Tag Archives: letting go

Release

Posted on by learning to live like water

Connections with you

Wrapped around my heart,

My psyche.

Squeezing the life out of me

Causing me gripping pain.

There has been no joy in that connection.

No beauty has been held up in awe.

No great love has been born,

And now, no great love is lost.

The tether has been released,

We float free of each other.

The cords have been cut,

their grip on my heart loosened.

The last tears have been shed,

Their salinity lost in the vast ocean.

The waves cease to call your name to me

And the wind is silent

Bringing me peace and healing.

I look around,

I don’t see you

Anywhere.

You have vanished from my life.

But I see my beautiful life.

I see the people I love waiting to embrace me.

I see the places I love,

Beckoning my footsteps.

Filling the void that your disappearance left.

Filling it with more wonder and joy and beauty

than I could ever imagine

When I was with you.

I lift my face to the rising sun.

I breathe in the still, clean air.

I am alive, I feel, I love.

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.

What Is Going On With A?

Posted on by learning to live like water

Some of you may remember A, the guy I dated after S did the prison whore, and then on and off as S and I went through our 2 week on-off cycles. A had a plan to sell his 3800 sq. ft. home and live with his 44 yr old son out of a camper. Which he did.  Put about 30,000 miles on his truck in 6 months. Finally, I realized that #1, I would never want an intimate long distance relationship, #2, that I was not really attracted to A in any kind of long term intimate way, #3, that the continuing communication wit him, mostly via text, was a distraction to me figuring out what I really wanted.

I communicated this to A, and he responded by trying to change my mind.  Just before this, he had been talking about buying a bigger motor home (the one he had was tiny, 150 sq. ft.) “in case you want to visit me” was his first reason.  I didn’t respond to that.  Because, it’s just not an idea I could wrap my mind around, and assumed there were other reasons, like even for his son and him there was no privacy in the small one.  I had seen it, it wasn’t really pleasant in any way.  He said that about the time he asked me if I’d have time to visit him next summer.

In talking to me after my communication, he told me that he would never get remarried (he is a widow of just over a year), which is fine with me because marriage is not an idea I ever want to visit again.  He also told me he planned to be homeless and live out of the camper/motor home for a couple of years because he was enjoying their travels so much.  He said he had wanderlust enough to last a long time.  When he left CT he had a plan to be in Santa Fe by this fall, then go back to his brother’s ranch in TX, then decide where they might want to stay for next spring/summer, but he loved Santa Fe the best, it was his first choice.

Now, I think it is fine for someone to follow their dream, or their bliss, it is, in fact, what anyone, everyone, should do.  However, I would not have any interest in visiting him (or anyone) for any length of time in a camper/motor home.  It’s just not my thing.  I told him I was a home body, just talking in general, that I would always want to have a home base.  (To be clear, I could stay on a boat for 2 weeks, a nice, good sized boat, but then that’s my thing.  Not camping.)  So, I was happy for him, I knew I would never want to be a part of that and he didn’t seem to be asking me, until he started with the visiting thing, and the needing a bigger camper/motor home in case you want to see me thing.

So, for all these reasons, I decided to just block him.  Then I wouldn’t get texts I felt compelled to answer, and if he just stopped hearing from me, hopefully he would move on, and let go.  It felt like a clean, necessary break to me.

For some reason, even though I have blocked all  his numbers, and everyone on his group text list, I still get his group texts.  I cannot stop them.

So a week after I just stopped the communication, I got a picture of his new, much larger, camper/motor home. This is about a week after he said the thing about needing one in case I came to visit him.  I immediately thought, “Damn, I hope he didn’t buy that thinking I would come to see him.”  But I thought, that would be crazy…no one would do that, would they?  No…I hope not.

Today, I got a group text with pictures of a house, and the scenery around it, in Santa Fe.  With the message “going to make an offer on this house tomorrow.”  WHAAAAA?  This is a guy who not more than 3 weeks ago insisted he didn’t want to own a home, wanted to continue to roam the countryside, seeing new sites, visiting new place, meeting new people, and was quite content to be “homeless.”  A couple weeks later he’s buying a house.  And he JUST got to Santa Fe about 3 days ago.

Again, I thought…I hope this has nothing to do with me.

I’m probably just paranoid.  He has not tried to reach me that I know of.  Of course, being blocked, I don’t get any texts, which was our main way of communication.  But there are no blocked call voice mails, and no emails.  It’s just that he was the kind of guy who got into me so much that all my interests became his.  Except the camping thing, which he and his son planned long before he knew me.  But the music I loved became what he listened to, my spiritual journey started to become his.  If I was going to Sam’s club he wanted to come with me.  Or anywhere.  ….idk.  That was something I didn’t really like.  At first, I found his attention flattering.  Then…it became too much.  We didn’t go out that long, only a few weeks, maybe a month.  He pushed it along way too fast.  When we first met I was broken, and bruised by S and the prison whore, it felt good to have someone who adored me, and made me his world.  But I realized that was totally selfish, and that I just didn’t feel the same, and found it easy to tell him I was going to try again with S.  That was 6 months ago.  Then I saw him a little bit before he left, when S and I were constantly breaking up. I just fear that A hasn’t really let go of some story he made up.

Anyway, when I got the text, I deleted it, as I do all his texts.  I hope he decided to buy a home because he wanted one, not because he suddenly thought I might come visit him if he had a home.  It just was so sudden, as was his purchase of a much bigger camper/motor home.  Didn’t seem particularly thought out…planned out…and was the opposite of his intention just weeks ago.

I sure wish I’d stop getting his group texts.  I’m looking forward to the day when I’ve shed past entanglements and made room for something new to come in the door.

I Couldn’t Bend the Fork

Posted on by learning to live like water

My book club met last night.  We are reading “the Sacred Year” by Michael Yankovich.  One of the girls has learned how to bend spoons and forks.  You’ve seen people do it, they bend them like they are a piece of rope.  She taught us.  Out of the 5 of us, I was the only one who could not do it.  But I am going to keep trying.  When everyone left, she said that her teacher told her that the people the most spiritually evolved have the hardest time, that usually the people who do it first are the 5 year olds who have no attachment to the outcome.

And yeah, I did…You have to be able to focus on it, then let it completely go, and I had, have a hard time with that part.  The letting go.  It will be a good thing when I learn it.

I think my head wasn’t in it either, because besides work being another day from hell, I didn’t sleep well the night before because of my stupid arm.  So, I had lunch in my car, and was playing music with the key on accessory.  And I dozed off for about 5 minutes, woke up, disconnected my phone which was playing the music, and didn’t shut the car completely off.  So when I came out last night to leave, early I might add because I wanted to get  home, book club was at my house, I couldn’t start the car.  I had to wait 45 min til someone came to jump me.

I was ready to cry, really.  My son talked me down.  I was just overwhelmed. Between work, having book club, surgery in 2 days, and not seeing S…..I was losing it.  I regained my equilibrium somewhat, but I still wasn’t in a place where I could focus and let go of any thought last night.  I figure I will do it this weekend while I recover.

S did make me laugh while I sat in my car waiting.  I texted him what happened, calling myself brilliant.  He texted me back, “Maybe you should be a brain surgeon.”  Which just cracked me up, and took me from the crying place, so that was good.  I was grateful.  Small favors.

I  hope today is better.  I have vowed to stop trying to “get caught up ” at work, and just get done what I can.  I am stressing myself out to the max, and I need to stop it.

Speaking of which, it’s time to go get in the shower and get ready.  Wish me luck.

Love on the In Breath

Posted on by learning to live like water

So Hum, the ancient mantra.  Meaning simply, I am.  Simply?  Maybe not so simply?  I Am is God’s name, they say.  I am that I am.  And so, on this spiritual journey we are taught never to put words after I AM that God couldn’t be.

It’s hard, to remember this.  To remember that I Am worthy, to remember not to say I am not deserving.  I Am beautiful, not to say I am ugly.  I Am lovable, not to say I am only deserving others disdain.

I do my morning meditation almost every day, beginning with So Hum.  Breathe in love on the in breath with So, breathe out all that no longer serves on the out breath with Hum.  Every day, clean house, every day lift your level of consciousness to let go of old useless ideas, and allow more love in your life.

Love without condition. Loving someone, everyone, without knowledge or care if they love you back. Is that hard?  Yes, at times.  But the part that is hard needs to be uncovered, and let go on the out breath with Hum.

I am relearning this…to love without condition.  Why would anyone need to meet my measure of worthiness to be loved?  They need to meet their own.  I need to allow people to be, to find their own level of happiness, and be themselves.  In fact, I only need to find MY own level, and stay out of other people’s business.  If someone chooses to include me intimately in their life, then i can choose whether or not that serves me.  I am finding it is not the other way around though.  Just because I may choose to include someone in my life, i have to accept that it may not serve them.  At least in the present moment.

But I find love has a way, when it is truly given without condition, of bringing those that we most want in our lives to us.  It is human nature to go where the real love is, the easy love, the love that says, “You are valuable, just because you exist.”  It is fearless love, because it doesn’t need to know the outcome, it is willing to take the risk, it is willing to open it’s arms and say, “Here with me, be yourself.  I will love you. I will hold you when you need it, I will let go and let you fly if that is what serves you.”

I learned this when my son lived with his father, when I had very limited contact with him.  I suppose I always knew it was the truth, I always believed that love without condition would open a pathway for him to travel.  It did, he was able to find it and travel it, out of the dark murkiness of abuse, he followed a light that may have been faint at first, but steady. And  he found his way.

Life is for loving, as Deepak Chopra said, in my morning meditation, our inherent nature is love.

So Hum.  Always, love on the in breath.  You will never run out.,

Take the Leap

Posted on by learning to live like water

About to dive off the cliff
Into unknown water.
Is the water warm,
Will is soothe my soul’s longing?
Will it wrap around heart
And stop the aching?

Or is it cold,
Will I shudder
And hug myself?
Treading water to keep from drowning?
Swimming for the nearest shore
To escape the icy fingers
That creep around my psyche
Warning me of danger.

The water beckons.
I am cold,
I am warm.

Take the leap.
Find out.

Taking Stock

Posted on by learning to live like water

I guess I am taking stock of where I am.  How am I doing, really, after the nasty break up?  And not talking to S all week.

I have to say, I’m ok.  I find myself a little pissed off at him from time to time, but then, it’s really at myself. Not like anyone couldn’t have seen it coming.  I loved him, enough that I put blinders on to the red flags.  I am beginning to get used to the texts not being from him, when my alert goes off.  And it doesn’t bring a pang of sadness either.  I don’t know why, but I am sitting on my deck, it’s evening, and for some reason I keep feeling like he’s going to be walking up the steps any minute, but I know damned well he is not, and I don’t want him to.  Just a feeling.  Maybe he’s thinking about me, or something.  Maybe I’m making it up, lol.  Just that we had that kind of connection, and just because part of it is over, doesn’t mean the connection is broken.  It would be easier if it was.  And maybe it is, it just needs time to deactivate.

I have been so angry at him, for being so ugly, and for the way he sucked me back in, only to hurt me.  Why apologize to me, and say you will never do those things again, when that is so far from your intention. The last day I saw him, we lay in bed and fell asleep.  He had a hold of my hand, and every time I tried to move it, he grasped it tighter.  Why?  Just because he could?  And because he could make me think there was something there?

There wasn’t.  Not anything.  Yet I believed over and over again that there was.  Because I wanted to.  Because what was an illusion was what I dreamed of.  He knew, and he played me, to get what he wanted.  Then he unplayed me, again, to get what he wanted.  And me, the willing participant.

Sigh.  I am not really hurting, just reviewing my part in this.  How I allowed myself to be used, and thus abused. How can I blame him, he loves the dark side.  It is exactly what someone who craves that would do.  Powerful ego.  Drives him to prove to himself he can do it, I guess.  Wow.  Cool.  Ugly.

I don’t regret that I loved him.  It’s never a bad thing to put love out into the world.  And he needs love probably more than anyone I ever met.  I love being in love.  I just hope next time, that it’s real, that the object of my affection feels somewhat the same, and has no desire to manipulate me to make himself feel good.  I hope I see the signs and believe them, and am a little more pragmatic.

I’ve been talking to A quite a bit since he kind of came apart on me the other night.  But we are more close friends, even though he occasionally says he wishes I were there with him, or he here with me.  He’s just lonely, it’s been just he and his son for 3 months now, except for short stays with friends or relatives.  And A likes the company of a woman.  It’s nice to have a male friend who tries to make me feel good about myself.

So, how am I doing?  I’m fine.  It’s requiring a little more introspection than I thought it would.  I mean, I was trying to end that relationship for weeks, and he kept drawing me back in with his illness, with his apology.  Just so he wouldn’t have to feel like I dumped him.  Why go there?  I kept telling him we wanted different things.  He kept saying I had no idea what he wanted.  Well, I do.  I did then, and I do now.  He wants to grieve his angel of darkness for the rest of his days, and see how many women he can bed while he does it.  More power to him.  I will not be among the many.

Some Idle Thoughts on a Summer’s Evening.

Posted on by learning to live like water

Feeling “mellow” tonight.  I am feeling free of S.  I  have no emotion at all, no anger, no pain, but no romantic love, no longing either.  I wish him well…I just wish him to leave me alone.  It got worse before it was done completely, which is not what I wanted, but it wasn’t my choice.  The unconditional love remains, that love which I try to have for everyone.  But as for sharing a life, having a relationship, that’s done.  I realize because of the “Lucky 7” things, I had hoped for more than was ever possible.  I accept reality, and realize we are way more different than similar.  It was never going to go anywhere, and was bound to end as it did.

I think he “unfollowed” me today, or someone did, anyway, because i lost a follower.  i assume it was him.  And that’s a good thing.  I hope he loses the address for this blog too.  I dislike constantly worrying if what I write is going to be taken wrong, and piss him off.  I wasn’t willing to give up the right to write what I felt to keep him happy.  I don’t think I could have kept him happy anyway, no matter what I wrote or didn’t write.

I heard from A tonight.  He’s leaving Seattle where he’s been staying at his brother’s lake home for  a few days, and heading for the Cascades and Canadian Rockies.  We talked on Facetime, it’s kind of cool to be talking face to face.  I have never used it before.  He’s such a nice, happy, sweet man.  He always makes me feel good about myself. Always smiling.  But there are 1000’s of miles between us, which will always remain.  All I know is it’s nice to have a friend like him right now.

I often wonder what my relationship with A would have been like, if I had not been involved with S already when I met A.  I keep thinking that a relationship, deeper than the one we have, would have developed, and then I would have been so morose when he left.  So, I think it worked out for the best for us both, because neither of us got so attached that his leaving was painful.  I know he loves me, and I love him in a different way.  More than a friend, but not the way I used to love S, with longing that ached.  Which is a good thing because there will always be a big distance between us, and neither of us will ever entertain the idea that we could be together.

Well, pensive tonight I guess, on the end of my relationship with S.  On whatever my relationship with A is.  I don’t feel like dating, I don’t really want the complication of a man in my life right now.  I have a lot going on to get ready to put my house on the market.  I’m gonna hang out with my girlfriends, go to the beach, do a Paint Nite, and just generally put myself back together. It will be nice to have some time with out chaos.

The Second Day

Posted on by learning to live like water

Day 2 of no contact with S.  It was much easier, I was much less angry, less confused, less bitter. He runs through my mind occasionally, as in “Why the hell would he treat someone that loved him like that?”  Because, God, I loved him so much.  But I have been able to quickly shake the thought out of my mind.  He did.  He does.  Repeatedly.  I don’t know why.  And it doesn’t matter why.  The fact is he does, and I am free of it.   And what of the love I felt for him?  The unconditional love remains, but I don’t want to see him or talk to  him.  The passionate love, the desire to be with him, is, as Pink Floyd says, “receding”.  Such a perfect description. I can breathe again.

My son and I happened to both be home for dinner tonight.  He put some chicken jalapeno sausage on the grill while I had a glass of wine.  Then we added a whole bunch of food that he brought home from Bobby Flay’s restaurant at the Mohegan Sun Casino, Bar American.  One of his friends is a chef there, and that’s a GOOD connection to have!  He said the kitchen is allowed to comp their family and friends….he paid for 2 appetizers, two entrees and desert, they comped him 4 more appetizers, another entree, another dessert.  Way more food than any two humans could eat, and unbelievably good.

The best part was that I got to sit and eat with my son, and chat with him for awhile, not something I often get to do.  He’s 23, and now we have these adult conversations, lol.  About his girl, my issues, plans, time off, when’s the lawn going to get cut, etc.  Out in the summer evening, warm but not hot.  Blue sky with a few puffy white clouds.  It was a treat.

Starting to feel myself.  No drama, no heartache, no pain.  Peace and quiet.  Lovely.

At least, for tonight, all is well.

Putting Myself Back Together

Posted on by learning to live like water

My morning meditation was disturbed by a thunderstorm this morning.  A warm, soft rain had been falling, which suddenly became a thunderstorm.  I had to end the mediation prematurely and make sure the open windows were not allowing the rain in the house.  They were not, thank goodness.  I didn’t want to have to shut the windows.  It’s not hot enough to turn on the air conditioning, but if all the windows need closing, I’d have to turn it on.

S has not tried to reach me, which I’m not surprised at, but grateful for. I’ve been able to calm my emotions, stop flinching when the text alert goes off on my phone.  Last night I stopped at my cousin’s house on the way home and we went for Chinese food together.  Actually, she’s my ex’s cousin, but one of my best friends.  I knew she was going through a hard time, and was alone last night. So it did us both good.  It’s a blessing to have someone in my life here, who knew me 40 years ago, and for her too.

I still hear from my friend A, such a sweet man.  He’s on the Olympic peninsula in the extreme northwest of the country, 3000 miles from here.  He sent out a group text yesterday of looking across the water and being able to see Canada.  He seems to be really enjoying his trip, and why not?  Retired, financially stable.  Like he said, he’s not flunking retirement, lol.

Hope I can find someone to hang out with this weekend, maybe go to the beach on Sunday, it’s supposed to be hot.  We’re off work on Friday, so we get a lovely 3 day weekend.  Looking forward to it. Might try to get my deck ready to paint.

So, life goes on, peacefully now.  Putting the pieces together, but trying to make something new out of them.