Tag Archives: hurt

Every Second Takes Me Farther Away

Posted on by learning to live like water

Here’s the problem.  I went to bed last night and thought, without thinking, this is S’s side.  I get a pizza, and think of ordering it the way S liked.  I get dressed, and he liked me in this. None of them are conscious thoughts, they are just there.  Permeating every thought.  My text alert goes off, and I think it’s him.  I put him on “do not disturb” do I still get them, but there is no alert so they don’t make my heart stop.  I will just see that he’s texted when I open my phone.  It’s a small step, but it helped a little yesterday.  There probably won’t be anymore texts anyway.  I think he’s done, he’s not going to try to pull me back. He knows my mind is made up.  I know he thinks I shouldn’t care about her being in his life….but he knows I do. I’m not sure he understands how he irretrievably broke my trust, because that would mean he had to look at what he did to figure out why.

Whatever.

This morning is easier. Every second takes me farther from him.  Every second that passes dims the memories, the hopes, the desire.  And anyway, when it gets bad for me, I can visibly see him Monday night, watching me suffer and not giving a damn.  Just drama to him.  Feelings aren’t real to him, he doesn’t have any, even though he declares he does.  He kept saying that, “I have feelings too”.  I said “but no one knows what they are.  You never talk about them.”  So…whatever they are, that might have soothed my soul to know he could feel something about the end of our relationship, will forever remain his secret.

It’s his way.  It’s why we can’t be together.  I just wish he hadn’t drawn me back in so many times.  I wish he’d just let me go the 4 or 5 times I tried over the summer.  Even when HE was the one who said he needed to go off and find out who he was, when I said, then go, S, find out.  You can check in with me whenever you want., he would be drawing me back a couple days later.  For a guy who wanted to be alone, he made a pretty concerted effort to keep me in his life.  I drew the line at having a purely physical relationship, so I didn’t see him much.  But I was there, every day, all day, texting, sharing…every day.

I guess that’s what i will miss if I ever get past the hurt, is his funny quirky sense of humor.  He says it was different when we could sit on the deck and talk.  Of course it was.  There wasn’t a third person in the relationship.  Of course it was.  I wasn’t expected to share him.

He calls it a green-eyed monster.  As if there is one woman in the world who would be ok with being dumped hours before she expected to see her man, dumped for another woman??  Is there anyone out there that would think it’s ok for him to see her Saturday and me Sunday?  Seriously?

Ii just wish the ache in my heart would go away.  Time, distance….right now it feels like I need to travel to Mars to get away.

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.”

Releasing

Posted on by learning to live like water

release-the-past-let-it-go

I managed to get through a 10 minute meditation this morning.  It was on releasing the past.  It reminded me to frame the past in such a way that I understand that what was done to me, was done from the level of consciousness that S was at when he did it.  It wasn’t done purposefully to hurt me, he is just unconscious of how his actions hurt, devastate people.  Because he fears vulnerability so much, and keeps so many walls around himself, he cannot possibly understand what it is like to have no walls up.

I always believed he had a higher level of consciousness, though I don’t know why I thought that.  Maybe because he is smart, it seemed something he would know.  He could discuss almost anything, intelligently.  I guess, the ability to speak about it, and have academic understanding, is a long ways from feeling it, and knowing it, and living from that level in your heart.

I was able to maybe release just a teeny bit of it.  There is still so much hurt, that if I think about it, I just fall apart.  Someone who is so smart, should be wise enough, compassionate enough not to willfully hurt someone who loves him.  Or so I thought.  But his level of consciousness is so wrapped up in his ego…I know it’s hard for him to even see me.

But I see him.  I wish I didn’t, but I always have, I always will.

Wow, This is So Hard.

Posted on by learning to live like water

This is hard.  Really hard.  I think the universe did me a favor, really, in my head I know this.  I needed something from which there is no return, I needed the bridge to be burned, to begin the letting go. And as my close friends, and my son, have told me, this relationship has been bad since the beginning.  It’s what I said, when, a month ago, he told me she was back in his life.  He somehow convinced me that those words didn’t mean what I thought.  But in the end, they did.  What they meant is exactly what I thought they meant.  He was not just talking to her.  She was back in his life.  I should have stayed with my gut, it never lies.  I knew it then.  I knew it last night, i knew it this morning.

He came here, when I was losing my mind a month ago, a few days after he told me she was back in his life.  He got right in his car and came here.  He told me the night that he said she was back in is life that he wished I’d be happy for him, that was all he ever wanted, when he left a voice mail.   Then when I saw him that night, he said, he meant all he ever wanted was MY happiness. That he thought I’d be happy because I knew he had so many loose ends,questions that had never been answered with her. But when he told me it was my happiness that he wanted,  I cried, and I melted, and I took him to me, and loved him again.  And it was all a lie.  She was all he ever wanted, just like I first thought.  My happiness was not even on the table.  So played.  She must have played him, not wanting to see  him right away.  He was hedging his bets, I guess.  In case she didn’t want him, he’d still have me.

God I am stupid.  As if the words “She’s back in my life” can be misunderstood.

S always said water seeks it’s own level.  Usually it was in reference to me, still being with him when he treated me badly.  But I see the wisdom now.  I could never seek the level he wanted.  I could just not do it, it was so far from what I wanted.  Betty Boop…she wants it. She wants a relationship, at least, from what he told me of their past, where there  is no communication all week, except maybe a “are we on for the weekend?” message, email…and then get together for a lustful weekend.  He thinks that’s love.  Now that someone has really loved him, I wonder if it will ever be the same for him.  If he’ll figure out that sex is not love, but should be an expression of it.  He knew that with me.  Because I told him, those exact words. Now he has the words….from me, to fool himself with her. ]

He chose the level he’s comfortable with.  He was never comfortable with my level.  Too much emotion, raw emotion from me.  Too much truth on the table.  And I could stay with it, physically, emotionally.  I only ran when he made it all about a physical relationship.  Ran.  Told him a hundred times, we want different things.  Go get what you want, I don’t want that.  So…he has what he wants.  He doesn’t have to be accountable, he doesn’t have to acknowledge emotions that are uncomfortable for him.  He can pretend that sex is love, and he can set himself up to be hurt again….I feel bad about that, really, but it’s his choice.  It’s his comfort level, and he has no desire to rise above it.

I still see him, I still feel him.  I know when he’s with her tonight, and tomorrow, he will be held back by the scope of what he did to me.  I hope he is.  I hope he finds he cannot fuck people over that easily.

He should have taken some time off from either of us, and figured out what he wanted, and met with me face to face.  But he’s not able to stand on his own two feet, he’s not able to man up, and face the consequences of the choices he makes.  I deserved so much better.

He says he told me he was no good, that he would hurt me.  I said, so what, that relieves you of no accountability for what you have done.  So what if you know who you are?  You don’t change, and you think I’m gonna write it off?  Make excuses for you?  That’s the most pathetic of statements.  “I told you I’m bad,and I’m bad.”  It implies I should excuse it, because after all he told me he would do it.  Just like he told me about the prison whore, last winter.  When he fucked the hooker as a test….this is just another prison whore.  Just another test for him.  To see…..

He reads this.  He will know what I mean.

Shoudda, wouldda, couldda.  He wrote it all off.  I need to do the same.  Just putting things right in my mind.  Trying to make sense of senseless hurt.  Senseless pain.  Unspeakable cruelty.  And really, unbelievably stupid, ego-centered but self destructive decisions on the part of someone I loved.   Of course, when the ego rules, it is always self destructive.  That’s how the ego keeps power, by lying to the heart.

A month ago when he told me she was back in his life….I was driven by jealousy.  I could not stand the thought of him with another woman.  This time, almost a month later, it’s not jealousy.  If that’s what he wants, he better go for it, because I will never fuck a man over like she did, and if that’s what makes him comfortable, then he needs to be with her.  But how he played me, how he purposefully made me think something else was going on between us, how he manipulated me for his own benefit, not giving a good goddam whether or not his actions would devastate me, that’s what’s unforgivable.  At least for now.  To use another human for your own purposes is the lowest of the low.  She used him…in their last relationship.  I would guess he also used her.  They are both users.  Liars. Manipulators.  They belong together.  I don’t belong with him.

But the pain of what he did to me will take some time to get over.  The way he devastated so easily my emotional landscape.  For his own prurient interests.  And I fucking loved this man, as he’s never been loved before.

I guess this is it for now.  There will be more.

The End Is In Sight This Morning

Posted on by learning to live like water

I’m up early this morning.  I have been out on the deck since the very first rays of sunlight edged the eastern horizon.  It’s still, the birds are not even singing yet.  And it’s cool, I’m wrapped in a blanket.  It promises to be a beautiful day.

I’d thought I was going to the beach today, but that didn’t work out.  It’s ok, though.  I am going for a walk with a friend this morning, just back from Martha’s Vineyard where she has a summer home.  It will be good to catch up.  My son will be home from his music festival in the early afternoon, and it will be good to see him, have his somewhat chaotic energy back in the house.  And his help in finding and getting rid of the snake!

I am better this morning.  I have a selenite healing wand with a fluorite tip on it.  The two stones are very healing.  I held it to my heart last night.  One of selenite’s metaphysical properties is that it helps to break up patterns, and I felt it was exactly what I needed to get over S.  I need to break up the pattern that my mind and heart go through when I think of him.  I held it there, and repeated “detach” like a mantra.  Focusing on the word, on visually seeing the energetic cords break off and fall away.  I fell asleep with it that way.  I think it helped.  Because this morning when I think of him, I remember all the ways we did not get along, all the reasons I tried to break it off with him all summer, and he kept drawing me back in.

Looking back, I suppose he just didn’t want to be alone.  I don’t think that he thought that, purposefully.  Just, he really has so few people in his life.  His daughter and son, and one good friend that I know of.  He wasn’t in love with me, but he liked the fact that I was.

I am putting that in the past tense.  I think I can just begin to feel the transformation of what I felt for him, becoming something else.  Something less painful, something more like the words of that song “You’re just someone that I used to love.”   No mean intent, just that I can feel the first tendrils of moving my heart away from him, and the pain and chaos loving him has cost me.

I’ve known for months we were not meant to be.  We never saw each other for one, which was his decision. Not mine.  But I stopped fighting it long ago.  I saw him maybe 4 times all summer.  So why is it such a big deal that he is not with me now?  Because he’s with someone else, and it feels like rejection.  Because I am jealous, I would have liked to be someone he wanted to spend more time with, but I never was, so I need to stop making it out to be like he ever wanted to be with me anyway.  He just liked keeping me on the periphery of his life, liked knowing there was someone out there who adored him.

Well, I don’t, adore him at the moment.  I’m not mad, but this morning I am real.  His relationships are all pretty dysfunctional.  He has been healing the one with his daughter, but Betty Boop will probably reverse that in a big hurry.  Too bad.

I have lived such a dysfunctional life with my ex, that I was comfortable with S’s ability to create a dysfunctional relationship with me.  I realized that this summer, there are probably 3 or 4 blogs about how I tried to end it with him, and he talked me out of it.  Most notably, the time in maybe July, where he had just pulled me back in with the possibility of him being very sick, and then disappeared on me for 4 days.  I mean, literally, on the weekend, he called and asked me not to “dump” him, and told me how he is sick and the constant pain of his headaches was making him behave poorly, and so I didn’t, and I think he came up to my house that weekend, maybe.  Then the next weekend his mother died and he disappeared to New Jersey, without a word, and I was calling the hospitals here to see if he’d been admitted, because I was afraid he had an aneurysm.  I was so terrified.  He came home and texted me like it was nothing.

Dysfunction.

I don’t need that.  He once told me that he and his ex gf used to fight passionately, and make up passionately, and that there had been many times when they had separated for months at a time.  This was when we first met, and I thought, I don’t want any fighting passionately.  When a fight begins, I run.  I was the runner.  I have had more than my share of hard fought, blood and guts fights in my life, and I don’t like them.  Back then, he didn’t yet know she had married within months of leaving him.  I think he thought it was just another temporary break up.  One day she messaged him, after I’d been seeing him for a couple of months, said she wanted to see him.  Of course, I was terrified, and he was kinder then, than now.  He told me to not worry, that I was taking him out of the equation, that he was just going to talk to her, and it didn’t mean he was going back to her.  Turns out she wanted to meet with him to tell him face to face she was married.  He disappeared then for 2 days.  Wouldn’t talk to me, or answer my texts, left me hanging out to dry, just kind of like this weekend.  The difference was he gave our relationship no consideration this time, He just said, “she’s back in my life.”  After 18 months.  He let go of me so fast, that it’s taken me days just to get up on my own two feet again.  I was blindsided, not only by Betty Boop’s appearance in his life, and mine by extension, but by how easily and quickly he threw our relationship to the wind.

Well, it’s all moot now.  She’s back, and I am letting go.  I think about all the hurt, all the times he disregarded my feelings because he couldn’t cope with his own.  When I am in a relationship with someone, him included, generally I consider their feelings first.  He and I both were dysfunctional, we could not figure out how to make it work.

It was a bad relationship.  It is good that something happened to make it actually end, to create an ending that there is no bridge from to get back to where we were.  Where we were was not a good place anyway.  I know there are much better places ahead of me, than behind me.

I’m going to have a good day today.  The knot in my stomach has unraveled some.  I made a pot of chili yesterday, but couldn’t eat any of it.  We’ll have it today, with some good bread.  I’ll work at opening the door for something “magnificent” to walk through.  I know the rest of my life will be wonderful, I know what I want, and where I’m going and what I’m going to do when I get there. S is beginning to fade, and I can imagine, for the first time, that a day is coming where I don’t think of him wistfully.  Maybe kind of, he was kind of a cool guy but so messed up.  I’d like to remember him fondly, but not painfully.  Someday.

Not there yet, but like I say, I know where I’m going and what I want, and that’s what I want.  Just to let go of it all, say I loved him once, we had some fun, but we had more pain, and we let it go.

The end.

Maybe The Universe Is Working in My Behalf.

Posted on by learning to live like water

This is me this morning.

Thank God for Ambien.  After working almost 40 hours in 4 days, I was exhausted.  But….didn’t consider going to bed until about 1 AM.  I was on the phone with a friend out in Montana for hours, crying on her shoulder, venting my anger, my hurt, my pain. I didn’t want to go lay down in the bed that he would  never join me in again.  I was afraid a torrent of raging tears would start that I couldn’t stop.  Somehow I calmed myself and slept for 4 1/2 hours. I guess due to 2 glasses of wine and an Ambien.  Bad to do together, but it worked for me last night.

I called him back, at midnight, or12:30 and asked him if she was there now.  No, he said.  I didn’t even know why I called him. I said, “You piece of shit.  You fucking piece of shit.”  and hung up.  I don’t know why I did it.  I just had, have so much rage.

II called him twice at 3 AM. He didn’t answer. I wanted to know when this happened, how long has he been seeing her.  I want to know if that’s why I never saw  him all summer, why he couldn’t make any plans ever, why he was always wanting to come here to my house, and never me to his.  I feel like I have a right to know how blind and stupid I’ve been and how big an asshole he is.

He said in his voice mail, “It’s all I ever wanted and you knew that.”  WHAT AN ASSHOLE.  No, I did not know that, when he was sleeping with me, talking to me all day long, having intimate conversations with me, begging me to come see him the Sunday before last.  No I did not know that he still was stuck on the fucking woman who tried to break him and abandoned him and took him for all she could.

Was I too strong for him?  I didn’t need him, but oh I wanted him and he knew that.  I loved being with him.  I put my heart on my sleeve and he fucking chewed it up and spit it out last night.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

And you didn’t fucking mean not to.  You meant to use me,and what I so willingly offered,to make yourself feel good.  The way it affected me was none of your business I guess.

But then there’s this.  Last Sunday we had a blow up, I just got sick of him calling me stupid because I couldn’t translate the two word texts he was sending me, and ended up misunderstanding him.  Just sick of it.  The wall went up, and I spent the week, trying to get over him.  Sure I would, I didn’t even miss him til yesterday.  I didn’t even see him as the same man til yesterday.

So, maybe, just maybe, this whole thing, the whole week, has been the universe working in my behalf.  Last Sunday was just preparation for him to tell me this last night.  As angry and hurt as I am, had I not spent the week trying to get over him, and move on by myself, last night would have been even worse, so much worse.

And seeing that, looking at that, I feel better.  I feel maybe the Universe is about to bring me what I want, about to open a door that’s been closed, because I couldn’t close the door on S.  Even though he clearly wasn’t actively participating in our whatever it was relationship.

They psychic back in June told me to stand my ground, that when I close the wrong doors the right ones will open.  She didn’t mention that I would have the door slammed in my face, and feel broken again, but still…the door is now shut for good.  I think it was probably necessary for something like this to happen for me to shut it and seal it shut, never to be reopened.

I’ll get over it.  That much I know.  I am still in shock, but I’ll get past it.  He can be with her, and find some more misery to cry about. He can work til he’s 75 to keep her out of debt, probably will pay for her divorce.  That’s probably why she came back.  She married someone very impulsively, she’s unable to manage her money, and can’t afford a divorce, so she’ll probably mooch the money off of him, and he’ll gladly pay some more so the bitch can continue to hurt him.  Stupid idiot.  Who would want someone back that took them for so much?  Someone who is used to being punished by those he loved.

Well that’s not me.  The people I love are given wings to fly.  Even him, when he told me he needed to go find himself.  figure out what he wanted.  I told him to go do it, that I fully supported it.  And what a bunch of bullshit that turned out to be.  The first chance he had, he dove right into the past.  Setting himself up to spend his life in more pain.  He survived liver cancer.  The liver is where we hold all our anger.  So, do I think they had 12 years of bliss together?  Doubtful.

And his daughter, with whom he’s become close…I’m sure she’ll be very happy.  She hates this woman, who she feels broke up her family. He told me, his daughter wanted nothing to do with her.  The woman was the cause of a rift between he and his kids that lasted years.  Welcome to the past again Scott.  It’s what you always wanted.

Where is the joy?  I know in my head I’m lucky to be out.  As my friend said last night, I’m glad it happened, it needed to happen for you to get away from him.  He’s really a loser.  You deserve so much better.  You make loving you so easy.  And he just couldn’t see it.

I’m better this morning.  I am moving away from all of it.  It’s like a car wreck, and even though I was shaken and bruised, I am basically unscathed.  My soul is intact.  I still know who I am, and where I’m going and what I want, and I know I’ll find it. He loves the car wreck, it’s where he wants to live.  He likes to live close to the edge of the abyss and occasionally see what happens if he falls in.

Once he told me, when talking about being rescued off a sinking fishing boat on Georges Bank or somewhere out in the Atlantic, that he feels the most alive when he’s close to death.  That should have told me everything I need to know about him, shouldn’t it?

Ok, rant for this morning over.  If you made it through this, thank you.  much love.

Blue Eyes

Posted on by learning to live like water

Those blue eyes follow me everywhere.

Sleeping,

Sitting

Driving

Walking.

I am trying to ignore them.

They steal into my brain,

And lay in wait for weakness

To strike and draw me back.

Bind me in the blue cords which jettison from them

And wrap around me until I find the strength

To wiggle out of them

And exhausted lay on my own bed.

In confusion, I want their warm sensuality.

In confusion, I cannot bear the way they cut into me and

Slice my heart open,

Again and again.

I opt out, for a whole life.

Not to constantly be stitching up the pieces of my heart

strewn across the horizon.

But the piercing blue eyes

are committed to my memory.

Bittersweet, and sad.

On Vulnerability and Love

Posted on by learning to live like water

The morning was gray, and quiet. I sat on my deck, having coffee, reading blogs, reading email. Doing some pensive introspection. About myself. About S. About vulnerability.

I have been a champion of vulnerability. I have watched Brene Brown’s TED talk on vulnerability maybe a dozen times. She speaks to what I have always known, but did not form into a cohesive thought until I saw her speak.

I have never been afraid to be vulnerable. Not with my friends, not with strangers, not with the men in my life. Not in my blogs, or my book, or with my son. I do believe that you don’t give someone all your secrets, until they have proven the right to hear them.  I give it out a little at a time, but I give it.  I will initiate it.  I am not afraid of it.

I believe it is the only way to have a real, fulfilling, human experience. I believe, as Brene does, that it is the birthplace of creativity, of joy. It is the ying of the yang. You can’t know joy if you don’t risk something. You can’t be creative if you are afraid of failure. You can’t expect someone to open up to you their deepest darkest secrets if you won’t share in kind.

Vulnerability means that you take a risk, you put yourself out there. Not knowing what the outcome will be, if you think that there might be a reward that makes it worthwhile. There is no risk-free existence. You can’t imagine that just because you love someone they will always love you back. You can’t believe that everything will always stay the same. Change happens. And when it happens, and you hurt from it, instead of closing your heart, you have to thank God you are able to love so passionately, so fully. Because it means you are alive. If you hurt….it is the ying to the yang. There is no great reward without great suffering.

Ram Dass tells a story about his guru, who when given the option of love vs. suffering, chose suffering, because it was then that he would grow. Learn about himself.

So, we wish those who cause us to suffer, love and light. We let them go on their way, in their life, and hope that they find joy. We find ourselves better prepared to go on with LIFE, and LIVING, because we have a deeper understanding of what brings us joy, and peace.

One of my favorite quotes is from Khalil Gibran. It states:

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

I have a friend who was devastated by an ex. This persons heart is closed now, for the most part. They do not want to love again, to risk giving of themselves because the pain is so great. I see cracks in the wall occasionally. But the person quickly fills them in, and retreats behind the wall again.

To me, it is like being dead before you are dead. So love didn’t work out that time, or the time before. Maybe it worked for awhile, a long while, and then it changed. Change is part of life. Loving to me is living. I cant’ separate the love of a person, from love of myself, my family, of every living thing. To stop one is to diminish all. Because they are all connected.

This being said….if we love someone to the best of our ability, and they choose not to return it for whatever reason, it’s not healthy for us to continue to dream that they will. There is a time to let go, and acknowledge that this is not the one for you. It comes with self awareness. Let go with joy, wishing all blessings and happiness to that person. And then risk being vulnerability again.

Never forget that once you decide what you want, the universe will conspire to make that happen. Thoughts become things, so think the thoughts about what you want. Not about what you don’t.

And live. LIVE.

Winding Down

Posted on by learning to live like water

Ah. Winding down. Friday night. Was supposed to go to a gong bath, but they canceled it. It’s rare that they ever cancel one, but it’s about 5° out, wind chill in the ungodly sub-zero’s. Which would mean all the equipment would have to be hauled out and loaded in the truck, and then unloaded at the church, then reloaded after. 8 gongs, and their stands and the bowls and the drums, and hell, I wouldn’t want to do it either.

But dang I was looking forward to it. At last weeks gong bath, I was able to begin to really process all my emotions regarding S. I had not been to a gong bath since “it” happened. Funny it seems ages ago, but it’s only been about a month I guess. Maybe 5 weeks. Seems so much longer. But in the end, I knew the road I had to travel. So I was looking forward to this week, to continuing this journey, to finding my center even more clearly defined.

It has been difficult for me, and for him. For different reasons. For me, because even though I knew I needed to break it off, that it was not healthy for me to be prolonging the final ending of this relationship, I still loved the guy, I had pretty deep feelings, I missed him like crazy, I wanted his energy around me. Didn’t want to let go. Still wish I hadn’t had to, completely.

For him…idk. I can’t really speak for him. I know he enjoyed flirting with me, I know he enjoyed our intimate conversations, I know he enjoyed my fearless outspokenness. We both enjoyed the other’s honesty. I know he enjoyed our physical relationship, and so did I and we will both miss that.

But you know, it needed to grow, to evolve. It was time. I was all for the evolution of it. He was not. So he did what he did in large part, to end it rather than evolve with me. And even then…he did not end it right away. But now…I see…it’s ended. It went round about. My emotions went up and down and on and off, until the gong bath last week, when they pretty much went to the off side. We talked, since. But when he began his flirting with heavy sexual content, I asked him to stop. And again. And again.

Because I don’t want to go there again. And really…it still hurts me, to think about what happened. Maybe some day I can joke about it. But now, right now, it is still raw. I wanted the evolution. I didn’t want the break-up. It hurts still.

I wonder why someone would want to stay in the same place…especially at this age. Why would you want to grow old alone? Face all your nights alone, and with whatever advanced age brings you. Why would you not want to be with someone who understands you, gets you, loves you, enjoys you, someone who will sit with you through your pain, and celebrate with you your triumphs. Why not be with someone with whom you can learn to play each other’s bodies like a fine instrument?

A one night stand will never get you those things. Strange will always be strange. It will never be comfortable, close, loving. It might be exciting for a few minutes. A partner can be exciting forever.

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

But…I do accept it. I accept that S doesn’t see it the same way, and he needs to follow his heart, like I told him. And I need to follow mine. I accept that he doesn’t want to talk to me, or be part of my life in another capacity. At least, at the moment. I accept that our roads have diverged. I’m not crying over it. I’m really ok with it. I have no regrets.

I went on a date last night, with a man a bit older than me. On paper we had a lot in common. Creative, love the water, boats, cruising. But there were no sparks. We met for coffee. Then he invited me to dinner. We talked, it was interesting, pleasant, but there won’t be another date.

No connection. With S…there was connection before we even met. I guess that’s why I couldn’t quite envision not having him in my life at all. But whatever, it’s not my call. I made my position quite clear, in my never to be subtle way, that I wanted him in my life, but that we needed to redefine our relationship, set new parameters. He was not so clear, but his actions said he only wanted it as it was.

I have to remember that all relationships are fluid, constantly moving, changing. We are all moving like water, in our own way, around obstacles, over the rough spots smoothing them out, breaking through the dams of our emotions. Who knows what’s next for any of us?

Just, livin’ like water. Getting back to source.

With Love and Gratitude, Good bye.

Posted on by learning to live like water

So I broke it off with him. I spent the night with him the night before he went in the hospital. I was scared. I was allowing myself to love him, setting myself up for hurt again, at some point. But I didn’t let it stop me. I thought about how I wanted to be there for him. I wanted him to have a nice memory to think of and wake up to when he came out of the anesthesia. I wanted him to know that someone cared how he was, and whether or not he hurt, or felt alone. I wanted that. I loved him. I loved him whole heartedly, without consideration of what he had done. It was true and honest and I don’t regret it.

The two days he was at the hospital, I worried over him. He didn’t get me the patient code as he’d promised, so I had to go through roundabout ways to find out if he was ok, or spending the night, or released. People I worked with didn’t understand why I cared so much. Hell, I didn’t understand. But I did. That’s all. I did. So I talked to him that night, and the next morning. He was in so much pain. I would have liked to just be there, sitting beside him. Just so he didn’t have to open his eyes and be alone.

But that wasn’t the way it was. There was too much water under the dam. I was going to take the time off from work, but he chose to go it alone. As he always does. I was afraid, anyway, to be so close to him. Because I still loved him, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did not feel the same.

But then, what he thinks of me is none of my business. Right? I don’t know if it’s smart to allow myself to be so vulnerable. But I did, it’s done. I don’t think I regret it, because I gave it everything. It was his to accept or deny. He chose denial in the end. Why? I have my theories. But only he knows, somewhere in his soul, why he didn’t want the woman who loved him.

But then the gong bath happened…

And the next morning I woke up and didn’t care that much. I still cared, but not the same way. It was not visceral, it was not that intense, heavy kind of caring. I think it came together for me as a result of the gong bath. Suddenly, I knew he would never love me, that if I stayed with him, I would be repeatedly hurt by him. It is not his fault…it is mine, I stayed knowing he and I were not compatible on many things. One of them is our views on sex, and monogamy. And there were other things…which are none of anyone else’s business, personal things that he and I could not come to common ground on that I kept pushing into the background, because I loved him. But eventually, they would have surfaced, you know…those things you bury don’t die….they rot and fester and make you sick. In a relationship, they make the relationship sick. They cause resentment, and anger, and feelings of rejection, and loss of self esteem. I knew that would happen.

Trouble was, he was still in a lot of pain on Friday. I didn’t want to talk to him about it. Not until he felt better. We talked, I tried to be my same loving self, but I know the difference in how I felt showed through the phone lines. The next day he asked, what exactly is going on with you.

He knew. We have always communicated on a nonverbal plane when we are apart. He knew. Thus began a long and hard conversation. It was still too early to have it, but he knew,and I couldn’t lie. Or pretend it was different. I told him, I still love you, but I don’t think I’m in love with you.

And so, now, after 36 hours of texting, questions, accusations and then an attempt to see me to say good bye, we are done. I was not ready to see him. I don’t think I’m in love with him, but there is still hurt and rejection over the betrayal. Seeing him is painful. I told him, not yet. Maybe later. He got mad. I’m sorry he got mad. I’m sorry I couldn’t just see him and wish him well. But truth is…the wound has healed enough for me to see clearly, but it still hurts. The way an incision hurts under the surface for a longtime. I know we are mis-matched, and I know neither of us would ever be happy going forward. I don’t believe I could ever quite let go of his betrayal if I stayed with him. It would come back every time I felt threatened, every time he flirted with a waitress, or the girl behind the counter at the drug store. I would have made him miserable, and I would have been too. I told him, the prison whore sunk our ship, at the end of the day.

I will miss him. I will miss his flirty, sexual innuendo’d texts. I will miss having him in my life, kind of having a “significant other” after all the years of being alone. I will miss our excursions. Sunday afternoon naps. His wild and crazy stories of his youth. His hands. His passion.

But I won’t miss that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I don’t know where he is. I won’t miss the questions, I won’t miss the distrust that is now there permanently.

Done. Gonna take some time off. Let the wound heal, so that it’s not even tender before I meet the next guy. I don’t want to bring baggage into a new relationship, just like I took off years before I started this one, to try not to bring baggage from my marriage to it. And still, the baggage was there. There is relationship baggage you don’t know about until you are in a relationship, I found out. It wasn’t easy, this first one. But it was fun. It created growth in me. And I know myself much better. I know what I want better today than before I met him.

So…I thank him, I love him. We are done. May we both continue our journey back to source.