Tag Archives: heartache

A Friend Request

Posted on by learning to live like water

Scott now wants to be friends on FB. We have never been friends on FB. It has certainly been his demise. It’s how I found out who Betty was, where she worked, that he was with her too when I thought he was only with me.  (And she thought he was only with her.)

Apparently it’s over with her if he is willing for me to be seen in his friends list. Wow, lucky me.  That has always been a temporary situation anyway.

All I can say is, NO. He is offering up sloppy seconds to me, again. I don’t want them. He apparently does not realize that if he were my FB friend, my son and all my friends would see it. All the people who had to watch as he reduced me to a pile of mush, and played with me, and used me. The same people who told me over and over who he was and to leave him alone. The last time I told my son that I thought he might come to our house in CT, uninvited, my son said, “Just saying Mom, if he shows up in our driveway, I will walk over to his car and punch him in the face.” He was not kidding. I told him, “no, I’ll deal with it.” He said, “Just saying Mom. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

My son is the one who had to see me reduced to a slobbering pile of sobbing mess after he did the prison whore. He also had to watch me then again, 9 months later, when I got the text that instead of us being together for the weekend, he was going to be with “someone else” (Betty) and that he was “busy and didn’t want to talk about it.”

When I saw Scott a year ago, after Betty had found out about me, my son said, “What the FUCK is the matter with you Mom? This guy made you cry more than my dad did.”

And still I talked to Scott through the move down here, on the phone, even though he was still officially with Betty, though I haven’t seen him in over a year. Until a couple months ago, when I just got so sick of the games he plays. The disappearing act he pulls, and then comes back as if it never happened. I just got so tired of being messed with.

And now he wants to be FB friends.

He had never been a friend. He has been my lover and my adversary. He has been my teacher of hard lessons, he has been a soulful connection. But he was never a friend to me. I was one to him. Every dark day that I knew about, I tried to help him. When she found out about me, and left him, (temporarily…but that’s another story) I was there for him. I loved him so dearly, more than I ever thought possible. And he used that love to bolster his own ego. To take what he could from me. And give back nothing, nothing permanent, nothing that lasts. We could easily have stayed friends. But he chose not to.

And so we are not. Not on FB, not in life. Not in any way. When I hear from him now, I feel dread, I feel a foreboding. Feel like the darkness is knocking on my door again. Do I love him, yes….always. Can I have any semblance of him in my life? Absolutely not, at least, not the way he is.

We can all change. It is hard hard work, to change and grow. If at some point he was able to convince me, look me in the eye, and tell me what he’s done, what inner work he’s done to change from being an egocentric, selfish man to someone who actually can be a friend, I might listen. I might then open the door. If he could actually apologize to me, and to my son, for his shoddy treatment of me, I might listen. But it would have to be heartfelt, sincere. I am good with words. I am intuitive. I would know the difference. He will say he has apologized to me enough. But what good is an apology when the behavior continues, unabated?

When I went through my divorce, I didn’t date for 5 or 6 years. I went inside, I learned to go deep, I learned to look at myself and forgive myself, but that also implies that I changed. And I did. I’m not angry with Scott (or my ex for that matter). I am just saying that I can’t have in my life what he has brought to it for 2 years now. (The first year, up until he did the prison whore was good with him, even after that, it was good. Then came Betty.) I have joked that he should go to the monastery for 6 months, like he often said he was going to. It’s a journey he has to take by himself. Even if I was inclined to help him, I would not. There is never real growth without real pain. There is help…but you have to seek it out. And not seek it from me. Not look to have the gaping wounds once again soothed by me so life can go on the way it has for decades.

So, I write this knowing he will read it. I don’t want to open the doors of communication with him, because it’s not safe for me. I know that somewhere inside there, I still love him as I always did, and that I would just be hurt again. I need to heal, I need distance, emotional distance to match the now physical distance I have purposefully put between us. He needs to heal too, and see himself. And acknowledge his soul and his spirit and stop feeding his ego, which is doing a good job of killing him, and hurting everyone who loves him. When he does that, when he can realize that he too is a child of God, as deserving as all of us, he’ll be able to love himself, and forgive himself, and then he’ll have something to offer the people he wants in his life.

I wish him Godspeed on that journey should he choose to undertake it.

Love and light, everyone.

Foolishness

Posted on by learning to live like water

To love beyond reason
Is kind of foolish,
She thought.
Though she had loved him like that
Forever.

There was no gain
Ever, in loving him,
Except
The joy that comes from having
A heart that’s full.

There was some game
To be played
But she could never
Understand the rules.
She never played it right.

She wasn’t a player
She was a lover.
Waiting
For a sign
That the game had ended.

But he disappeared.
His disappearance filled the void
Where once he lay
Beside her.
Now she wondered if he was real.

Were they, he and she, real
In the time-outs between rounds,
When playing stopped momentarily?
What was there?
Nothing? Or something?

There were times she grew weary
Of the game.
Times she said,
Go. I can’t play this game
Anymore.

Her heart aches still.
She waits for answers
As yet unspoken.
So she moves on,
And tries to love again.

Haiku No. 173: Where Light Cannot Reach (8 Parts)

Posted on by learning to live like water

where-light-cannot-see

You were ev’rything
To me. Sun, moon, heat, light and
Shadow. Also that.

Where light could not reach
You crept, with distorted truth
Filling the dark space.

Dazzling me, like light
I could not discern, at first.
I dreamed it was real.

You laughed, suffusing
Darkness disguised with strange glow
Sorrowful aching.

It’s taken me time
To eradicate your gloom
You’re strong in your fear.

But only light can
destroy the darkness, so go.
You can’t hurt me now.

You also can’t change
My belief in love’s power.
Still, I can see you.

Love needs no reason
to be unconditional.
Always, and all ways.

Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa

Posted on by learning to live like water

When I went to Florida I stayed for a couple of nights with a friend from high school who lives in the town I’m moving to.  Turns out she’s been singing the blues at local places around there for over a year.  One of her favorite female blues singers is Beth Hart.  I have to sheepishly admit I did not know her.  My friend put on a few youtube videos of her, one was with Jeff Beck at the Kennedy Center honoring Buddy Guy. I realized I had seen it, live, because it was way tooo fabulous not to burn a spot into your psyche.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward, really forward, to going with my friend to see her sing.

Anyway after she played the Hart-Beck Kennedy Center video,  she “introduced” me to Joe Bonamassa, except when I heard him, I remembered that Scott had already introduced me to him, and I loved him.  One of those moments where we weren’t having sex, lol.  Listening to and discussing music.  With our clothes on!  (Ok sometimes we were naked, but not having sex, lol. Just sayin’ it wasn’t what some people wanted to believe it was!) OMG, and we did that with books too!  Anyway, my friend played the video below, and all I can think when I hear it, is damn…that was me last fall.  October 3.  And damn, I want to love someone else like that.  Except, I don’t want to ever have to watch him walk away again.

Listen to it…I bet you’ll feel the same.

Johnny, I Hardly Knew You

Posted on by learning to live like water

The hard thing is reconciling the man I loved, with the man he was.  I love the guy I loved so much.  It wasn’t him.  It’s hard to comprehend how I fooled myself for so long.  It’s hard to accept that I gave my heart away, to someone who didn’t want it, didn’t cherish it, didn’t even think of it as a gift but treated it like a burden.

Hard. Really hard.

But I’m getting through it, because I have clarity.  There is no mistaking the man who showed up last night, or the one who texted me to tell me he was going to be with someone else.  No mistaking that it wasn’t the man I love.

And I swear, yesterday he sent a few flirty, very sexual texts, followed by LOL.  It was his thing, it was, I thought, our thing.  It seemed inappropriate now.  I didn’t respond.  But I swear, what he thought was he might be able to get me to agree to see him while he’s seeing her.  You know, what’s wrong he said, with being with one person Tuesday and another one Friday? (With, like intimately)  I am pretty sure that he thought I’d have sex with him last night, because I was so bereft.

But I saw him, clearly.  I hugged him hello, and started to cry.  I didn’t sit by him.  I was almost doubled over most of the time, my stomach was so upset.  I am holding all of it in my sacral chakra, and it was on fire.  Sacral, the abdomen is where we hold our creativity, our sexuality, and as a result, our vulnerability.  I was hanging way out there on a limb, holding on for dear life, while he was defending his indefensible behavior.  I had known that he would not be able to ease the pain, and he didn’t.  He doesn’t know how to be compassionate, or kind, when he’s done something wrong.  It’s not intentional.  He just doesn’t know.  No one taught him, and he never tried to learn.  It was the same after the prison whore.  He couldn’t own up to the pain he caused there either.

Today he finally, in his last message, said he was really sorry I was so hurt.  SO WHAT.  He didn’t apologize for what he did to hurt me, not today, not ever.  He can’t own it.  Who care that he feels bad I was hurt.  What matters is that he was the one who caused the hurt, and couldn’t even own it.  He thinks whatever he does is ok, because he does it.  If you don’t like it, walk away.

Which I have done.  Not even reluctantly.

I still see his heart, which he has barricaded up so no one can get in, and he can’t get out, not even to comfort the woman who loved him.  He comes from the attitude of scarcity.  There’s not enough of him as it is, he’s not going to give any of it away.  He never learned that giving it away is the only way to get more.  Too bad.

He’s a really really cool but totally fucked up guy.  I will always love the man who he won’t let out.  But I see him, I see him.  The last thing I said was if he ever figures it out, he knows where I am.

I don’t expect to ever hear from him.

Set Back

Posted on by learning to live like water

I set myself back today, way back. I was so good this morning. And I cried all the way home, and haven’t stopped.  He started off with an angry text because of my last blog, Questions Without Answers.  I apologize to all of you, who were cheering me on.

First off, he’s with her.  Why is he even reading my blogs, and 2nd, why does he care what I write? What does it matter, she’s his life now, what I say is just peripheral, and should have no effect on him.  I have to write.  It’s my only outlet.  My friends are sick of listening to me cry.  Complain.  Bitch.  And cry some more.  I can’t even tell A, he has been so good to me, he loves me, but even he will want to excuse himself if I start up with him again.  This is all I have, and he hovers over it as if he cared, but he doesn’t.

He says he apologized.  I said, yes you apologized for choosing her, and breaking my heart.  You didn’t ever apologize for telling via text, like a 14 yr old adolescent boy, hit and run.  “I’m with someone else and I’m busy and I don’t want to talk about it.”  Never.  No apology.  You should have been here, face to face, and dealt with the devastation you caused like a man.  Not left me in the street bleeding. Not treated me like yesterday’s trash.

But this is all repetitive.

We texted for about 3 hours.  I told him that calling him a 14 yr old adolescent was only stating the obvious.  That everyone’s first words, were “Really???  Like a teenager?? How old is this guy?”  No one needed me to tell them how immature and cruel and thoughtless that was.

But it’s water over the dam now.  He wants her, I don’t want him.  Well, I do.  I will for a long time.  But he wants her, even if he didn’t want her, I could never ever expose my heart to this much pain again.

He told me I wasn’t devastated, just jealous.  Wow…..I said, Yeah I’m jealous.  A woman who is a whore, a bitch and a bimbo is sleeping with the man I love.  You BET I am jealous.

After I’d said that about 5 times, he asked why I keep trashing her.  I said, I call a spade a spade.  I had to learn to read people when I was married and divorcing a manipulative asshole.    She #1) makes sure she gets paid for her time with you.  A new kitchen, a new car, maybe help with her credit card debt.  Who knows this time, probably help with her divorce.  Just like the prison whore, just the stakes are higher.  No different than the $50 you paid the prison whore, just cost you way more. She #2) left you when you were diagnosed with untreatable liver cancer.  (A miracle experimental drug saved his life).  If that’s not being a total bitch, and devoid of any human feeling, I don’t know what is. She thought you were dying, and she left you. She #3) left you then, as soon as you were done with the kitchen, I think you said the day later on your birthday…to marry some man she’d been cheating on you with.  That’s a bimbo.  The definition of all 3, in Websters, should have her picture.  I asked him what he did to piss her off.  Because he says he hates my temper.  I said, oh, yeah, well I do have a temper, and I lose it and then I get over it, and I don’t hold a grudge once something is settled it’s settled.  I don’t store it up, so that I can fuck someone up 6 months later when they are at their most vulnerable moment.  Personally, I think THAT’S a bad temper.  And a devious one, and a manipulative one.  Mine, is flat out anger, at injustice usually. It is fiery for a few minutes.  Seems to me, that would be easier to deal with than having someone leave you when you’re sick, after they’ve gotten 10’s of $1000’s from you, to be with someone they cheated on you with.  But that’s just me.  I’d take the honesty any day.

And then I said, so she comes back to you.  And she’s so sweet and cunning, isn’t she….you just can’t resist….You don’t even know where she’s been all week?  Do you care? It is sickening, that that’s the kind of woman he wants.  Just sickening.  Fucked up.  Royally.

I think that’s when he told me to leave him alone.  But I didn’t….because I was on a roll.  And he didn’t either. But we did say some t things that weren’t ugly, that we both needed to say.  And I ended up in the bathroom at work, sitting in there, crying. Wondering how I was gonna finish the day.  Not devastated?  No, decimated.  Crushed. Used Up. Wrecked. Shattered.  Broken.  Bruised.  Beat up. DEVASTATED.

Someone else is in his bed and his heart, no, I’m not devastated.  He is denying it, but he knows it’s true.  He knows I loved him more than I can say.  He knows I gave him everything I could give him, and asked for nothing.  Those things he knows.

I will never ever be the same.  I will be ok, I will recover, but I will never ever be the same.  I will look twice before I trust again.  Maybe 3, 4, 10 times.  100 times.  I will hold onto my heart, and probably fuck it up with a good man because I’m so fucking scared to give my heart away again.  I’ll never go to a beach around here without wishing he were with me.  Good thing I’m moving.  New beaches, new places, where he won’t be ghosting my psyche all the time.  Even the town he lives in, I won’t want to go to anymore.  And it’s a beautiful little town. Lots of tourists because it’s so beautiful.

He wanted me to go to the beach with him yesterday, why didn’t I go?  “Do you think I want to see you when you are sleeping with someone else?  Do you think I want to look in those eyes and see someone else’s reflection?  Are you THAT cold, that you think that would be ok with me?”

He blasted me for being online, on a dating site.  Why does he care?  What does he expect.  Yes, I said.  Of course I am.  Of course I’m looking for a man that will soothe my aching heart, and make me forget about you.

So, I have been messaging with a nice man, looks nice in his pics, loves the ocean like me.  Seems we have something in common.  My heart isn’t in it, but I’m going to meet him for coffee after work one day, because I have to force myself to get out there, and stop sitting home making myself sick.  I got a nice message from a different man today, but too busy to check him out. I might respond, just to put the energy out there, just to get used to trying to deal with the fact that this is where I’m at. That the man I love wants someone else, and ruined me. The fact that she’s the kind of woman she is, only rubs salt in the wound. I have to start from square 1 again.

So, I guess I need to stop talking to him, again, because this is all that’s going to happen.  I’m gonna miss him more, and hurt more, and still know we can never be together.  I just want to curl up in a ball and hide out.    He’s gonna get an ego boost out of my pain.  He’s going to keep me engaged.  I need to let go.

It’s only been a week and 2 days.  I guess I shouldn’t be beating myself up so much for still wanting him so much.

Dealing With It

Posted on by learning to live like water

So…this morning, after I had cried an inordinate amount of time, I got on FB and chatted with my best friend. The one who told me not to talk about him to her, because she knew he was only going to continue to hurt me. I told her….she felt bad for me. When it comes to our friendship, nothing can really hurt us. When she loves you, she loves you, she’s like me with that, and it’s why we are so close. I thank God that I have people in my life like her. She has always made me feel like family, literally, invites me to every holiday and family gathering of her large boisterous fun clan. They are all used to me, lol. Because I have no family here, it has been a godsend for me.

Then I talked to A, who I totally blew off yesterday, in my pain. A also loves me, like my friend. Unconditionally. I told him in pieces what happened. I have been chatting with him on and off, and today he is such a blessing to me. He lets me know that there are men who can love and be loved unconditionally. He told me again today, that he loves me, but we are purely friends now, because he has chosen to live in the Southwest, and me here and Florida, and nothing else would work. He is so angry that this happened to me, he is as angry as my son. They know it was me who was stupid enough to buy into what S was selling, but still….A has called him a prick. I told him don’t waste your energy hating S, he’s his own worst enemy.

It was A who really has talked me down. He could be mean and bitter, and not talk to me, I have so screwed him over for S. But he isn’t. He loves me so much, he makes me feel good about myself. He thinks I’m beautiful. He thinks I’m funny. He knows I’m flawed, and he just told me he loves my flaws. And we are just friends. We were intimate, once, now we are just friends. He is seeing someone in his new home, and I am happy for him. He said, she knows about you….I said, because you are an honest and loving man.

How different from a man who would blindside me, inflicting as much pain as possible.

Dark vs light. Night vs. Day. Ego vs. spirit. We all choose. Make no mistake, S, you chose to be who you are.

I have been talking to a friend from here on WhatsApp. She and I have similar issues, she has been so helpful. My ex’s cousin, who is a close friend, and is the closest thing to family I have, has helped me a lot too.

So I have people, people who love me, people who support me. I need to surround myself with people like myself, who can love without limit, and accept the same. Whose only dysfunction might be they care too much, lol.

I also reactivated a dating profile on one site. I am just putting the energy out there. I’m free, I’m available, I am willing. And that’s a huge thing, to be willing.

I am beginning to get past it. I can see how toxic S is, for me, for himself. I see so clearly how he is only comfortable with extreme dysfunction. And how I wasn’t, and why our relationship would end every 2 weeks. There was a HUGE physical attraction. There is some kind of energetic connection. But I can have that with someone who can love and appreciate being loved, can’t I?

Pretty soon I’ll block his phone number, so when Betty Boop goes home tonight he can’t reach me. I’ll delete his texts soon, so I don’t see them when I open my app. I’ll get rid of all his pictures. I already did that with some that were my favorites. I don’t want to hear from him, he can’t do anything but give me more pain. I know this is a roller coaster. I know that I will go from anger to pain to healing over and over again. This is the first wave of feeling like I will survive. And it feels fucking good.

I bought a dark chocolate caramel chocolate bar to take him. Or give to him if he came here. Yesterday, I thought I’d throw it away. I though I would gag if I tried to eat it. Today, I think I will open it, and eat some. I’ve wasted enough on him. Why waste $3 more?

So…to paraphase one of my favorite authors, and spiritual guides, Brene Brown, from her TED talk on vulnerability, instead of catastrophizing my life because I got involved with a shit, I will thank God that I can hurt this much, that I could be so passionate, that I can love that deeply, because it means I am alive, and not dead, not walking around numb to this life. And for those that are numb, and settling for a life that will bring them pain after pain, I can’t feel anything but pity.

Waves

Posted on by learning to live like water

102

Picture from East Beach, Rhode Island

The anger wave is being replaced
By the wave of complete devastation.
The one that rolls over your body,
And you begin to understand
What drowning is like.
Flooding the body with tears,
The ones that have been stuck in your throat for hours
The ones you tried so hard not to cry,
Because you were afraid
Once you started you may never stop.
The tears that come from somewhere deep in your soul
Accompanied by violent body-wracking sobs
Gurgling up as the wave rolls over you
Filling you with liquid pain
Stealing your oxygen.
You heart screams,
“Let me out,
Bring me to the surface
I’m going to die…
I’m going to stop beating.”

How it keeps on,
I don’t know.
The pain which radiates from it
Disables me.
Completely.

How I want it to be over.
To drown,
How lovely it would be
To be numb enough that the waves don’t hurt me.
Just numb.
No joy, no pain, no nothing.
No him, no her, no me.

To be in a land where nothing reminded me.
No life, only gray, only rocks, only dirt.
Nothing to stimulate a memory,
Or a desire.

It is worse than death.
There is no peace.
In death, I would be reborn.
In this,
only suffering.