Tag Archives: honor

Ruminations on Reclusiveness

Posted on by learning to live like water

Am I becoming reclusive? I spend a lot of time alone. And I don’t mind. I consider calling a friend to come over or go do something, and so often I stop myself. Not wanting someone intruding on me. At least lately. I don’t understand this sudden change in me.

I’ve always been extroverted. Love having people around. Love deep conversation. Love my friends. It’s why I was not afraid to move somewhere far away where I knew only 2 people, an old friend and my sister. I knew that I had always made friends easily, and I have. But lately, I find myself keeping to myself.

Perhaps I have given too much of myself, maybe I feel spread thin. I don’t know. I miss my son. At times I really miss my old life. But I love my new life. It’s just that lately, I don’t want to take a walk with someone else. I want to walk by myself, along the waterfront, sorting out my thoughts and emotions. Trying to figure out what it is that I really want, that brings me joy, and passion.

Writing is the first answer. Not the only one, but the first one. It brings me so much peace, to put my thoughts in a form where I can see them. I cannot seem to work them out without putting them on the page. I was up again, last night in the middle of the night, writing away. Because thoughts were there that were screaming at me for release. Compelling thoughts. And things I don’t want to publish, I don’t want them to be public knowledge. I need to keep and honor some things only in my heart. We all do.

This morning I have to get some groceries. Coffee, cream, toilet paper, some salad makings. I had to force myself to be kind enough to ask my friend who has no car of her own if she wants to go with me. I’m glad I did. I have wished someone was here to just talk with, someone I knew well. I want to rest in the arms of a close friend. This friend I called, well, she is a good friend. She can become argumentative though, and I hope that doesn’t happen today because I am way too tired to deal with it.

What I really want is someone who could take a nap with me, just lay down and make me feel safe….a man, no doubt, but just to rest my weary head against someone who I knew would not hurt me. It has been decades since I had that peace. And even when I had it, it was temporary.

When I lived with my son, I was content enough, to have him around. He was there. He would listen to me if he realized I really needed to be heard. He could see and understand me without a whole lot of communication. He read my body language. It wasn’t like having a significant other, but it eased the fact that I didn’t have one, or that the man I’d chosen had let me down, again.

I don’t want to be a recluse. I want to be involved in life, with passion, with love. I don’t want to become isolated, yet that’s what I’ve been doing lately to some degree. I’ll show up where I’m expected, but I just want to be alone most of the time.

I guess, when I look at it from the more objective perspective of reading it on the page, that I am sitting with some things. I don’t really know what they are, or why they are affecting me this way. But like a teacher who used to facilitate my meditation group each week said, “You don’t have to excavate. You don’t have to dig up your past. You just have to honor that you feel the way you feel.”

I guess I’m honoring myself, by allowing myself to feel things that are uncomfortable right now, but are evasive in origin. I guess that I want to do this in private, until I don’t need to anymore. So, if my blogging is more sparse, that’s why. I’m not saying it will be, but it was yesterday. And then the things that came out were direct from my soul. Today, this comes from the same place. I am confused, but willing. Reticent, but full of words. I suppose at some point it will spill back out and the clouds will dissipate.

Love and light.

Which Will You Be?

Posted on by learning to live like water

strength acourage

Strength

Measured in lies

Measured in pain caused

Measured in lives destroyed

Is weakness.

Is less than zero.

 

Strength

Measured in open hearts

Measured in joy given

Measured in lives connected

Is power.

Is heaven on earth.

 

Courage

Measured in willingness to lie

Measured in willingness to deceive

Measured in willingness to devastate

To crush, to harm

Isn’t courage.

It’s cheap cowardice.

It’s emptiness of a soul.

 

Courage

Measured in Willingness to to be honest

Measured in willingness to trust

Measured in willingness to show oneself

And be seen, truly be seen

Is courage.

It is wealth of spirit,

It is fullness of soul.

 

Which have you been

The weak morally bankrupt coward?

Or the courageous, powerful rich spirit?

 

Which are you?

 

Which will you be?

Random Memories Wreaking Havoc

Posted on by learning to live like water

Warning:  This is pretty raw……

Today was difficult.  I had that random rogue wave memory hit me today, while I was working.  (See last blog)  I had to go to the ladies room to keep from crying at my desk.  I just don’t understand the mentality.

When he did the prison whore, he called me two days later and couldn’t wait to tell me.  He didn’t want the weight of it on him.  He said “I did something and it’s gonna hurt.”  But he still had to tell me.  He had to do the right thing.  That was February.

In May, he had me over to his house on a Sunday.  Not of course, Saturday night.  I had been there in April, a couple weeks before, the night his friend died. (I had been sitting at home, and was overcome with a feeling from him…I called and asked if he was ok.  He said “funny you should ask.   Gus died last night.”  I was there in a few hours.  He was sad….really sad. But Ok.)  I didn’t think anything of the fact that I hadn’t been with him the night before, now two weeks or so later.  He’d had the memorial service for his friend the day/night before. I got there late morning, I think.  We made love, we were sitting naked, he on his couch and me in one of his recliners, and he told me he was thinking maybe we didn’t need to see each other every weekend.  I remember saying, “I think I want to get dressed.”

He was most likely in her bed the night before, or maybe she had been there and left.  More likely he was at her house…which is why I was not at his house the night before.  I think Saturday that weekend he might have gone to the memorial get together for his friend who died.  I bet she went with him.  She knew the friend too.  I think they first connected when she commented on his picture on FB.  Maybe he even called her to tell her. Since she wasn’t really married……  Maybe he spent the night with her.  Maybe their first night together again.  Maybe not.  Maybe he came home and texted me about it. I can’t remember, it was 7 months ago.  But I’m sure he started seeing her then.  And then he had me over Sunday.

He just said he wanted to focus on himself, on his house, his yardwork, he’d been in a relationship for all his life, he wanted to see what it was like alone…..He still wanted to see me, just not as often for awhile.

Because he had her now.

(This is only a rough timeline.  I didn’t always write about it when I was with him, apparently.  I know I was the weekend of March 30.  I know that was not the last time I was at his house, so I think this is approximately right.)

But he didn’t respect me or his relationship with her enough to tell me the truth.  He could tell me the truth about Samantha the prison whore, but not Betty.  He couldn’t tell me the truth about her until I was ready to come down there and find her there. He disregarded everything either of us ever said to him about not wanting any part of a relationship like that.

All summer he tried to get me to be part of an intense physical relationship, but nothing else.  Because we had a great physical relationship.  When I began to realize that’s what he wanted, I told him to let me go.  Not to come see me if he didn’t want to stay.  A couple of times he spent the night, I don’t know how that worked with her, that I got him on a Saturday night.  Maybe they were fighting.  Maybe she went away.  Maybe he lied to her.  Who the hell knows?  But he gave me just enough to hold on.

Now I get why in early May he was excited to go to Florida with me in early June and suddenly did a 180° turn.  I knew something was up then, but I couldn’t figure it out.  I was angry about it though.  He’d found cheap tickets for us, we’d talked about what we’d do…etc. He was going to rent a car so we could fly into Tampa and then he’d have a car while I visited my mom.  And suddenly he wouldn’t go.  Broke my heart then.  And I got over it, because I fucking loved him.

Sometimes I’d agree, “if that’s the only way I can see you then ok….”  More and more often the answer became “…..Let me go if that’s what you want.  It’s not what I want.”  He wouldn’t do that either.   I’d say, “You wanting to find yourself and be alone is fine, but it doesn’t mean I’m sitting in the wings waiting for you whenever you get the urge.  If you want to be alone, then be alone.”

Of course, he wasn’t, alone. He had her.  But he wouldn’t say so.  He wanted us both, hanging around.  I could see him anytime from Sunday afternoon til Saturday morning.  He could easily, apparently, go from her bed to mine, or mine to hers.

I remember the day of the eclipse, end of September, Sunday night of the weekend before he dropped his bomb.  We were texting…I was telling him that the reason our sex life was so good was because I loved him so much.  That I couldn’t even participate if I didn’t love him.  He suddenly seemed to hear me….he was going to come here and watch the eclipse.  He was getting ready to leave and fell down his stairs and couldn’t move.  He was laying on the floor on his back.  He had been half-thinking of spending the night because I can go into work late on Monday.

And then he couldn’t come.  I think that was true…He had been planning to leave when he called me me from the floor.  She wouldn’t have been around on a Sunday night, and never would have known if he came over and spent the night.

So we sat on our own decks and watched it, texting occasionally.  We both saw the same shooting star.  We texted all week from early in the morning til we went to bed.  During work. During lunch.   Close, intimate, sweet, sexy.

Right up til we went to bed Friday night.  I felt he heard and understood me for the first time in ages.  I felt close…he said he did too.  He texted me at 4 AM when he woke up “for no reason”.   Turns out for plenty of reason. At 10:30 he texted me that he was going to be with her.

Set up.  So set up.  So set up all summer for him to devastate me.  At the moment I loved him the most, he brought me down, he crushed me.

I’ve been pretty good lately.  It doesn’t hurt much anymore.  Angers me more than hurts.   But today, all these random memories from last spring have been just barging into my mind, not knocking at the door, not ringing the doorbell, not asking if they could come in. Slapping my face, ripping open scars, spitting in my face.

All that time.  He could tell me about the prison whore, who meant nothing to him.  But he couldn’t tell me about Betty, who he claims now, he loved.  He couldn’t even honor her by telling me the truth.  He couldn’t respect her wishes.   He couldn’t honor me or respect me and my wishes.  What did I do to deserve that?  I loved him so much, I was always there for him.  I asked very little of him.  Whatever he wanted.  We had fun together, we played, we flirted, but for me…it was always within the confines of just us.  It was just two people who cared for each other being intimate.

I want to get back to forgiveness.  I’m happier there, but tonight I’m hurting.  It won’t take so long, it won’t hurt as deep this time but it hurts.  He’ll read this, and he’ll hide away from me.  What does he care, he didn’t care for those 6 months.  He’s probably hiding from Betty too.  Why should he wonder if the women whose lives he ripped up for his own pleasure are ok?  He can’t do anything about it, but if it was me, I’d still want to know that they were not still laying on the ground bleeding.

I know he’s a sick man.  I mean, mentally ill, to do this to anyone.  I also know he’s not going to do anything about it.  He’s not going to face his demons, he’s going to let them have free rein.  He’s going to go to his grave believing that he was hurt by all this.  All this that he created, and he set up, and he caused with his lies and deception to feed his own ego.  Eventually, I’ll feel sorry for him. Eventually.

Not tonight.  Tonight, I’d like to know that he feels the depth of my pain.  Tonight I’d like to know he has even a modicum of remorse for the way he shattered me, and left me lying there in pieces.  Tonight I’d like to know that it all meant something to him, something more than great sex.  I wonder if he knows how much audacity he had to ask me to help him with Betty, after he ripped my heart out and chewed it up and spit it out in a bloody mess.  He wanted me to help him deal with the lies and deception of another woman, without any consideration as to what those lies and deception did to me.  As if I should just understand, because he didn’t love me, he loved her.  As if that somehow made my pain less intense.  You’d be hard pressed to make me believe he loved anyone but himself.  Playing two women all summer, lying to them both, deceiving them both.  That’s not love S.  That’s self gratification, like jerking off.  One was an old fuck, one was a new one.  But we were both just a fuck for you.  We both know it.

I know I’ll never get what I wish I’d gotten even a little of.  I’m left to dry my own tears, and put my own self back together, and start walking again, away from him, toward a new life.

 

 

 

Learning to Love Ourselves

Posted on by learning to live like water

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I have always had a hard time with the concept of self love, until now.  I never felt I should put myself ahead of the needs of others, especially those who needed something from me, that I could provide.

This kept me in a bad marriage much longer than I should have been.  I did his work for him, I took care of him, of our business, of our home.  Eventually, of making the money to pay our bills and keep food on the table.  I got nothing back for it.  It’s of little surprise that when I left the marriage, finally, I was out of love, and depleted.  It’s of little surprise that I tried to fill the hole with food, and when I left, weighed about 40 lbs more than I do now.  It’s of little surprise that my heart used to pound in my chest so hard every night that I was afraid I’d have a heart attack in my sleep, and prayed every night not to let that happen, not to leave my son with my ex as his only parent.

It would have been the same with S, because I was giving myself to him, unconditionally, unlimited.  I did try, but not hard enough, to leave him when I began to feel that same emptiness.  But unlike my ex, S would give me an emergency fix and offer up a small bit of himself, and make me feel like he wanted me around, and I’d buy into it.

I realize now that I was not loving myself in either case, that I was just finding a way to keep giving of myself.

Loving ourselves does not mean that we think we are great.  It does not mean that we give our egos free rein over our thoughts and emotions.  It means that we dig deep, we find out what we need and want to lead a rich full life.  And we seek that out.

After my marriage I did that, for at least 5 years. I learned to meditate.  I sought out people who were more enlightened than me.  I read spiritual books voraciously.  I thought I had it figured out, who I was, and how to find what I wanted.

My first foray into trusting and loving someone was with S.  Although I knew and had learned well the power of unconditional love, I still had not turned that love inward.  I still did not ever put myself and my needs first.  I offered it up, and for some reason, felt it was ok if I didn’t get it back.  It wasn’t.  I was already depleted when the Boop came back into his life.  That incident cracked my heart open and took what was left and spilled it out onto the ground.  What could she give him that I didn’t? Why?

The answer was she gave him less, not more.  She wanted less from him, not more.  She was satisfied with less from him not more.  I get it now.  I get it.

Since then, in the last 6 weeks, I have realized that loving yourself means not giving up your dreams.  It means you honor the emotions you feel, you don’t act out on them, you feel them.  You honor them.  You live through them.  You find a way to grow from them.  Use them like the rain, to grow into something beautiful.

I learned that anger is only a mask for pain.  I learned that hate is only a mask for fear.  The fear is that things will now change, you will have to start over, you may live your life out without ever finding the love you want.  Which makes us so willing to accept even small bits of what we want, it’s better than nothing, right?

No.  It’s not.

This is where trust has to enter.  We have to trust that our lives are unfolding as they should be.  That the rich full life and love that we seek will come to us.  We have to trust that when we open the space in our hearts by letting go of people and relationships that are not working, the universe will fill it for us, with what we are dreaming about.  Simplified, it is the law of attraction.  Like attracts like, it’s a scientific physical law, and also applied to energy, emotions, relationships.

In my life, at 40 years old I dreamed I would have an amazing beautiful baby boy.  He was born on Cinco de Mayo in my 41st year, 10 lbs, 15 oz.  22 1/2 inches long.  Today he is 23, 6’3″, athletic, and focused, and kind, and loving and has been the light of my life since the day he was conceived.

All during my divorce (which took me 4 years to complete) I dreamed of owning my own beautiful home, and having my son with me.  That’s all I wanted.  And 4 years ago, I bought it, and my son had already been with me a long time.

What you dream of will manifest.

But first, you have to love yourself.  You have to believe you are worthy of an amazing life.  Of love and belonging.  Of whatever it is you dream of.  I am re-engaging with my dreams, and letting go of trying to make what was always untenable work.

I still will keep a place in my heart for the child who drives that riverboat, but it’s his journey to get it down the river, to steer through the deep and get wherever it is he’s trying to get to.  My path leads away from him now.  And I’m ok with that.  In fact, I am looking forward to moving toward the things that I want.

I’m learning to love myself, and honor myself, and my dreams, and I think that it has a lot to do with learning to live like water.  The journey to source, to ourselves, to becoming more authentically ourselves, is not always easy.  It doesn’t always flow.  It get blocked, and requires work to unblock it.  It requires us to at times make a new path, at times wear the bedrock away.  It requires us to trust our guts and the universe, knowing that the intent of one is the intent of the other.

Trying to Honor Myself

Posted on by learning to live like water

Ok.  So this weekend I didn’t make it through Saturday. I sent  him a email, I didn’t unblock him. A quick, short one.  I was worried about a medical problem he has, I don’t know if I made it up, or not.  Probably, an excuse to contact him.    He’s not answered. He’s with her.  He won’t answer until she’s gone or he’s home. If at all.  Probably better if he doesn’t.  I’d have to let go a little more.

I missed him something fierce this morning.  This afternoon, I’m better.  It’s all probably because I’m so tired.

Maybe I’ll make it through Sunday.  Who knows?

I walked with my ex’s cousin this morning, maybe 3 miles.  I talked about my lesson, from S.  I said, “I think it was the other part of unconditional love.  That we have to extend it to ourselves, first.  Not everyone will be open to the concept.  That’s their journey.”

Her response was, “I hate it when people say to love yourself, and people pretend that they are just awesome because they love themselves, so nothing bothers them.”

I expected that at some point S would find it irresistible, to be loved so limitlessly.  But he didn’t want to be loved at all.  He didn’t want the responsibility, he didn’t want to give of himself that way.  I don’t believe he loves her.  Not when he was asking me to come see him the minute she left last week. He’s using her, she’s blissfully ignorant of what he’s up to (thus my poem “Not Ignorant Bliss.)  in my profound belief in the power o unconditional love, I loved him anyway.  I still love him anyway.

What I realized is that loving yourself unconditionally doesn’t mean pretending everything is wonderful, that you are so great, that you are impervious to hurt.  I realized that loving yourself means that when you hurt, you honor that hurt.  When you are angry, you honor that.  When you are in love, you honor that.  Even if you are in love with someone who can’t or won’t for any reason, love you back.  If you miss someone, then miss them. If you are lonely, be lonely.  Honor it.  Honor what you feel.  Don’t run from it.

Sit with it.  Allow it.  It’s human, we are human.  We are spiritual beings, having a human experience.  So experience it, the whole human perspective.  That’s the lesson.  I had to have unbearable pain to learn this.  I had to love  someone beyond reason and limit to learn this.  I had to miss someone so much, that it still can render me almost senseless, to learn this.

I thought I knew it.  I even wrote a blog about it, a long time ago.  But I didn’t know it, until I experienced this, to this degree.  Knowing it, will help me heal.  Because you don’t sit with it once, and it’s over.  You sit with it in waves, some huge rogue waves, some just momentary swells.  Some of them knock you down, and leave you gasping for air.  Some of them just make you wobbly on your feet for a moment.

There’s no rule.  They comes as they come.

Take them as they come, and honor each one, and live through it, and realize how strong you are, because you did.

Listen to me preaching.  It’s hard, it’s fucking hard.  But there are no real options, except to honor it, and get through it.  And so we, the broken-hearted, continue in our quest to find a way through it, so we can one day love again.