Tag Archives: Attachment

Couldn’t Be Much Happier

Posted on by learning to live like water

He likes my little house. That’s a big deal to me, because he was not happy at all that I sold our house in CT, and decided to move here. Change is hard for him, and we were so happy in that house, after the years of abuse with his father. We were ok in the rented condo I had for transitional space, but the house we had there was a dream come true for both of us. Now that he’s happy in CO, and has a life there, he is happy for me, and he really really likes this cute little house. Kept saying, “You did really good Mom. I get why you just had to buy it.” Because, he felt for the longest time that buying this house pushed me to sell the house in CT immediately. But fact was, that house was going on the market when it did, and he gets that now. You have to sell between March and November up there, because very few people buy a house in the winter.

It’s so funny, how it used to irritate me so much to find his stuff stuck in the couch, or spread on the coffee table, his shoes on the floor somewhere, or a light left on somewhere. And now…it just makes me smile. Like, oh, this is how it always was. It is so familiar, the way the things our children do are.

We can, and did, just sit in the living room, each in a recliner, and talked for hours yesterday. The TV was on for noise, as was the habit in our old life, but we just talked and talked about our new lives. I could tell he loved the familiarity of our furniture from the old house. You’d think there’d be not much to say, because we talk every day anyway, but there was. He was way too tired to do any sightseeing, and I think it was cool, that he just kind of wanted to stay here and reconnect.

My son loves to mix this EDM music, and he uploads it to SoundCloud and has like 5000 followers. He got a gig to play the Saturday after Easter at a club in Denver. He played there once before, and they liked him well enough to invite him back for Saturday night. He doesn’t get paid, but he gets his name out there. He’s meeting a lot of the artists that have made it really big. He’s really breaking into it. He says he spends most of his free time making new recordings. I love that he has a passion for it, that he follows his passion. He landed in the right place to follow this passion, since he says Denver is probably the hub in the world for this kind of music, and the wild shows that go with it.

We’re both looking forward to going over to the island tomorrow to see my sis and hubby. My sis has a big really nice apartment over the garage, overlooking her pool, that he and I always stayed at. I told him maybe we could share my mom’s old room, where I stay now, in the house. He looked so disappointed, lol. He said, “Idk, Mom. I really need my own room, you know I stay up way later than you…..” But I know it’s just because he loves that space, it’s like a really nice hotel suite. So I’ll tell my sis that he’s staying up there, so he can watch TV late, and go to bed late and sleep late, lol. Just going to tell him to come to the house to shower etc….so she doesn’t have to clean it all up for one night’s stay.

He also knows my sis is a great cook, and the food will be awesome, lol. And we’ll hang by the pool, and the hot tub and go to the beach. It will be fun. My sis just loves my son too. I know at one time her hubby was appalled that I wasn’t insisting he go to college, but he’s doing so well, I know my brother-in-law has changed his mind on that. And it’s hard not to like my kid. He’s funny, and kind, and smart. His priorities are good, and he’s set his own boundaries, that make it easy to be with him.

I’ve had a few moments of wishing he lived close to me, but I am trying not to get too attached to those, because that stuff will just ruin the time we have. Just going to enjoy having him here, and then begin to plan the next time I’ll see him. Probably in the summer sometime, I’ll head to CO for a few days. He has all kinds of places he wants to take me now.

Couldn’t be much happier this morning. Love and light all.

Flutters

Posted on by learning to live like water

fluttering

My heart fluttered for a moment
When I thought of him
Smiling,
Laughing,
Talking.
When I remembered
the briefest of moments in which
Connection sizzled.

It made me smile.
A fluttering heart
And a fluttering tummy
Signs that I should trust my gut
On this one.

Maybe the Universe will
Conspire in my behalf.
It’s done it before.
I trust it will do it again.

So after I smile
After the brief moment of
Flutters
I surrender
To the Universe
And release all attachment
To outcome.

The universe can steer my course.
Flutters notwithstanding.
Just a knowing that what happens
Is what is supposed to happen.
How do we know?
Because it did……

By Deborah E. Dayen

Image from Hawkins Bazaar, via Google Images

Observation and Evolution

Posted on by learning to live like water

evolution (1)

In present moments
It all passes by
Without attachment
Like a story
A fable
With some lesson
Obscure
or
Blatant.

Sitting alone
Observing
What went before
What is right now
Wondering, idly
What will come.

Everything that happened
In our lives
Brings us to where we are.
Which will bring us
To where we will be.

Is the lesson learned?
Has the soul evolved?
Does the lesson need repeating
In order to be learned,
In order to be released
to the next level?

Lay down the defenses
Open the heart
Open the eyes
Open the ears
Let go of attachment to outcome
Breathe.
Allow life.
Allow love.

Always, love.

By Deborah E. Dayen

Image from Learning School via Google Images

Life Without My Stuff

Posted on by learning to live like water

(I had such a hard time titling this post.  I kept wanting to call it Breaking My Life Into Pieces but thought that sounded too much like a sad love affair, and I’ve surely written enough of those, lol.  Athough the emotion is not dissimilar, strangely.  Big change comes hard, most times, whether it’s a love affair, your kid moving out, or you moving away.  There is always some degree of loss, and some degree of gain.)

The people who bought my deck furniture two weeks ago finally came back and got it last night. The wife is very excited to have it, which makes me feel good. But now, I can’t sit outside in the morning and write and have my coffee and listen to the birds and feel the cool morning air because there is no place to sit. I can’t even take a chair from my kitchen table out because I sold the kitchen table.

It feels like watching my life get broken into pieces and sold off, or given away. I was able to schedule the Salvation Army to come pick up my son’s couches on Sept 12. I’ll give them a bunch of other stuff that I have that’s in decent shape. I have to call a guy whose name a friend gave me, to take a bunch of stuff to the dump for me. I have a large collection of half burned candles I want to give away….Good Yankee candles for the most part. But I think I’ll have to throw them out.

I never thought I was attached to things. Really. My ex is attached to things, he can’t let go of anything even when it drags him under. I’m not attached like that, I can divest myself of what I don’t want to take with me, but it is harder than I expected to walk through my house without all the stuff that is normally there, just part of my life. I am a bit shaken by it.

I’ll be glad in a few weeks, when I can start putting it back in a place I want it, in Florida. When I can again have my house with my stuff, and feel like, yeah, it’s my house when I come through the door. Right now, even my bedroom is beginning to look strange to me. The nightstands almost cleared off, the closet with nothing in it except shoes, and my summer clothes. Drawers have been emptied out.

I’m making lists of what has to be done yet. Call the insurance co, call the utilities, call the cable company, call the garbage pick up. I wish honestly I’d quit working last Friday. I just have so much to do before I take off for Denver.

Which is another stressor altogether. I should be down about 10 lbs by the time this is over. I know my friend, my bff, is planning a goodbye party of some kind when I get back from Denver. She invited me to dinner the 9th. But I KNOW her. Besides her nephew said to me last time I saw him, “Well, we are having that party for you anyway, right?” LOL. Gave it away, lol. But I’m not telling her, I will fake it and be surprised. That will be nice, really, to see everyone one last time before I go.

I’m sure my blogs are getting kind of boring, just about the stress, and the angst, and things I have to do to accomplish this. Let me say it is WAY more stress than leaving my ex-husband was. For one thing, I was running full-tilt boogie from a life that was killing me, literally. I couldn’t wait to get out of the pressure-cooker of that house, away from him and his lying power trip. I couldn’t wait to live somewhere where I could wake up and everything was the same as when I went to bed. I didn’t take much with me, and I was going a mile and a half away.

This move…the life I have here is wonderful, and I don’t particularly want to leave it. I just want to stop working and I can’t, and live here. And I am sick to death of winter. It’s so difficult when you are on your own, and have to deal with all the snow, and cold and heating bills by yourself. I’m sick of driving to work and/or home in snow, shoveling my car off, getting snow in my shoes, when I leave work. But mostly sick of having to go to work anyway, lol.

My life….I’m just blessed. My son and I are happy sharing the same space while we both have our own lives. I have a ton of friends, so I’m not usually alone unless I choose to be. But I can’t keep this house if I don’t work, and I don’t want to work, so off I go to my mortgage free bungalow in Florida. It will all be good, but the transition is difficult, really difficult.

Time to get this day underway. Love and light, all.

Emotional Packing

Posted on by learning to live like water

 

packing

I’ve found I can only pack and sort things for about 2 or 3 hours a day. I just get too emotional. So attached to some things, which it would be stupid to take, but it’s so hard to let them go. One of them….well, I just stuffed it in a box. It was a huge teddy bear that was a Christmas gift to my son for his first Christmas. I just couldn’t let it go. It’s been sitting in the rocking chair in my room since forever, even before I left his father.

So many other things. I had emails between S and I that I’d printed out, I had pieces of writing from 20 years ago, I had memories, memories. So hard. I managed to throw most of that stuff out, but it made me melancholy, to be leaving everything I have known as an adult. I lay down on the chaise in my living room and cried for a few minutes. I laid down on my bed, and just closed my eyes to process all that has happened to me in the 40 years I’ve lived here.Everything that has brought me to this moment, of packing up my life of 40 years, and sorting out the things I want to take with me.  Lay there for about an hour.

My son asked me twice today what was wrong. I just said, “You know, it’s just big changes…so many big changes.” But I decided that I was done packing and sorting for the day. I changed my clothes, put on some makeup and went to the store to get laundry detergent and limes so I could have a drink when I got back, maybe read a book or something.

I got to the store, and as the universe does, I walked through the parking lot right into my bff who I am able to tell anything to, and told her how my morning was. She knows me, she gets it. She is always, has always been there for me. Even when I didn’t listen to her about S, she stuck with me while I figured it out. So we talked, it was the best thing that could have happened to me to run into her. She said she’d pick me up at the airport on the 8th when I get home. Awesome.

When I got home, instead of making the drink I was going to, I made a frozen peach strawberry daiquiri for my son and myself. It wasn’t bad, considering it was the first time I’ve made one in maybe 20 years, lol. Then I sat on the couch and began really mapping out our trip to Denver. We’re going to do somewhere around 500 miles a day, and then the last day only have about 350 to do. I got hotel phone numbers so we can call and make reservations.

Then I did the same for the trip to Florida which is a full day shorter.

Then a girl which whom he is close friends came over, had the last of the daiquiris and they decided they’d make me dinner. 🙂  Good kids.

I think I’m at the point I can stop obsessing about making sure everything is packed up for my mover’s date. I think I’m well ahead of the game now. When I stop working next weekend, I’ll have all week to get most of the house finished. I will leave the kitchen until I get back from Denver.

It gets more real every day. Most everyone I know I’ll see again. They’ll be down to see me, or I’ll be up to see them. There are some people I won’t see again though, and some I won’t get to say goodbye to. I guess I just have to do the best I can. The love I have for them will always be. I think they know that.

Love and light, all.

Patterns

Posted on by learning to live like water

pattern

I have been thinking a lot about patterns…how easily we create them, and fall into them. And how important they become in our lives.

For instance, my morning pattern…to wake up sometime between 5 and 5:30. I have not set an alarm in years and years. Think about what we do when we wake up, get up. Get up, turn on a light, go in the bathroom, turn on the cold water faucet in the sink for my cat to get a drink, use the bathroom, brush my hair, put on my bathrobe in the winter, get my phone and glass of water from the nightstand andgo downstairs. Every morning. Same pattern. I do not even think about it. After getting my coffee, I am on the couch with the news, with my computer, my meditation, and writing for at least an hour, sometimes more. It varies only by season for me…In the warm weather, I skip the robe and am out on my deck, watching and listening as the world wakes up.

Patterns. When they are broken, it is disconcerting. Every few months I have to do fasting blood work, which means getting up and dressed and out of the house immediately, and I hate that, it so disrupts my morning patterns.

Every once in a while we are able to break patterns and create new ones. Dieting breaks eating patterns, and if you are lucky you can create new ones that are healthier for you. If someone leaves your life, it is easier if you can fill the patterns created around them with something else. Writing, or working or creating in some way. But one little wobble, the wrong food, a phone call, whatever, can slip us right back into those patterns. Maintaining new patterns requires such vigilance. Not back-sliding requires hyper-vigilance. I know I have lost and gained the same weight so many times in my life. Recently though in the last 6 or 7 months I have lost about 20 lbs, and I think the new patterns are sticking. New patterns had to be created when my relationship broke up, especially in the last two months because there was no communication. It required a lot of writing, and introspection to deal with that. I guess my readers know that, lol.

I think it might be a good idea to evaluate my patterns periodically, and see if they are serving me well. See if they align with my higher self, with the person I want to be. Try to be mindful of those that don’t serve me, and see what I can do to change them. And try to be mindful of when I am back-sliding into old patterns that don’t serve me.

Then again, patterns are part of our DNA.  Even the DNA itself is a pattern.  All of nature multiplies and divides by pattern.  We’re kind of hardwired to live by patterns, all of creation is.  Only we as humans really have a choice as to what patterns will serve us and which will not.  Ahh  free will.  And there’s a whole other blog, lol.

Love and light…..

Knowing

Posted on by learning to live like water

truth at center

Love.

It was a gift to myself

To love you.

The joy of loving

Outlives the pain of losing.

Precious moments lived

Delight my senses.

Painful moments

Teach me to rise

To surrender

To grow

To learn.

There is no loss anymore.

Gratefully I give up

The attachment

And keep the ethereal joy

Of knowing I can love.

An Ending and a Beginning. They Are the Same Thing.

Posted on by learning to live like water

It’s been a good day.  The north wind blew in and it was blustery, probably the first day this season with a wind chill.

In Eat Pray Love, Liz Gilbert says “Ruin is a gift.  Ruin is the road to transformation.”  I would have to agree.  Complete chaos ensued from the devastation of my life.  But now, 6 weeks later, I can see the unfolding of a new life for me, with clarity.  I see what I was not getting from that relationship, and how I just accepted it as it was.  Seriously, I was unfulfilled in many ways, and always deferring to his wishes. If I asked for myself, it would only be once, most of the time.  “No” is just too much rejection for a simple request.  I learned to find happiness with what I was given.  For awhile.  Because I loved him so much.  I was always dreaming of the day when he’d want me the way I wanted him.

It was never gonna happen.

Eventually, I wanted out, because I was unhappy.  Most of the summer.  He talked me down, he kept me engaged.  I don’t know why he did.  We rarely saw each other.  What did it matter?   I settled for misery because I loved him.  Time and time again, he pushed me away, til I left and then reeled me back in til he had me.

He should have told me about Betty Boop wanting back into his life.  Or him wanting her.  He just should have been honest with me and let me know the truth.  He knew neither she nor I would share him.  So he lies to her about it, and tries to convince me there’s nothing wrong with it.  He should have told me, and let me walk away with some dignity.  Instead of dealing a crushing blow to me. A blow that left me face down in the dirt, gasping for air, while he danced.

He chose BB because she doesn’t want anymore than his warm body in bed once a week.  And that’s what he wants, someone who asks nothing more of him. Who doesn’t even ask much of him there.  I caused endless problems between us because I was not satisfied with less than.

We have had an uncanny connection, I think more from my end than his.  He used to have it, he would call when I was thinking of him.  I have always been able to feel when things aren’t right with him. The day his friend died.  Different days and nights I wondered if he was ok, and he wasn’t.  Sometimes I knew, and didn’t say anything.  I didn’t want to know.  Just the other day, with his health.  I am still concerned with that, I’m not sure that was what I had the intuitive feeling about. Waking up to middle of the night phone calls or texts.  The morning he dropped his bomb on me, I sat there shaking, knowing there was something terrible about to happen.  I even blogged about it, how I was trying to talk myself down.  But my intuition was right.  My world was forever changed that day.

It felt like I would die.  And I was dying.  The me that kept giving in, and giving up, and accepting being treated poorly, and accepted less than I deserved, and so little real fulfillment, did die.  That day, and on the ensuing days.  And now, I have been reborn, transformed as Liz Gilbert says.  I have lost some of my excess weight.  I have done my work, I have looked within to see why I accept less than I want.  I defined what values were important to me.  I have realized that unconditional love has to be extended to ourselves first.  We have to value ourselves first, and only then can we offer anything to anyone else.

I am proud of my ability to show up, to get into the arena and be seen, and dare to love with my whole heart.  I don’t regret for a moment that I loved S.  But now, I won’t accept a one way street again.  What he has with the Boop, I don’t want.  I want connection.  Love.  Happiness.  I loved being in love. I want to be loved back.  This life is too precious to waste it away on trivial sex without connection, on a love that only goes one way, in a relationship that makes you cry as much as laugh.

I want more.

My heart is open to all the endless possibilities.  I am transformed. I am stronger than I ever was.  I am more focused.  I am more sure of myself, and what I want.  I can find and make very happy someone whose happiness will also depend on my being happy.  An energetic circle, where the beginning and ending are blurred, because eventually, they are the same thing.

Turning the Love Inward

Posted on by learning to live like water

Letting go?  Have I really done it?  For the last month, I have thought I had many times, then a wave would wash over me, I would remember his cruelty in the way he dumped me, I would be so jealous that he was with her.  The pain would try once again to drown me. I don’t know, this is different.

I just don’t care.

And I can still say, as in the poster I have on my last blog, that I love the 100 things about him still, and always will.  I feel affection for the memories and the man, I just don’t feel the pain.  I am ready, and moving, on.

Whatever that dream was….I am sure it allowed me to energetically let go, which is what I HAD to do. Our connection has always been so energetic, more than any other way.  I don’t feel the pull.  I don’t feel wrapped up in his energetic energy cords.  My body, my heart, my soul, once again are free to shine.

I still have him blocked, for the time being I will leave it that way.  This is our last text.  You will see how juvenile it is…

last text

When I blocked him, I wasn’t even mad. I was just sick of it.  Sick of the juvenile conversation.  Sick of the bullshit, of listening (or reading) him say whatever was convenient, whatever he thought would change my mind.  Or, having to deal with his anger when I didn’t change my mind, and put the truth in front of him. This conversation had gone on for the entire month since he let Betty Boop back into his life.  I didn’t tell  him I’d call the police because I was afraid, but because I didn’t want to give him any way to access me. I needed it to stop, fully and finally.  It was over.  He pretended to end it, the day he chose her, but he couldn’t really let go.  So I finished it off.

Four days later, as if because there was no other way, he came into my dream, trying to still convince me, continuing the conversation.  Telling him then, in the midst of love-making, to leave….and standing my ground, surprises and now, delights me.  Delights me, because I took my life back, when I was the most vulnerable, I was still strong.  I let go.

I want it to remain finished, so I will leave him blocked.

And I will become stronger and stronger. My light will get brighter and brighter, until it dazzles the man I’m looking for.

Feeling my happy self this morning, the way I was 2 years ago, before he showed up in my life, to teach me this lesson.

The lesson, that I am worthy of love and belonging, that no one can make me feel otherwise.  That people all have free will, to learn their lessons or not.  To set themselves up to repeat them over and over, til they choose to learn them, or to learn them quickly, and move forward.  In the grand scope of things, I am not unsatisfied with the length of time it took me to get this lesson.  It was important.  Unconditional love is not just for others.  It’s for ourselves too.  First.  I loved myself enough to let go.