Tag Archives: gongs

One Last Gong Bath Tonight

Posted on by learning to live like water

gong bath

Last night I sent a friend in Scotland Reiki. I only sent it for about 15 minutes, because I was so tired from getting up at 4:30 am yesterday that I started to fall asleep. (Sorry, Ogden, lol) But it did me good, which is the cool thing about giving reiki, you get it too, as it passes through you. I got the first 8 hours of sleep that I have gotten in about a week. I hope it helped him too.

I did my meditation this morning, as usual. Trying to prepare myself emotionally for this long trip I begin tomorrow. I realized at some point during the meditation that I can probably finish everything I need to finish to leave tomorrow, and still have time to go to the gong bath tonight. That would be the best thing for me.

I have been holding so much emotion in my sacral and solar plexus chakras. Every morning I wake up and have that nervous feeling in my stomach. I work with it throughout the day, but still, it’s there. And from time to time it overwhelms me, to drive such a long distance and then leave my son there. It’s just a mom thing I guess. I spent so many years trying to protect him from his fathers wrath and biting tongue, and then so much time freeing him, and then the last 8 years trying to help him heal. Making him believe that he is worthy of love and belonging just because he exists in this world, and just because he is my son, and I think that I’ve been successful on that count.

It’s just hard. We are so close. I am so happy and proud of him, that he’s set this new life up all on his own. I’ve tried to help, of course, financially a little, contributing to new tires and car alignment, and I’ll help him set up his place in CO, but he’s done all the work himself to find a place to live, and to get a decent job.

But anyway, I think the gong bath will help me to release a lot of the angst I have over the whole thing.

Not to mention all the people I’ve been saying goodbye to. There will be a ton more when I get back from CO too. I love this place I live, except in winter, lol, it is beautiful. But it’s the people who are in my life on a regular basis that will be in my heart.

So gonging I will go. I sent my friend Linda an email telling her I was now intending to come. Just once more to lay on the floor and let the tsunami pf the vibrations of all Peter and Linda’s gongs carry me where I need to go.

Working through it this morning.

Love and light…..

Note:  the picture at the top is not the gong bath I go to, but is very similar.  (Pic is from Google Images.)  We also have 8 gongs and all kinds of other vibrational instruments.  And most of us lay on the floor, it’s my preferred position.

Trying to Just Keep Rising

Posted on by learning to live like water

keep rising

I just came home from the gong bath.  Gong meditation.  I took a friend tonight, someone not into much alternative stuff.  She asked, “There’s not water involved?”  LOL.  No…..Better to call it a meditation, that is, really what it is.  But deep, very deep if you want it to be.

When I am there, bathed in the vibration of the gongs, and crystal bowls and the drums, I seem to be able to look at the issues in my life non-judgmentally.  I seem to get a clearer picture of what has happened, is happening.  From a different level.  It has happened so many times.  S once told me I should go every night, because I work so much stuff out when I’m there.   I’m a much nicer person, apparently.  Or at least, so he thought. I suppose it’s true, because who isn’t nicer when they aren’t stressed.  Although he was usually the one stressing me, lol. But I digress.

Tonight was no different. What I think I needed to do tonight was get back to the present moment. To stop fretting over things about which I have no control. There is so much going on in my life right now with retirement, buying a house, selling a house. Leaving here, relocating where I know three people well. Letting go of old attachments to people, places and things.

I reminded myself tonight, that my obligation to myself is to keep rising. There are those who will rise with me. There are those who won’t rise at all. There are those who will rise, catch up to me, and rise past me. We all may bump into each other in this life. But each of us has to keep rising, in our own way, on our own path. I believe that we are here, in this lifetime, to learn lessons, and to evolve our souls. So, the only thing I have to do, is try to keep doing that.

Back when my friend who is a medium suggested that S was my twin flame, she explained about that kind of relationship, how it is push pull, how one is running and is chasing.  How you are usually not in the same place based on the many life experiences.  The important thing she said to me though, was, “and you have just just keep rising.” The rest will never be known to me, if he is or is not my twin.That there is some kind of soul connection is undeniable.  I know when I’m going to hear from him, I still feel him.  I basically ignore it, but the fact is, it doesn’t matter now.  All that matters is I keep rising.

It does not involve hate and anger, blame, guilt, shame. It does not involve jealousy or selfishness. It does not involve any of the negative emotions we as humans find so easy in our interactions with others. We all have to keep rising. We can’t hold the hands of others and pull them with us, everyone has to raise themselves. If we meet somewhere, at some point, then it’s just a blessing.

When the meditation tonight was over, I was thinking about what a loving and supportive environment it is there. Everyone is there for healing. Everyone is there to lovingly support each other. I have friends who I see only at the gongs, who I have seen once or twice a month for years now. And I feel so close to them, as if we know each others souls.

It’s all about love, everything, every emotion that I have there reduces to love. It’s like numerology, reduce to a single digit. It’s like the Rumi saying I put up this morning, we are left with two desires at the end of the day: to love, and to be happy. Evolving our souls, to me, is finding a way to love more, and be happier for it.

So I go to the gongs, twice a month, to seek out unconditional love, and to find a way to be happy. For the most part, it works. I am always always, better for having gone.

Sending love and light to all tonight.

 

Being Propelled Forward

Posted on by learning to live like water

lip of insanity

I have not been able to keep up with people’s blogs lately, I hope once the house is on the market I have a little more time.  I get the notices on my phone app, in my email, and I save them all to read, and pretty soon I have like 20 to read.  So, I’m apologizing for ignoring them.  I guess its one reason I want to retire, so I have the time to keep up with everyone.

The realtor is coming tonight.  We’ll probably sign a contract, settle on an asking price for my house.  She sold me the house, so knows it well, and she lives across the street from me.  It should be an easy meeting.

We had book club last night.  The other girls had to go early, so it was over by 8:30.  We are reading The Tapping Solution by Nick Ortner.  It’s about EFT tapping, tapping your self along the energy meridians also used in accupunture etc.  It’s apparently very effective for changing habits, undoing phobias, healing actual physical ailments.  I have always had my own way of dealing with trauma, which has involved going within, sitting with it, letting it bubble up and go.  Reiki and gong baths, and meditation.  But it would be good to have other modalities as well, because I have had nights where I tried all of that but could not get to sleep, and would have tried tapping instead of taking an Ambien, (which sometimes even didn’t work.)

Hopefully, I have left all that trauma in the past.  It feels like it.  I’m feeling very mellow this morning.  It’s so hard to let go of things, but I believe I have.  The psychic who told me to grieve if I need to grieve, and to nurture myself, followed by all those dreams, seem to have propelled me through the door that I couldn’t get open.  Maybe it’s like Rumi says, “I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door.  It opens. I was knocking from the inside.”

Yes, pretty sure that was the problem.

Love and light.

Gratitude and Release

Posted on by learning to live like water

thankful

I didn’t think I’d sleep last night, but I slept well.  I went to bed and lay under the covers with the kind of chill I get at the gong baths that starts from the inside, my heart and solar plexus chakras, releasing.  I did my gratitude list, I was grateful for my son, my warm bed, my home, my two sisters, my parents, my life.   And then I fell fast asleep.

It did me a lot of good, to speak my mind, to say to him, and to her, what the truth was from my perspective, and demand that I not be made into something I was not.  That my relationship with S not be made into something prurient, and shallow, because it so was not.  Anyone who reads my blogs consistently can see that.

When I was being grateful for all those things, I also was grateful that I am strong enough to stand in my story.  That I could articulate what was true, what was undeniable.  That I didn’t have to sit in the shadows and swallow a lie.  I am so grateful that my life has taught me to stand up for something.  To stand up for myself.  The fact that someone I loved cannot stand up for himself, or me, is his problem.  He will live with that karma.  If she stays with him, she will also have to deal with it.

He has so much fear.  For some reason, he feels that if he admits to caring for me, not even loving me, that it will take something from her.  How silly.  Caring for one person doesn’t negate the love you have for someone else.  She can’t be that jealous, that he couldn’t care for someone else when she wasn’t in his life.

My conscience is clear this morning.  I am ready more than ever to go on my vacation, free of emotional encumbrances that bind me to the past.  I am more ready than ever to make this move for the same reason.

It’s all been hard, so hard.  Some of the hardest shit of my lifetime.  And trust me I’ve been through a lot of shit. It’s not as hard as the problems I had when my ex was trying to keep my son from me, but it’s running a close second.  I trusted my gut now, as I did then, and as I freed him from abuse, I have freed myself from betrayal.

I always have to remember, that everything that happens to us brings us to where we are.  I like where I am, I like who I am.  Therefore, I am grateful for all of it, and all the lessons I was taught.   I also try to remember that many wise people say our purpose in this life is to learn lessons and evolve our souls.  I have felt the power of speaking up for myself, not because of it’s affect on anyone else.  If there is, or isn’t, an affect on anyone else, I likely won’t ever know.  But I feel the power within me, that I loved myself enough not to swallow another lie.  And that’s a wonderful thing to know, that I can do that.

 

A Little Gong Introspection

Posted on by learning to live like water

 

longing

Just got home from the gongs, it was lovely as usual.  I was fairly relaxed going in, and may have dosed off for a bit.  Hard to believe with all that sound going on, but it happens.   Not sure if I was sleeping or just somewhere else.

Texted with the new guy a lot today.  There have been no moments, yet, of wondering   “why did he say that?”  Won’t  know if there’s any connection til Saturday.  I’d like to talk to him on the phone, I may tell him that tomorrow.  Idk.  I hope I’m not too outside the box for him, lol.

I was driving home tonight and kept thinking about the weekends I spent with Scott before Betty showed up again in his life.  Sometimes I just don’t understand why he was so quick to give it up.  Even if he wouldn’t let me go, he gave up that time together.  We’d make love before we slept, and when we woke up, then go out on some excursion, and then usually take a nap before I drove home, usually late in the day, and make love once more.  It was sweet, and easy.  Seems like it might have been worth a second thought?  Well, apparently not.   I hope I can find that again with someone.

Gongs make me introspective, help me put things in perspective in my life.  I wasn’t longing for Scott, I was just missing that closeness, with someone. I know who he is.  Maybe I’m longing for the guy he was, then.  I don’t know.  But that guy disappeared, and hasn’t been around for a long long time.

Well, off to bed. love and light.

 

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.

Well On My Way

Posted on by learning to live like water

Saturday morning.  I slept almost 8 hours.  I have not done that in weeks, probably before Betty Boop first showed on the scene a month ago.  I feel good, I woke without a knot in my stomach this morning, in fact, with a smile on my face.

I think his voice mail yesterday, his sick sorry attempt to “comfort” me was the key.  I really really saw and disliked him with that voice mail. It infuriated me, but when the fury stopped, I took ownership of my life, and realized everything happens for a reason, and the reason all this happened was because he did not, does not, belong in my life. I don’t wish him ill, I really feel emotionless when it comes to him right now.  No love, no pain, no hurt, no desire.  He’s just someone that I used to love, like my ex husband.  Like the Pink Floyd song “There is no pain you are receding.”  Finally.

I am hoping that since he has no way to respond to me about my blog, he will quit reading them.  But at least if he does, I will not have to deal with whatever he thinks about them.  I won’t know, and that’s a good thing.

I sit here and realize I have no stress this morning. I don’t have to wonder if he’s going to want to see me, I don’t have to wonder if he does will he just want to spend a few hours or will he grace me with some of his time, I don’t have to worry about battling it out with him if he is looking for a “nice afternoon.” I don’t have to wonder where I stand with him. I don’t have to wonder about him at all.  I didn’t realize how much stress I have had the last 6 months with him, always wondering about our relationship.  It feels good, so good.  I feel free today, for the first time. I don’t even feel loss, this morning, which is pretty amazing to me.

I feel like I battled it out all week, and this morning I know I won the fight.  My heart is not pounding, the roar in my head is silenced, my blood sugar has gone back into the good range. I”m not feeling nauseous.  When the physical symptoms of stress, and grief have alleviated, I know I am ok.

The gongs helped I’m sure.  I tried to focus on letting him go, and now, 2 days later, I feel free of  him.  I’m so glad that I know how to deal with my emotions.  Not to bury them, but to  honor them, and let myself feel them, until they are calmed, and subsided.  I always said to him, “It will hurt, but I am strong, I’ll get through it.”  A week later, I am well on my way to the other side.

I’m going to go full tilt boogie into getting my house ready to sell at first light next spring.  I have so much to do.  A friend is loaning me a power washer to do my deck this weekend, I think.  I can paint/stain it when I get back from the wedding next weekend.  That’s one of the biggest jobs I have to do.  I have recruited my son to help me for a few hours at some point this weekend, since he’s off, to get the house good and clean.  I slept so poorly this week, and worked late almost every night, I had no energy to give the house in the few hours I was home.

I was just thinking of his smart ass email to me, when I blogged that I was ok with never seeing him again.  “Be careful you don’t get carpal tunnel patting yourself on your back.”  Well you know what?  I had the surgery, I snipped out the  thing that was causing me pain.  And it’s healing beautifully.  And if I want to pat myself on my back, along with all my friends, for recovering so quickly from utterly cruel devastation, then I will do it. I don’t have to live with what he did.  But he does.

N.O. W.A.Y. B.A.C.K.

Posted on by learning to live like water

Here is what set me back so far yesterday.

Wednesday night I put up the blog about how far I’d come in 5 days, so far that the realization that I will  never see him again did not hurt.  I was glad to get to a place where that didn’t hurt me.

I forgot, momentarily, that he reads my blog.  I hate that he reads them, it makes me measure my words.  It is like a censor, I don’t feel like I can write down my real feelings all the time.  Especially now.  I am already too vulnerable to him.  He already had proven he doesn’t deserve to hear my story. I was hoping that since he now had Betty Boop and had thrown me out of his life like yesterday’s  trash that he would stop reading them. (I’ve chosen to just write down what I feel this morning, and let happen whatever will happen from putting it all out on the table.)

But he read it. He sent me an email, since texting is cut off to him, saying something like ” You might get carpal tunnel from patting yourself on the back.”  I deleted it, with no response. I would have liked it if he were happy I had come so far in healing from his unfathomable betrayal.  But no, he was a smart ass.  He didn’t like that I was healing.  He prefers me hurting.

I went to bed around my normal time, 10, and read, and then tried to get to sleep.  I was almost asleep when a friend texted me.  When I opened the phone, it opened to voice mail, I don’t know why, I must have accidentally left it on VM. I saw a blocked voice mail, which could only have been S.  I listened (big mistake) to him say, “I don’t know what to say.  I really miss you.”

This is 5 days after he completely and totally devastated me, decimated our relationship. Chose Betty Boop. 5 days after he texted me at 4 am, and followed up with a text telling me he was spending the weekend with her.  5 days later, he misses me.

All I could think is HOW DARE HE?  HOW DARE HE?

Naturally, I didn’t sleep much.  maybe 3, 3 1/2 hrs.

It infuriated me. He was simply playing with my emotions.  A manipulation to make me think about him.  He didn’t like that I could think about never seeing him again and not hurt over it, so he stuck a knife in the wound again, so that I would hurt again.

Cruel.  Heartless.  Selfish beyond belief.

He didn’t say, “I made a mistake. I’m so sorry I hurt you like that.  I’m not with her.”  He just said he misses me.

Duh. Of course he misses me.  I was the one, the only one, in his entire life to unconditionally love him.  Adore him. Accept him.  Ask nothing of him. I knew he would miss me.  He knew he would miss me.  Who cares?  He did what he did, he can’t undo it.  I told him there is no way back from this, when he did it.  There is not.  There is no way back to where we were.  He created an abyss, and whether or not he is happy with his decision, he made it.  We both have to live with it.

So yesterday my anger was renewed.  My healing had to start all over again.  The gaping bleeding wound in my heart, that actually physically hurts, had to begin all over again.  What kind of monster does this to someone?  Does he think so little of himself, that he doesn’t believe he can have any effect on people?  No.  He knows, if he knows anything, that I loved him more than ever at the moment he broke me. He knows what he’s doing.

My posts yesterday were meant to tell him to leave me alone.  I knew that the pain was going to follow the anger, it always does.  I hoped it would be during the gong bath, but it was really this morning.  Apparently I wasn’t ready last night, to accept and deal with the pain.This morning, I remembered how much I wanted to be with him, Friday night. How I sent him a text, telling him I would drive down to his house Friday night, I missed him, wanted to be with him so much. Maybe he was talking to her then.  I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

I have wondered, since he texted me when she left Sunday, and now with the voice mail, if maybe the reunion didn’t go quite the way he dreamed it would.  That maybe once you have had someone really love you, whatever she offered wasn’t enough.  I will never know, I don’t want to know.

I know, that I can never ever expose my heart to him again.  There is no trust, there is only hurt when I think of him.  There is only the knowledge that he can throw me away at a moments notice, first he prison whore, then the bimbo.  There is only the knowledge that he chose the woman who devastated him, over me, the woman who loved him without limit.  And that he was able to make that choice with as much cruelty as possible.  That he could crush me, without a tender word, without acknowledgment of anything decent.  Just telling me what he wanted.

So, does it hurt me to think I will never see him again?  No. It is actually a relief.  A relief to know that he won’t have the opportunity to ever again crush my heart.  His voice set me back to the beginning, made me re-ask all the questions I had realized were not answerable, and that I didn’t even want answers to.  I had to go back and now work myself back to the place where I know that nothing he can say can fix what he did.

If he decided he made a mistake choosing her, so what?  So if it wasn’t the dream reunion, and she couldn’t and didn’t want to fix him, or be accountable for what she’d done to him, so what? And I don’t even know her side of the story, but I know if he did something to her, for which she was getting revenge when she took off on him when he was sick, to actually marry someone she’d cheated on him with, after taking him for all she could, I know that he cannot be accountable for his part. He never can.  And who cares what happened if anything with the reunion?   Because in the mean time, he killed us.  He broke me and he broke us in such a way that I know I am better off without him, and the pieces of our relationship cannot be put back together.  There is nothing there.  He pulverized it, with his cruelty.  I’ve said right along he’d have been happy to have kept us both.  Maybe that’s all his message was. An attempt to keep me on the side while he spends his weekends with her.

Do I still love him?  Yes, I will always love him.  That’s unconditional love.  Do I forgive him?  I was getting there, but now, with his “I really miss you” message, I have to start that journey all over again.  But I’ll get there.  Because that’s what I do.  Hate and anger and pain will kill you.  It is taking poison and thinking someone else will die.

Not right now, though, not yet.  Not since he had to re-open the gaping wound that hadn’t even stopped bleeding yet.

The gong bath helped.  What happened during it was not what I expected, but it never really is. I was in a deep, and very tired meditation.  There was a good chance I’d fall asleep, but that didn’t happen.  My friend led us into the meditation, with the guided imagery of a white light surrounding us.  That light stayed with me, and soothed me.  It told me, literally, that I was beautiful, that I was love, that I was loved, that I was worthy of love.  I visualized S on a cloud with me, and I said everything I needed to say, without anger.  I gently pushed him off my cloud, and thought, hoped, expected I would watch him drift away, out of sight.  Last night he would not drift away.  He just floated around me.  Hard as I tried to energetically push him out of sight, I could not.

Not quite far enough in my healing.  The white light comforted me though.

On the way home, I said out loud, “S, I need you to leave me alone.  I need this to heal.  Please please leave me alone.”  Because his energy around me was palpable.  And I swear, I swear, I heard his voice say, “I can’t leave you Deb.  I can’t”

Could have been my imagination.

When I went to bed last night, I decided to sent him a text saying “You have a tremendous amount of nerve to leave me that voice mail 5 days after you decimated me and our relationship.  I’d appreciate it if you would not attempt any further contact with me. You’ve got your bimbo. You don’t need me.  And I don’t want you,you made sure of that.”

I know that it might not have been the right thing to do. I know that no contact is probably a healthier choice, to just let it all go.  But I just want there to be no mistake in his head.  I want to make sure he understands that I don’t want to hear from him, that there is  n.o.  w.a.y.  b.a.c.k. from what he did.  And I don’t want to have to start this process over every fucking day.

This morning, there is pain again.  I knew it would come, I also know when I have sat with it, and honored it, it will go.  I hope it goes soon.

At least he was silent last night.  For that I am grateful.

As Liz Gilbert always says, “Onward.”