Tag Archives: recovery

Halloween Morning Musings

Posted on by learning to live like water

Feeling a little disjointed this morning, I have so much I want to do today, but it’s early.  It’s Halloween, and my neighborhood is Grand Central in this small town. A friend is coming over to help me hand out candy.  I’ll make dinner, we’ll have a glass or two or three of wine and enjoy the kids.   I was just reminded we set our clocks back tonight, whoo hoo. I guess that means I’ll be waking up even earlier tomorrow, lol.

I am glad I didn’t spend more than a week figuring out Jim was not the guy for me.  I need to let my intuition guide me a little quicker.  I have been saying I didn’t really feel a connection, and trying to allow one to form.  I should know when there’s not one, there’s not one. When there is, there is.  I’d like one that is good, intimate, loving connection but not so intense that I feel the person all the time.  That’s way too distracting.

I realize I tend to be too direct for a lot of people.  I just don’t believe in pretending to be someone I’m not. Especially in the beginning, when just meeting someone.  I am not brazen, not pushy, I can usually get across what I need to say with a smile, a flirt, some humor, some self deprecation, a little funny sarcasm.  But I get it across.

Games are not part of my personna.  You know, where you pretend to be what you think the other person wants.  Or just be untruthful, because you’re unsure of yourself, because you think another person won’t like you as you really are.  Personally, I think games bite you in the ass.  I think they lead to depression, to insecurity.  Control, manipulation.  Because you have to keep up the fake personna to keep the person.  Sooner or later, you wish you could just be yourself. You would wonder why you couldn’t be, why you thought the person wouldn’t care for you if you were yourself, but by then…you’ve lied to them so much, you’ve worked so hard at this fake personna, you risk ending the relationship if you make yourself known, and admit that the person they thought they knew wasn’t you.  Vicious cycle.

Vulnerability is hard.  It’s scary to put yourself out there, not knowing what the outcome will be.  But lying, faking, game playing…is harder.  It will never end well.  At some point the truth will be known, and it will leave you cold, alone, and empty.

I think the thing that shocked me the most about S was that he was playing a game….with me, with her.  with everyone, I think. He was obsessed with the game “Go”, an ancient Chinese game where the point was to have no losers so that everyone saves “face”.  I always said, look if I screw up, I don’t need to save face.  I need to own it, and change that about myself, and make amends for any damage I did.  Save face?  A mistake is just a mistake if there is no lesson learned.That’s the bullshit about shame.  We all have it, the point is to learn from it, and use it as a tool to become a better person, and raise our vibration.

I know that the fact that I kept allowing S into my life after all the crap he pulled on me was starting to damage my relationship with my son.  What a mistake that would have been, to trade off my relationship with my son for S.  Another bullet, that would have literally killed me, dodged.

It just occurred to me, that my ex, who obviously didn’t think he was lovable because he grew up in a family where love was a reward, not a fact of life, felt he had to manipulate and control people to keep them in his life.  He truly thought that if I professed to love him, which I did, it meant that I was either a.) stupid or b.) wanted something from him.  I think perhaps the same was true of S.  Because it is an innate human condition to want to be loved, but when we are taught at a young age that we are not lovable, we learn not to trust it.  To see it as another manipulation, since in an abusive household everything is a manipulation. My ex’s father was physically and emotionally abusive, his mother was passively abusive, she didn’t stop his father, and used the threat of him to keep my ex in line and in fear.  S had the same situation.

S says I can’t let go of my marriage, that I talk about it all the time.  Well, yeah, I do talk about the things I learned from it.  It was the experience from which I learned the most in my life.  I spent the first 5 years of freedom trying to understand what happened to me and my son, and undoing the damage.  I realize that the wisdom I gained from that search, might be valuable to someone else.  It has nothing to do with the marriage, or letting go of it.  It has to do with life lessons, and learning, and sharing.  I know for a fact that sharing the wisdom has helped others, when I was active in an online community for abuse survivors.

I couldn’t convince either my ex or S that they were lovable just because they existed.  It’s water under the bridge now.  I need to find someone who already knows it.

I was watching Amy Schumer on HBO last night, after my boring date.  She just cracks me up.  I love her honesty, and she’s hilarious.  She reminded me of how my relationship with S used to be, open, funny, physical, flirty, honest….  Watching her just made me laugh, and remember part of my life.  I didn’t get sad, or upset.  I know S is not that guy all the time, I know he morphs into another person when he’s with a woman that probably wouldn’t find Amy Schumer funny. Or if she did, she would think she was outrageous, and that no one is like that.  Not knowing that S was for 18 months with a woman pretty much like that, though not as funny, lol. I know he and I both thought she was hysterical.  Real.  She’s very real.

Well, whatever.  I’m sure there’s a man out there who would appreciate and enjoy an open, honest, monogamous, sexy woman, and is open to falling in love, and monogamy too.

God, I sound a little needy.  I think I just miss having sex, lol.  Nah…I need a connection to have it.  I’m just longing for that connection with someone.  I’ll find it.

Like the Phoenix…..

Posted on by learning to live like water

Day 4.  I am better this morning than I was yesterday morning.  Not as good as last night.  I have let him go, let any desire for him blow away with the emotional cyclone he put me through.  I never want to see his face again, I have deleted every picture so I won’t accidentally come across his face, and have to remember how I loved this asshole.

It’s the treachery, the deception, the idea that he thought it was perfectly ok to lead me on all week, to blow my world apart.  That he couldn’t man up, and tell the truth to me, and let me go when I was asking to go.  Such a narcissist, one of the worst I have ever known.  Worse than my ex-husband, and I thought he was the worst ever.  My ex’s lies were just random, about what he was doing, often stories he made up and believed, that were so obviously lies it was almost humorous.  (Though laughing at him brought on his scary scary temper.)  He never set me up emotionally just to punch me in the stomach, just to knock me down and stomp on me.  He was a sick f**k, but S is so much sicker.

Yes S, it turns out you were much like him, as you said.  You were him, taken to a new level that was past my ability to think was possible.

I have known many people abused as children, though his story was one of the worst.  But he’s smart, he could have crawled out of it.  He used to say he didn’t have a filter.

No, S, it’s not a fucking filter.  It’s a conscience.  You said you were developing one?  That’s a laugh.  Really…you are so full of shit. You like chaos, you like hurting people because you NEVER dealt with your own hurt in a productive way.  So you project it, and you act out on as many people as possible, in as intense a way as you can.  And some unsuspecting person like myself, that just saw the possibilities of you instead of the reality,comes along, you must have been fucking drooling to set me up and watch me fall.

Like you said, it’s your karma.  If you had a belief in anything, that would be ok, but you don’t.  You’re a cold, dead heartless man.  I am so glad to be rid of you.  And not to have lost any more than i did.  You ought to go crawl in a hole and stay there, until sensory deprivation makes you forget everything you know, and you have to be reborn.  Go to the monastery, like you talked about.  And stay there.  Then you can’t continue to hurt people for your own gain. (Yes he used to talk about doing that for 6 months.  I used to laugh, I am thinking the monks would exorcise him before they’d let him in.)

I have my book club tonight, I’m grateful for that.  To be with friends who live on the other side with me will be just what I need.  A has still been beside me through all of this. He texts me all morning, during the day, in the evening.  He still tells me he loves me, and we know it’s just an unconditional love he has, that we will always be good friends. He sends me music, pictures of the southwest. Just being sweet, kind, loving, talking me down if I need it (tho I think I was done with that after the first 48 hours), showing me reality in a kind, but firm way.  He has always turned out to be the blessing in my life.  He is diametrically opposed to S, and I am sure that he was put in my life to make me see the difference between a creep and an angel.  I wish it had been S I cut off for A, a couple months ago.  Not the other way around.

My friend Megan from here has been so helpful to me too.  She and I have so many of the same issues, and we have had a running conversation with each other comparing notes, and trying to understand this sick narcissism.  So the blessings that have come from his treachery far outweigh the pain, and the pain was unbearable.  But the duality is, there is equal joy that grows out of the ashes.  Like the Phoenix, I will rise. I will be better, happier, and more loving.  No stupid man who thinks the darkness is where it’s at, is ever going to have too much effect on me.