Tag Archives: change

Getting Grounded in Reality

Posted on by learning to live like water

I finally talked to S.  Well, that’s stretching it. We texted.  And I think in the end, we came to an amicable understanding that we needed to stop seeing each other.  That’s how I hoped it would be.  I have no anger, I have no regrets.  I understand him, and I think that while he may not completely understand me, he at least respects my feelings now.  I didn’t want this to end in a blaze of anger and ego, and I think that’s what we managed to do.

Last night I had a strange dream.  I had been thinking how S was now free (he always was, but there will be nothing pulling him back now) to go discover who he is, on his own, discover his passions, decide how he wants to spend his retirement.  That thought converted to a dream as I fell asleep, I guess.  I dreamed he came to just “check in”, just visit.  I was sitting outside, on the side of a hill, next to a border garden, backed up by a fence..  There was another man sitting with me, who I didn’t recognize. I never saw S in this dream but I know he was sitting with us.  I said to him something about my sister…and then “my sister knows everything.”  (LOL, I know I was talking about my older sis, even though I have a younger as well.) When I said it, suddenly a human form began to break out of the garden, sitting up, forming before my eyes from the dirt and grass and flowers in the garden.

I guess that kind of freaked me out, I wasn’t scared,  but it was just weird….and it woke me up.  I don’t know  what it had to do with S, or me.  I don’t think I can look up “human form created from garden” on dreammoods.com, lol.  I would guess it had something to do with being grounded, a spirit, connection to the earth.  As for how my sister ties into it, I really don’t know.  She went through such a hard time this winter, trying to care for my mother after her stroke, and has spent the couple of months regrounding herself, in much the same way I do when I get lost.

That’s two strange dreams I’ve had in a couple of days.  The other one upset me, this one didn’t, but I thought about it a lot, had a hard time getting back to sleep, and ended up texting S, further explaining to him that I still can see him, I still know there is something in his soul worth loving, and that someday I hope he is able to believe it and open it up to someone.  And I felt quite grounded, loving and detached when I said it.  So maybe that was the point of the dream, to help me to become grounded in the reality that it is over with S.

On to a new day, a new week.  I hope there are some new and exciting things coming my way.   And yours.

Love and light.

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.

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.

No More Heartbreak

Posted on by learning to live like water

I was with my ex-husband for just shy of 40 years.  We met when we were 18, married at 25, divorced at 58.  In that time, he broke my heart 1000 times.  Rivers of tears, countless sleepless nights.  Days of deep-seated fear, hours of sheer terror.  A broken heart was not something I wanted to revisit.

I left him when I was 55, almost 56.  I felt only relief from the moment I was gone.  And fear for my son, who stayed with him.  But mostly relief, that my world upon waking would be the same as when I went to bed.

When I was 63 I met S. A full 7 years after leaving my ex.  I was attracted to him before we even met.  I have often commented on our connection.  It seemed uncanny, it seemed that we had to already know each other on some level.  It’s never been a balanced relationship, but it’s been fun, interesting, and passionate. But then, last winter, he fucked the prison whore, and broke my heart.  To his credit, he knew he was going to break my heart, and tried to break it of with me before he did that.  But I was too convincing, I guess, in my misery, and sadness, and he couldn’t do it.

Since then….it has been off again, on again for us.  We have that connection, a physical desire, but we want different things from life, I guess.  We see things differently.  We react to things differently.  And the places we came from on our separate journeys were a long ways apart.  Each time now, that we are off again, it is a little harder to put it back on.  No matter that the love is there, will always be, it just isn’t making either of us happy.  My heart is broken again, I am guessing that his heart is feeling a little pain too, but I could be wrong.  I can’t speak for him.

Then there is A….who I met after the thing with the prison whore.  We became close.  A loves me, is not afraid to be vulnerable and tell me exactly how he feels.  He knows I have this thing with S.  A, however, is not here.  He’s off on his grand adventure, and sends me pics and  tells me how he misses me, and loves me, but he’s not here.  He’s out west, in one of the national parks….he won’t be settled in for probably a year.  There is no future really there.  And I never could drum up the passion for him.  But love, yes, I love the man. He treats me like gold. I think his purpose in my life is to remind me how I should be treated.

When I first told him I was going to see S again, he sent me a beautiful email, telling me he knows he only offers heartbreak on a platter, because he knew he would be leaving on this great adventure, but that he would balance it with love and tenderness.

But God, I didn’t want another heartbreak.  I don’t want any more of them.  I want to love someone who can love me back, fully, unafraid….  I am tired of the games people play in their heads, holding back out of fear, fear not caused by me, but by a past love.  Fear which has no basis in the present, but still colors everything.  I’m tired of having a passionate physical relationship, which never carries over into life, and living.

I think I’d just rather be alone that deal with another heartbreak.  I’m not saying that if someone came into my view I wouldn’t give it a chance.  I’d sure like to find the love that lasts before I leave this earth.  But I think when it begins to go bad, I need to just let it go, instead of trying to make it work.  Better to be alone, and whole, than have my heart axed in two again.

Seeking

Posted on by learning to live like water

Change is part of life, she said

As I sat outside with my morning meditation.

Welcome change into your life, she said.

The sun rises on a new day,

and sets on a new evening.

In between miraculous and mundane experiences

blend into the tapestry of our lives.

No regrets, it has all been good.

No fear for the future,

I know where I’m going.

But change, the only constant.

Ever seeking,

For that place where I find peace.

My head not in the clouds

Nor buried deep in a dark hole.

My eyes open, and seeking

With joy my companion,

Peace.

Hiding Out

Posted on by learning to live like water

I was told my head was up my ass.

I knew that this would come to pass.

The words that came had no class

They had the stench of real bad gas.

And so I will remain this way

Until the all clear comes one day.

Better to have my head up my ass

Than to breathe someone else’s really bad gas.

It seems an odd way to end

But on this I won’t bend.

I have been this way once before

And I swore I’d travel it no more.

Connection Lost (or Mercury in retrograde keeps messing with me.)

Posted on by learning to live like water

Words get said,
Misunderstood.
Requests get made,
Offense taken.
Predictions made,
Never happen.
Emotions run high
Connections are lost.
Computer goes on,
Has to reboot.
Phone messages
Lost, late.
Never acknowledged.
Connections lost.

Sunset comes,
With thunderstorm.
Sunrise comes,
Fog rolls in.
Day passes in between.
Connection anticipated,
But connection lost.

Someone calls,
They’re angry.
Someone smiles,
They are unaware.
Connection lost.

Shaken up,
Everything is new.
Inquiry keeps me sane.
The point is not to change
But to re-evaluate.
What is real?
What is illusion?
Connection lost.

Empty questions
Empty answers.
Upside Down
Inside Out.
Connection lost.

Transformation

Posted on by learning to live like water

I talked to my ex husband yesterday.  It is unusual.  I didn’t talk to him for 6 or 8 months, and twice now in the last 10 days.  He has led himself down the primrose path to destruction.  I believe that now, now that he has created so much chaos for himself,, he is reaching out to the one person who he knows always loved him.  He needed help sorting something out, and I was able to cut through the bullshit for him, (which is all self created by him), and let him see reality.

Then he told me his aunt passed away a couple of days ago.  This is unusual, in that this is the 3rd (at least) member of his family to die since we’ve been apart, but the first one he’s told me about.  It was too late for me to go to the wake or the funeral, but at least I can send her children a card.  They were part of my life for 40 years, I was grateful that he told me.  Which means to me, that he perhaps doesn’t see me anymore as the cause of all his problems, but as someone who just had to save her own life,, (and our sons).  Perhaps it means that going forward our relationship will be based on commonalities, on the better part of our history, instead of the abuse he piled on my son and I in an effort to maintain control.  I hope so.  I would like to see him as a friend.  It’s been 8 1/2 years since I left him.

I would hope that the same can be true of S and I.  S was the first man I was involved with since my divorce.  I feel still the unconditional love I have always felt for him, despite the ugliness that came up in the last few days.  I know we can’t be together as we were right now, but I am not forecasting the future.  How can we know?

My friend A left on a grand adventure this morning.  Downsized from a 3800 sq ft beautiful home to a camper, with his son.  They are headed out to the Olympic Peninsula eventually, stopping along the way where ever they feel the desire.  By October he will be in Texas at his brothers ranch, and then on to the Southwest in the spring.  I went to see him, and he told me,  “Look at me, I have to say this now, I won’t have another chance.  I know I scared you with it before.  But,   I just want you to know I love you so much.  You have forever changed me.”  I still do not feel the passion for him that he feels for me, and I’m glad, because I was just able to be excited for him to take on this adventure.  He’s a sweet man, we will stay in touch.

But the whole point is, love never dies, does it?  It can change, and transform, but it’s energy.  Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed.  My love for these 3 men in my life will continue to change, but it will always exist.  No matter what has been thrown at me, the hate, the anger, the viciousness that can accompany pain….in the end, it is always love that is left.

I’m at peace with all of this.  I’m happy to have found a way back to peace with all of them.

Love and light, all.

Change and Connection

Posted on by learning to live like water

I sat outside last night for a few minutes before I went to bed. I was tired, I have been sleeping poorly, as I guess could be expected from the events of the weekend. I hadn’t talked to S for most of the day. I gazed at the half moon, with thin clouds racing by it.  Sitting out there, I could feel S’s sadness. I knew he was at his home, 50 miles away, and feeling bad. I messaged him, and my intuition, that connection we have, was right.

I know he just doesn’t get it, why I just can’t do it anymore, why things can’t stay as they were for me.

The only thing that is permanent, is change.

My emotions of the last week, maybe 2, have been more and more to separate our lives, to end this relationship that never could get off the ground. I look at him, and I love him in that unconditional way. I accept who he is, I accept the direction he has wanted to take. He is the one who has come to me in times when he’s been introspective, to tell me he needs to be on his own, he needs to find out who he is by himself, without being attached to someone.

I totally support that.  I can’t imagine being this age and not knowing what I want.  I have told him to do it, to keep me in the loop if he wants.  I have told him I’m not going anywhere right now.  No one can forsee the future. But if we keep the communication open, we can remain friends, and honor the connection that I find rather exceptional.  It doesn’t mean that we have to be intimate, it means that we can remain close friends, if he wants to.

Right now, we want different things.  Neither of us can cross over to the other side, not and remain true to ourselves.

I know…that in the end, he knows that, he will get it, that we want such different lives. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Since he doesn’t know what he wants, I guess I can’t speak for him. But I certainly want something different from the relationship I have had had with him, than he wants.

I think it’s just hard to be single at this age. I don’t think anyone makes it to being single in their 60’s and doesn’t have baggage, even though I have seen profiles of men who say they don’t. They do, they have just buried it. I’ve tried to let mine bubble up and deal with it when it does. It’s not always easy. Like I told S, early in our relationship, he was the first man in my life since my marriage, and even though I thought I took plenty of time to be aware of my baggage, my triggers, there are some you don’t even know about until you are in a relationship. And lucky him…he got to experience those.

Don’t worry, he had plenty of his own, to pay me back, lol.

But the fact remains….I’m ready to move past friendship. I’m ready for someone to love me, the way I loved him. I’m using past tense, because I feel like there’s no way back. It will take time for those emotions to ebb to the actual flow of the events.

It was fun, for awhile. But since I came back from Florida in March, when he came to my house and came as close to saying he loved me as he ever would, it’s been work. The enthusiasm is gone, the desire to just hang out isn’t there. For him it’s backed off to wanting an occasional “nice afternoon”. For me, it’s progressed to “I would have liked to spend Saturday night until Monday night with you this weekend.”

How’s that ever going to work?

It’s not. And I’m OK with it. I really am. Enough water has passed over the dam that my grip has loosened, I am not holding on any longer. I’m sure S’s grip is also loose, he maybe isn’t as clear on why as me, I hope he gains that clarity.

I hope we remain friends. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I wish him love and light. Always.

BEWARE

Posted on by learning to live like water

Beware Some People Will Sell You A Dream And Deliver A Nightmare

Beware of Those Who Play Their Cards Close to their Chest

Because they are lying to everyone. They only tell you so much, so they can manipulate your thinking about who they are. And then they go on to the next person, and only tell them so much, so they can manipulate that persons thinking just as they did yours.

I was a secret. No one knew about me. Oh, he told me they did, a long time ago. But I was never introduced. I never met his kids. I never met his friends. If they called while I was in the car he either didn’t mention me, or said he wasn’t alone, but never, that he was with me. How stupid could I be? After a year……

Meanwhile…I was falling in love with the person he coached me on. I was writing all the secretiveness off to “he’s just not ready yet…” making excuses for him. Like an idiot. Like a fool.

After all, he took me to his “special places”. Bullshit, special. Bullshit. They were just beautiful places that he knew, from living there forever. It was just part of setting me up to love him.

For 2 weeks I reminded him a 3 day weekend was coming up. I was met each time with, “It’s 2 weeks away…..” I reminded him my son would be gone, I’d have the house to myself. I had visions….hopes….dreams….

But what I got was….an offer to come here for an afternoon. And a lot of grief again, for wanting to plan ahead, to plan for more.

Last week we met and talked, I did not want to be friends with benefits. If that’s what he wanted then we should split up. If he doesn’t know what he wants, then he should figure it out, by himself, and if he wanted to, check in with me when he knew.

Yesterday after explaining and re-explaining it for 36 hours…that I was not interested in an afternoon. A “nice afternoon” as he put it. That was the offer. After 5 or 6 times of saying “Look either come for the night and the day tomorrow or don’t come….” He finally told me he had a “family BBQ” at his ex wife’s that night, and wanted to watch the Indy 500 on tv tomorrow.

As if he didn’t know this 3 days ago. After playing me all day and night and morning this morning, bitching at me for wanting to make plans, for never being satisfied, for trying to control things.  All the while withholding information so that he could manipulate and control me.

He’s been hiding this, trying to manipulate me into believing that I am too demanding,that I want too much, because I wanted to spend time with him.  He probably went to his “family BBQ” and played the poor guy who’s girlfriend of 13 years left him last January after he put in a new kitchen for her out of his own pocket, and then got married. Never let them know he was in the process of fucking over a woman who adored him.

Gee….I wonder how sick the girlfriend was of his games. Imagine 12 or 13 years of this.

Me…I only lost a year to him. Believing his lies to me about how he was open to whatever happened. He was open to whatever he managed to make happen, which was to pull me from someone who really loved me, just to do it, and then use me for his own pleasure. How often did we lay together, and the next morning he would tell me how I “scared” him, how he was afraid of the feelings he had for me, and how he didn’t want to be in love or in a relationship.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I loved him unconditionally. I made excuses for him every time. I made myself vulnerable. I put myself on the table, emotionally naked and brave, for him to use. Believing that he wouldn’t AB-use me. I was there on every dark day he had. When he had to have surgery, even though he’d fucked the prison whore 2 weeks before, I was there for him. When his best friend died, and he hadn’t talked to me in days, I was there for him.

Because I loved him.

Stupid stupid me.

He didn’t and wasn’t ever going to love me. He wasn’t man enough to walk away from me. He liked the attention. He liked the adoration. He liked my eagerness. He liked what I could do for him. Even though he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it for me.

I loved him anyway

Stupid stupid me.

Allowing myself to be a secret. Allowing someone to use my sexuality for their own pleasure, with no care about how he was using me.

One of these days I will stop beating myself up over being so stupid. But not for a few days.. I drowned my shame in a bottle of rum, last night.  Good rum.  Gosling’s Black Label.  There’s enough left for the rest of the weekend

Gonna try to forget what a foolish woman I am.

Beware of those men, and women, who hold their cards close to their chest. They are full of deceit. And they will hurt you.