wall again.

To me, it is like being dead before you are dead. So love didn’t work out that time, or the time before. Maybe it worked for awhile, a long while, and then it changed. Change is part of life. Loving to me is living. I cant’ separate the love of a person, from love of myself, my family, of every living thing. To stop one is to diminish all. Because they are all connected.

This being said….if we love someone to the best of our ability, and they choose not to return it for whatever reason, it’s not healthy for us to continue to dream that they will. There is a time to let go, and acknowledge that this is not the one for you. It comes with self awareness. Let go with joy, wishing all blessings and happiness to that person. And then risk being vulnerability again.

Never forget that once you decide what you want, the universe will conspire to make that happen. Thoughts become things, so think the thoughts about what you want. Not about what you don’t.

And live. LIVE.