Day 24: The Longest Day

This is the day that my kids will be gone the whole day. the longest day. however, yesterday and tomorrow are the worst days, because those days they are on the roads. and it is fully winter. 

last night I acted stupid. i was pretty good all day, keeping busy, doing what i planned to, staying on task i mean. but then i started getting antsy around 4-430 because they were due to arrive at the hotel, the tracking app said they had arrived at the hotel, but no one was texting me back. i really didn’t want to be that person texting like crazy, so i held it together and just sent one text each. after a half hour of stewing, thinking about how incredibly insensitive they all are, knowing im sitting here nervous, etc., i sent more texts. finally mark called and said they were all checked in. i was so annoyed with my kids, even tho normally i would understand/expect it.

they walked to a Vietnamese place for dinner and then decided to just stay in the room for the night, much to marks disappointment. it was raining pretty bad. he texted me that he was going to safeway for a few things and then would just hang in the room with them and watch netflix. after half an hour, it occurred to me, violently, that he was not going to safeway, but that he was either hanging out with someone he planned to meet there or had set up something with a prostitute. this is completely illogical, but I have become this “crazy” suspicious paranoid person. i really hope i can get past it, because its awful to feel this way. to second guess everything, to never really be able to believe anything anyone says. its awful. so when i texted him and then called and then texted 3 times with no response, i was utterly convinced that i had caught him in this duplicity. finally he called and said he was at safeway and his phone had been off — why? would? his? phone? be? off???? — lie alert alert alert!!!! so i texted, “you have 60 seconds to send me a photo.” he sent me one of the basket (granola, yogurt, water, toothpaste) and another one of his face/body in a safeway aisle. 

he loves this shit. this is what he wants. this is what he tried to get me to do for alll those years. to monitor him, to make demands, to be totally possessive and domineering. but it wasn’t my nature. I hate doing stuff like that, im too lazy for it. it really takes a lot of energy to be that way, or any kind of domme.

and yet, here i am.

I told myself this was all fine, open communication with him for these three days, because he has my kids. but just this little bit of interaction with him and the grossness is right back in my face. his grossness and my own. i hate it. i really can’t stand it. i feel weak and out of control and stupid and confused. i can’t wait til my kids are back home, and i can go back to shutting him out. 

his mom called today crying. I told her i saw him yesterday and that he didn’t look good, that he smelled bad, either of alcohol or bad food. she said, “good! i love my son, but i want him to suffer. i want him to realize he made a mistake and beg you back.” i didnt tell her that there is no way i’d take him back. instead i told her that i wanted him to suffer too until i saw him. because its terrible to see someone you love suffering. i just want him to be happy. i always wanted that. it took me a long time to accept that i couldn’t make him happy, no matter what i did. but now, unsurprisingly, he’s not happy alone either. which is what he always said he wanted: to be alone. but now he’s saying it’s because of this city. if he was in a different city… or country. he always said he wanted to go back overseas. THEN he would be happy. when i pointed out to him that he was miserable while he was overseas, he denies it. he makes excuses: well it was the job, the apt, the people, the teapot he was using made him sick… etc it goes on and on. he’s just fucked up like that.

so yeah im having trouble with all this. I feel guilty that he’s suffering and feel drawn to help. im resisting, but it hurts. i feel hateful and angry toward him too. i feel fragile and afraid. i hate being without my kids and desperately don’t want them to fly the coop, altho i obvsly do want them to do that. a lot of my suffering is indeed coming from thinking about past and future. mostly future. hatred for myself and all the regret of the past, but mostly fear of the future. but, i know i have no way of knowing what will happen in the future. so im just really focusing on staying in the moment today. it’s helping. 

night is harder. we’ll see what happens tonight.

last night after I talked with the kids (not texted, they’re terrible texters!) and felt more calm, i had this nagging desire to eat something or take a few shots of something. i fought it off. when the compulsion returns tonight? idk

today I met an OA person for lunch at a salad place. it was nice. the conversation was very helpful. she’s 70 something and very wise, but there was a weird moment that thru me and made me put up my guard a bit. she seems to prefer the dynamic where she’s doing a lot of talking and giving wisdom, but if i ever talk about something i learned, something that she can’t expound upon, like having kids (she didn’t have any), then she gets very visibly annoyed. and as soon as i was done saying what i said she gave a brisk, “who cares!” and went back to a previous subject. it was…weird! i do like to talk with her and do appreciate her experience and generosity, but shit man. that’s a little awkward!  idk. makes me feel like i can’t trust her, and should carefully control the amount of time i spend with her, and what i share with her. don’t want to get snipped at again. but it sux always having these restrictions.

or am I supposed to like, confront her? is that what normal people do? like, say, “you know i feel uncomfortable with the way the conversation went when i was sharing and you cut me off and said ‘who cares'”? but seems like she would get super defensive and it would be even more awkward. i have actually done something like that with good friends in the past and people do NOT respond well. I’ve tried to be really really nice about it and planned ahead. doesn’t matter, they get defensive as hell. trying to think about how i would respond if someone did that to me. i like to think I’d respond well, but im sure it would feel out of the blue, so i can’t say for sure. damn, idk. 

easier just to moderate contact. nice and safe 😦

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Day 23: Alone in a Little Boat in the Dark with no Oar and a Storm Approaching

They just left. He took them for a 5.5 hour drive to another state for a college interview tomorrow. then, wednesday, they’re back on the freeway again for another 5.5 hour gamble with their lives.

I may sound dramatic, but I am a person who hasn’t driven on the freeway for over 3 years. it started with flashes of panic while driving on the freeway. so intense that my body flushed hot and my hands felt instantly swollen. worse, i felt like i couldn’t control my hands. and that i was about to veer out of my lane. it was all-encompassing, and i couldn’t breathe. then it would pass. next time would be worse because I’d think omg not again! i started to be afraid it would happen. i started to plan what i’d do. i became afraid to get out of the left lane, because i needed to be able to exit the freeway asap if it came over me. i started avoiding the freeway. 

I wasn’t safe. i started getting the  panic on highways, going 45 mph. compulsive thoughts would take over my mind, and i would imagine veering into ditches or trees, imagine in greattt. detail. it was excruciating and terrifying. many times i had to take my hands off the wheel, steering with knees or fingertips, because i felt a voice screaming in my head to just DO IT! i was terrified my hands would jerk the wheel of their own volition, or some part of my unconscious that i didnt have access to would make it happen! it felt outside of myself it felt out of my control. it became a significant part of my life: my fear of driving. 

my therapist called this OCD. I bought some books. “The Imp of the Mind” was one. i went on forums and read about Pure O and wrote down other people’s advice. i integrated as much as i could. my OCD waxes and wanes, and it’s hard to tell exactly what, if anything, causes it. i have been able to drive on highways fairly anxiety-free for 6 months, but still avoid freeways and curvy mountain roads. 

the one thing I keep thinking about is that it started right after my therapist tried to do that light-bar therapy, EMDR. she tried it on me to address the cPTSD. we did it once for a minute, and that night i felt really weird. a couple of weeks later we were going to try for a few minutes, but within seconds i went into a full-blown panic attack. i had never panicked in front of her. actually, i am a very reserved person in public and have managed to avoid “freaking out” in front of people except twice. no, three times. that time with her, once in the dentist chair with that horrible plastic flap covering my mouth, dental dam i think?, and once when i was getting set up to have an MRI on my head. they clamped this plastic cage thing on my head and were about to stick me in the giant pencil sharpener, and i absolutely lost it. it was bad.  i ran all they way out of the clinic into the parking lot in they stupid gown with the back open and my butt showing! so humilating 😦 shudder just thinking about it.

do I avoid dentists and MRIs and light-bars now? yes. yes i do. and freeways. i am a person whose life is dictated by fears. im pissed about that. but not sure what to do. they say, “oh just expose yourself a little bit at a time, just a little bit” and yet i can’t help but thinking it only takes a little bit of 70 mph veering to kill me and maybe others. i do force myself to go to the dentist. i have had conscious sedation MRIs. but the freeway, its a hard one for me. 

my therapist thinks it stems from this (but, idk): when I was a kid and a young adult. if i would be driving with my mom, we would be talking, as ppl do. normal chat for my mom often turns into highly emotional erratic rants. i have learned to disengage and tune out as much as possible because it’s emotionally and physically painful. she would be jerking her hands in the air (jerking hand–my fear of my hand jerking against my will?) and then, on many, many occasions, she would ask wildly, “what if i were to just drive in front of that truck?!!?!?” i will admit that this scared the shit out of me. few things can make you feel less in control than being in a situation like that. it was terrifying. and the worst part was that there was this enormous pressure to respond Exactly Right. she was teetering on the brink — or was she? — and my life depended on easing her back to reality. and i was a child.

yeah, it could be connected. idk sighhhhhhh fuck

Im Alone in a Little Boat in the Dark with no Oar and a Storm Approaching. this is how I feel with my kids gone and possibly in danger. taking care of them and protecting them has been priority #1 for 17+ years. their dad, my husband of two years, was an alcoholic, drug-addicted, and violent man. he was an unlawful citizen from Russia. he had overstayed his student visa. we thought when we got married, and surely when we had the twins, he would be granted a green card, or at least a work permit. but no. that’s not how it works in America! he was only granted a green card after we divorced and he was arrested several times. because seemingly innocent young fathers who want to work don’t deserve citizenship, but criminals do!/s 

he wasn’t innocent tho. he terrorized me, beat me, and even started to abuse them, which is what finally forced me to escape. he threatened me constantly. his dad was the captain of a huge merchant ship that delivered goods up and down the coast every couple of months. my ex-husbands favorite threat was that he would steal the babies and get on his dad’s boat and have his mother raise them. this was logically feasible. and I knew if they got to russia, i would never find them. i lived in constant fear. fear of the minute-by-minute possibility that he would snap and someone would be hurt or worse, and fear that they would all one day be gone. my trusty hypervigilance kicked in, and i stopped sleeping. 

eventually it was me who disappeared with them. when they were 14 months, I ran and hid from him until he could be arrested. he was in a deportation holding camp when 9/11 happened, and he told me terrible, just vicious, things that happened to middle eastern detainees after that. then he was just randomly released. he lived in the city, about 90 minutes away, and fell back into heroine, a drug he had escaped for a number of years. crime followed, and right after i moved two states north to get away from his unpredictable visits and constant threats, he was finally deported for these unrelated crimes. they were 5. so it was 5 years of ridiculous hypervigilance. he threatened from Russia too, and altho i felt less afraid, i couldn’t let go of the hypervigilance. i petitioned the school to block their names from yearbooks, i petitioned the state to not seek child support because that would give him our address.  not like i expected child support anyway.

his sister, who speaks no english, emailed me once or twice. she said he was cycling thru addiction/crime, prison, and rehab. this made me feel safer. an addict has a hard time orgnizing shit enough to pull off sneaking back into the US. but I would say it wasn’t until the last year or so that i realized i could start to really let it go. they’re practically adults. he can’t really kidnap them now. he would have to try to reason with them, and he wouldn’t be able to convince them to go. we’re finally safe from him. i mean, we may have been safe from him for a decade or more, but i finally feel that we’re safe. that threat has released me. or, i have released that threat?

I do wonder about the timing. how the threat from my ex-husband began to wane just as the threat of the freeway and other types of containment and pain began to build. i understand how PTSD, especially chronic, affects the brain. when you’re so used to being a highly stressed state, relaxing can be uncomfortable, even impossible. the brain just tries to keep the status quo, does what it has to do to keep those stress chemicals flowing. understanding this has helped me to recognize a lot of the thoughts that were my brains way of “doing it’s job”. but i wonder if this stuff is deeper– i suspect my unconscious mind of this bigger mischief. 

only once before in the last 17 years have my kids been away from me, not counting sleepovers and mini things like that (which ultimately I am still in control of). when they were 9, i let them go back east with my ex (the one i just split with), let us call him Mark. (took 23 days to give him a fake name.) Mark took them back to meet his family. it was impossible for me to travel because of my back injury, so altho it was weird, his family was super nice, and my kids had a great time. i hated to let them go. flying. being out of my care. being with strangers. mark, an alcoholic, being in charge. i hated all of this. but i didn’t want to stand in the way of my kids having fun, novel experiences. and ive always wanted them to have other people, not just me. and in the long run, it was a great experience for them. i clearly remember going to the airport to pick them up. i was wearing a typical outfit for me, some dark boho witchy style. i remember because i saw my daughters face as they approached me from down a long corridor. i became self-conscious as i saw her study me and i saw her smile drop and a disappointed look come over her face. she was 9, she was just starting puberty. this was the perfect time for her to see me as something separate from her and to reject it, to reject me. it hurt so much, but i knew it was healthy for her to push me away as she figured out who she is. i knew that if i could handle it lovingly and without judgement or expectation, she would eventually, hopefully!, come to accept me for who i am, even love my weirdness. and now that she’s 17 we have a great relationship. we are very, very different. but i feel like she accepts me, and i think that as she becomes an adult, she may even love me just the way i am. but it was hard for many years. hard to be rejected and disliked by someone you love so so much. but that’s parenting!

they were gone for 9 days. (2009, 9 years old, gone 9 days. weird.) this was a very interesting and harrowing experience for me. I remember i had certain plans for what I’d do while they were gone to distract myself. but within hours the silence became like this ominous force in my home. it followed me around, getting closer and closer and heavier and heavier until i felt suffocated. i started to panic. this was before i knew how horrible benzos are for you, so i just started popping them like crazy. finally, by like 6pm, i called my mom and asked if i could come over and stay until my kids came back (weak!). when i got there i was a little better, but i was so antsy. then i found a project, a huge one. my g-ma, who lived with my mom, had a million slides that my granpa had taken over the course of 50 years or so. he was an amature photographer. he had died in 2000, and she had stored all these boxes of slides. so i bought a slide scanner and set to work in the basement. at that time, the slide scanners only scanned 4 at a time. so it took me many very long days to get them all. 

so two things came out of this. no, 3. actually, 4:

1. I was able to make thousands of amazing family pictures accessible for myself and other family members, who did not hate me any less for it.

2. I popped so many benzos that i got really messed up and decided to look into them and discovered forums online that helped me get off of them for 4 years (until i was put on a high dose in the hospital 3 years ago and havent been able to wean off them again sadly).

3. my kids got to make connections with a nice family who I think they still feel connected with to this day. if nothing else, they got to experience a different type of family, which has to be good for them.

4. my kids, or at least my daughter, got a kickstart in differentiation from me, which I know is healthy. i know she really liked/identified with (?) Mark’s mom who is wealthy and ditzy and marterialistic and barbie-doll pretty and super sweet — total opposite of me!

but now I have 3 days without them. two nights.  this time’s differnt in ways. they are older, for one. and they have been more and more absent the last few years as they spend time with friends and involved in extra-curriculars. so, im more used to them being gone. im not used to both them and him being gone however. and with their final departure looming (college) in just a few months, something i dread no matter how hard i try not to, there is more significance to them being gone this time. but i have prepared. i have been reaching out to OA people. my #1 priority is to not turn to food, alcohol or pills to distract me from this challenge. i plan to attend an AA meeting today, and OA meetings tomorrow and Wednesday. plus im going to listen to program podcasts and text/call people. i have crochet and knit projects, and some binge TV shows to listen to while i work on them. i have healthy food in the house. the weathers a bit warmer so i am going to take the dogs to the lake as soon as im done writing this. i have a stack of good books and some meditation podcasts set up. i have some yoga videos on youtube ready to go that were recommended to me by a reputable indian friend.

I want to do weird stuff like meditate naked and blast old school dark wave and dance in black robes. im smudging the shit out of the house! 

and I am really grateful. maybe it would have helped me to not cling so tightly, but i am so grateful that i don’t have a situation like so many people do: shared custody. specifically, shared custody with an asshole. the idea of having to let my kids go with someone i dont trust on a monthly or weekly basis…not being able to demand to be included in group texts like i did with Mark this morning, or to track them like i do with Life360, or to have to let them go when i don’t i feel its safe and the best thing for them. not having that kind of control and peace of mind. just a horrible thought. at least with my ex-husband — yeah i never got any financial help or a break. and my kids didnt’ have a relationship with their dad. these things really suck. but there are people in very similar situations who have to give their kid(s) up to an irresponsible jerk, possibly even an addict or abuser, and the law protects that bad parents right to time alone with their kids. so, as hard as things have been/are, i am so grateful that was not my situation.

im obvs writing a lot so I don’t have to go deal with life. but one last thing. i was trepidatious about how mark would behave when picking them up. this being the first time we’ve seen each other since he left. i purposely didnt get dress (pjs) or do my hair/makeup. i was friendly and superficial. he hugged me three times, all intiated by him. the first time he did some weird kiss/long sniffing thing with a slight, almost silent, moan. seemed affected, but it’s hard to say. the second two were more normal, and i was like uh, ok, tried to be generic but not rude. the kids were gone for the last one, he had closed the door so i was nervous, and he said i love you. i paused, but said it back just to be polite. stupid, i know. im sure it didnt sound passionate. its just he’s leaving with my kids and i dont want him having negative feelings toward me. idk i feel kinda shitty about it. it was just weird. also, he smelled bad. like old rotten garlic.

on that note — To The Lake!!!!

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Day 18: In Which I Reached Out

Today i saw my old therapist. she only charged me $30 for the hour, which was very generous and appreciated since i have taken on so many expenses with him leaving. she said her practice was not doing well or else she would offer to see me pro bono because she cares about me so much. this made me feel uncomfortable. when she offered to see me no charge two years ago, i couldn’t accept it. and i don’t like the idea of her caring about me, seems unprofessional, and makes me suspicious of her guidance. i think that may be just my trust issues talking, but i am not sure. i have never had a normal relationship with an authority figure, and i don’t know what that would be like. growing up i had no adults i could trust. i was responsible for the care of my little brothers, and felt it was us against the world. when i had my own children, i raised them with the same mentality. i always felt more like a big sister to them than a mother. i have a hard time inhabiting an adult world, as an adult. idk what im saying here.

my therapist listened for a while as I filled her in on my nightmare of a year, and then she got kind of tough-love on me, interrupting with, “why do you listen to anything this man says?” she was frustrated. i admitted that i realize now that i was lying to myself 2 years ago when i discussed him and the nonsense of our relationship and how i was distant from him and protecting myself. that i was actually only doing what i thought he wanted and telling myself i wanted it to. that i was just so desperately trying to get approval from a man who could and would never give it to me. she said she believes strongly that he is a psychopath and knows exactly what he’s doing. idk, maybe this is true. she said when you’re around someone who makes you so confused like this, that’s a sign. i said that ive always been so good at reading people, and he seems so earnestly innocent and seems like he really does care about me in his way, but his actions show something totally different, so i get confused that maybe he is just really fucked up and all the stuff he does is straight out of his unconscious mind, for self-protection or maybe to punish me for perceived slights. but that he doesn’t seem to do it consciously. it’s just crazy to think that i could have read him that wrongly. for 10 years. but either way, whether he devises his cruelty or it just happens because he’s fucked up, i know i can’t be around him. i can’t do it anymore, it was killing me, truly. and that’s what i need to focus on.

then she talked about her ex husband again, which makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like it when she tells me about her life or when she cries about her kids. normally, i would feel honored that someone would be open and vulnerable with me, but in this setting, it feels so unprofessional. i think maybe the reason i didn’t want to see her pro-bono is because i was afraid she’d do a lot more crying and  personal stuff. like, she told me she had dreams about me, etc. it just felt super awkward. but, it’s a small town and $30 is manageable, and i like her in a lot of ways. 

then I decided to go all in and attend an OA meeting afterward. i really did not want to do this for numerous reasons. sighhhhh. but i know i need to reach out and start making connections in order to be less isolated. on the way to the meeting he texted, “<3 have you thought any more about [college city]”. they’re going next mon, tues, weds and he got a really awesome hotel downtown. he’s insists he wants me to go, and maybe he’s sincere, who knows. one thing i know for sure is that i DO NOT want to go. i was clear with him before that i am not going. i didn’t respond to his text.

the OA meeting was at a church. I have trouble with churches, too many bad memories. when i went in i saw that it was only 2 ladies, both whom i remembered from before, both who i liked. they were really nice to me. when it came time for me to talk, i gave a very brief explanation of why i stopped going (trouble with the 3rd step– higher power), and the fact that I’d recently experienced a deep betrayal that led to extreme dissociation and depression. but altho I’ve gained 75 (!) pounds since i saw them last, i’d also lost 150 two weeks ago when i kicked out my bf of 10 years. clever stuff/s

they gave me their numbers and took mine and said they’re going to harass me. they’re really nice, and I think they get it. one of the ladies is 70 something. i used to hang out with her a bit when i went before. we’d go on walks. she’s really a wise one, but something about her troubles me, makes me uncomfortable, scares me. not sure what it is. i think it’s because she smells bad. like she doesn’t shower or wash her clothes. i know full well that’s a sign of depression, but she acts so chipper. she really seems like the cheeriest person. but she openly talks about how she always felt like she had to “have a ham hock around her neck to get kids to play with her”. weird analogy, but i get it. so she is not hiding the fact that she desperately needs approval. which would explain the cheeriness. part of me thinks that scares me because i don’t want to be there if she snaps into depression mode, because i wont know how to deal with it, dont want to get drawn in to another person’s emotional demands (ie my mom). another part of me thinks it scares me because i relate too closely. either way, i feel selfish, wanting the help, but not wanting to give it. wishing i could be an island. telling myself that not every older woman will be like my mom.

then this weird thing happened, which happens to me sometimes and i hate so much. i got her smell on me. i can still smell her. it’s been hours. she gave me a good long hug, but that couldn’t have done it, right? its got to be psychological? some kind of phantom smell?  idk i have to go get dinner ready, but im going to change my clothes and pull my hair up and try not to think about it. ):

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Day 16: Breakthru Sun

I feel different today. Not sure what it is. I said before that i finally saw a light at the end of a tunnel — to realize this is a tunnel and not an abyss was huge — but maybe now i feel that light. idk. one thing im doing is trying to remember, really get in touch with the person i was before him. i look at pictures and think, i don’t know her. or i think worse things, awful hateful things that come from the regret and pain of right now. but if i step out of all that and just think. try to get back in that head space. no, it wont be exactly the same. but she is me, one of the hundreds of iterations of me, and i can remember. and actually this is practice for when my kids leave in september. if i can do this, my next challenge is to find a way to remember who i was before i had them. so daunting. especially since i was a disaster.

one of the ways I am getting in touch with pre-him me is with music, of course, right? it’s very complicated tho because music is HIS.  i think this is a good time to record how we met and a little bit about him and the relationship. we met on myspace! in august of 2006. we were both in a literature forum and started communicating about tolstoy, my fave. it was strictly a non-personal thing for a few weeks, but then his writing started to get to me. he has a way with words. he’s actually brilliant, in a way. he thinks very deeply in these beautiful and unique strands of mind. communing with that part of him is euphoric. it’s the best ive ever had. the deepest. those strands tho are so narrow and are totally disconnected. his mind is so rigidly compartmentalized, and his walls are reinforced a thousand times over. you can ride the bliss train down one of those trails and find yourself trapped in a nightmare of ambiguous hate and fear. brush one of the thorns, and the whole thing wakes up and starts to constrict. its horrible.

one of the areas in which he excels is art.  he is not a creative person, altho I believe he once was very much so, but he has a true gift for recognizing art. what i brought into the situation was long years of studying, and a passion for, literature and film. i have limited experience with visual arts overall, but threw myself into film, first in film school and it blossomed from there. i have experienced real escape and transcendence through literature and film. and in these areas, he and i were quick to find connection. 

in many ways tho we are different. where he is rigid, I am fluid. he is closed, i am open. in the very beginning he explained to me that he knew good art, and his opinion on that was unequivocal. that art is a real thing and “good” can be objectified and qualified. i felt that this was ridiculous, because art is an individual expressing an inner state, therefore it is inevitably subjective. a piece of art can do nothing for one person but then explode the mind of another person. maybe they can relate to something in it that the first person can’t. i felt, and still feel, that one person can never determine what will speak to the entire species.  i mean wtf? that bothered me from day 1. but, i couldn’t argue with his taste. he did discount some amazing films, and i think this is where i first started doubting myself and feeling inferior. i was resentful, but didn’t know how to articulate myself. partly because he was triggering old feelings of insecurity, and altho i am a sharp debater, he was as cold and slippery as a fish. manipulative af. i can’t count how many times ive legitimately wondered whether he is a complete idiot or devious as hell. i still wonder. irregardless, he introduced me to a hundred films that expanded my world immensely. 

while I was somewhat new to film, i was not new to literature. i have been escaping into books since i was 9. when i was 9 my mom left her abusive 2nd husband in the middle of the night with her 4 kids in tow. my sister and i were older and, since she could only choose 2 kids to take to the small apartment with her, she dropped us off at my grandparents, where we lived for the next 18 months. those months were traumatic for me, because my grandmother openly despised me. she was later diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder among other things. the family was well aware of her ways: she would pick a couple of favorites and terrorize everyone else. my grandfather was too afraid of her to intervene, so her house was a hellpit. her house was a meticulously clean hellpit, and children were not to touch anything or even sit on the couch. we were contained, along with her animals, in the back yard or garage during the day and straight to the guest bed at night. we were allowed no belongings, and our few clothes were kept in a box in the closet. my  mother was too busy to visit more than once a month for a few minutes, dropping off money i think. most of my memories of that time were of hiding under furniture. if i did interact with her, generally i was being screamed at, hit, or called names. however, the boredom under the table was a massive problem for my always too curious mind, and i started sneaking books from her bookcases. mostly westerns and dirty romance novels.

I was a sheltered child and learned a lot from those books. but escapism was the dominant lesson. it never ended. as a goth teen i became obsessed with the romantic writers. as a young adult, i delved into non-fiction works of eastern religion, 19th and early 20th century american authors, and eventually Tolstoy. his fiction stole my heart. his non-fiction woke me up to what one man could offer. he was the ideal version of myself, and i loved him. i felt a strong sense of self in this area. one that took my ex many years to dismantle. i eventually came to feel separated from literature, and i no longer read. his dominant superiority claimed literature as his. aside from a handful of authors, any book i liked, he knew more about, critiqued harshly, confused me. i started doubting myself. if i read a book, he’d ask to see it and dismiss it, he’d already read it.

it’s very hard to explain this. it seems like, “Who cares?”, but it was a constant subtle undermining of my connection to things i loved. if he didn’t know more, like with the aforementioned handful, he would insert himself there. he’d study the author, he’d get into forums, he’d research the history. so if i ever mentioned it, he’d correct me. and i would be taken off guard and not know how to react. if that happened once in a while, it would be fine, that’s just life and learning and that’s great. but it was everything. it was constant. it was like a thousand tiny tentacles ever so lightly and innocently severing every last ligature of my body until i was floating lost in a sea of confusion and an inability to claim a self or reality. i recognize there is a sublime opportunity in this, and i have managed to seize it in many ways. unfortunately, the destruction of my frail self-esteem has made it incredibly difficult.

music…is a whole other thing. sighhhhh. i think i have to explain a little more: my mother was a fundamentalist christian who had worked tirelessly to keep her children safe from the secular world. nice and cloistered in the twisted, perverted molester world of the pentecostal churches. the most succinct description I can give is one she repeatedly told me, somehow unaware of how nuts it proved her to be: when i was 2 she discovered my father had been cheating on her. when confronted he silently packed one bag and left. she scooped up my 4-year-old sister and i and went to live with people from her church. they counseled her to burn all of my fathers things, which she did.  every last picture. (might not have been that big of a deal if he hadn’t been killed 3 years later, leaving us nothing of him. but that’s another story.) these church people told her she was still too attached to things and instructed her to kill her beloved cat. when she couldn’t, they killed the cat in front of her, and she lost her mind and went wandering. when she was picked up, she was covered with sores and all her hair and nails had fallen out. she was admitted to the hospital, a mental institution, where she recovered for 6 months. during this time, she allowed my sister and i to be kept by the church people. i have had dark wonderings about what happened to us there. if nothing else it is a fundamental layer to the pattern of my life of being abandoned and unprotected.

she was released to my grandparents care. they took the three of us in. she was constantly in and out of fugue states and often wandered for days with bleeding feet. she told everyone that she was in the hospital because my dad had been poisoning her with arsenic. i believed this as a child. as an adult, i realize that if there was arsnic in her blood, it would have been more likely the work of the insane cult she was involved with. and i think its fair to assume that my dad left the way he did because he was afraid of her volatile emotional reaction, the same fear that came to rule my life for many decades.

back to the topic: I was raised for most of my childhood in an extreme fundamentalist home. one of the things we were not allowed was music. when i was 10, my grandfather bought me a small radio. i got a taste then. when i was 11, i was taken back to live with my mother and brothers, and the radio was confiscated. we were only allowed christian music, went to school at the church — if you could call it a school — and attended religious services 4 times per week in addition. she remarried a real sicko from the church. he abused us terribly with her as witness. when i went to the school for help, i was kicked out of the home: i came home, terrified of what they would do to me for telling, only to find two black bags with my things on the front porch. this is when life began for me.

I lived with friends until i finished high school. i stayed out all night, i met interesting people, i lived in clubs and bars and coffee shops that had all night music. i went homeless after graduating. i lived in flop houses and in cars. i fell in love with music; it was a huge part of the real world. it was a huge part of me, i realized. i listened to goth music, 80s darkwave, industrial, 60s and 70s psychodelic (mainstream), and some punk. when i got pregnant, i had to pull it together. i found a job, an apartment. i didn’t go out anymore. but, music was still so important to me. we were dirt poor, but my kids were raised with books and music. 

when I met my ex, i had my little soundtrack of loved music, only about a dozen were obscure bands, something that didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. but music is his deepest calling. i think in another dimension he could be some creative genius musician. in yet another, he’s a world-famous producer. the man has an uncanny ability to find amazing music. he has a relentless drive to search it out. and his dominance is most thoroughly presented in this world by “his” music. he collects it, like badges of his own worth, and plays it constantly. he wakes up: he puts on music. he drives: music. he goes to the lake: bluetooth playing music. he sleeps: music. our home became his domain because he always dictated the music. it was like living inside of his mind. or his mind expanding and encasing the home. “well, just change the music!”, you say! “put something else on!” and i did that! at first a lot. i said, hey its my turn. but when my music was on, he would pout and pace. he would never say anything outright– he’s too polite– but his body language and energy would be super negative, making things uncomfortable. so instead of being able to relax and enjoy the music, it became like a stand-off. playing my music became a rebellious act. a fight. and i hated that. 

and so I would fight less and less. I would go thru phases where I’d get some energy, and I’d kick up some dust, make a big deal. but mostly, i was so tired. and his music was really good. i loved it. within the first year, he copied all my old beat-up discs to an external hard drive. made sense. easy access. i gave my brother a garbage bag full of them. (he sold them for heroine, incidentally.) then the hard drive fell off the desk, and i couldn’t get it to work. it was going to cost almost $300 to have a computer guy pull the music off. money i didn’t have. i tried to list everything on there, but couldn’t remember over half of it. eventually, i never listened to music that wasn’t his. presented to me with his domineering stamp of approval. “this is good. listen to this”

and eventually, I just disconnected from it all. it was too hard. i was too drained with the other stuff going on, the sex stuff and the emotional roller-coaster. he constantly pushed his choice of books and movies and music on me. i was choked with it. i stopped liking movies, i stopped reading. i started driving in silence and tuning out his music when my home felt like a trap. and now i have an iPod full of his music. not a single song unconnected to him. we use google music on our phones, and it’s so hard to remember who i was before, and what i listened to. when i try, i hear him in my head, telling me whats good and what’s shit. 

so its been pretty silent around here. im afraid to play anything, because I don’t want to think about him. i have played a little reggae, because reggae is so positive and powerful it escapes him. and the ramones were always mine. he tried, but he could never get inside that. and I’ve been digging around online finding old favorites that he trashed, and i gave up on. 

I think its one of those things that time will heal. i have to believe I’ll come back to it. i’ll be able to read and watch and listen all by myself again. i’ll be able to say, “this is what i think.” full stop. 

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Day 14: Two Weeks

I didn’t purposely skip day 13, altho it’s fun to imagine that I would be that suspicious. I actually skipped posting yesterday, because i had to attend to my back. that included opiates and laying prone or on back with legs propped. I have this disability that usually lets me feel pretty normal as long as i don’t do anything or go anywhere. sitting for periods longer than 30 min, esp in a car, standing for 20, esp that shuffling walk/stand you do while shopping, anything like that can trigger a flare up. exercising more than a tiny bit at a time? flare up.

I was in a car accident years ago and then surgery on my spine/discs. in one area of my spine, where i lost 90% of one disc, there’s a bunch of “junk” (my neurologists word), just kinda hanging out. as long as there’s no inflammation, im relatively pain-free. anything that causes even the slightest inflammation, like say, a good workout, yoga, etc., causes connection between the junk and random nerves. once that happens, the pain causes the muscles to gaurd, or bunch up. more pressing, more pain. i have learned over the years, and the many hospital visits when it got so bad i couldn’t walk or control my bladder, some ways to get that shit to calm down. mainly, i lay prone as much as possible, take all the drugs to calm the muscles, and i say mantras, literally, to my lizard brain to try to soothe the fears that keep things reacting. this can take a day or two, or MONTHS! sighhhh its crazy. it’s also very discouraging and depressing.

its hard for me to gauge how much activity I can get away with. usually walking is ok if i stay very moderate and don’t try to go too long. i really want to do yoga for the emotional healing it is supposed to offer, but the dominance of core-strengthening gets me every time. i got the easiest, easiest DVD, which isn’t easy enough since im basically an infant. and i tried to modify her easy poses to make them easier. i wasn’t stupid enough to go for plank, but i did her modified plank. seemed OK. i really dont know what set my back off this time. probably the yoga, but could have been my dog pulling the leash, the insane emotional stress, the very slight tapering off benzodiazipines im trying to sneak thru, idk.

whatever it was, I did no excercise two days ago, but the nerve pain persisted. so yesterday i aggressively treated: ice, heat, legs on the wedge, stretches, medications. i only can tolerate 1/2 of a norco, so that’s what i took. it makes me very dizzy and happy. i have to be very careful for the next day or two, because they are so addictive. as a person with a tendency toward escapism/addiction, it has been a challenge using opiates responsibly for the last 12 years, but, except for a slight dalliance in the beginning, im proud to say i have done so. 

anyway, today I am letting myself do a little more, not much. it was impossible to stay in bed this morning because my son has decided its time to get organized. I’ve got a little bit of the control freak going, and when i hear him doing stuff, i can’t stand not knowing what he’s putting where. then when i see him working, i want to help. so we organized the back hall which desperately needed it. then he cleaned the filthy sliding glass door (5 animals) while i scrubbed down the kitchen. one side of the blinds were sickening. plus i washed down the cabinets and shelves and walls and cleaned the hell out of the toaster oven. then he worked on the laundry area, while i dusted the dining room, living room, and entry way. they’re all really just one big room, but i like breaking it up like that. 🙂 i took breaks in between and stretched, so hopefully i don’t regret it, because it felt amazing! im cleaning the kitchen blinds thinking, “how did i let things get like this??” its crazy. i feel like Eomer, the King of Rohan when Gandalf finally exorcised Saruman. at least my eyes seemed to lose that depression-glaze. wish the fat and wrinkles would fade away as quickly. 

also, well, I texted him yesterday. it was the first real discussion. i was drugged BTW, but still, i know i am responsible for it. it happened because i saw that the girl he was involved with last, the one who caused a lot of grief for me, lets call her…sally. well, sally had a twitter account where she liked to post lots of videos of them together. sex stuff. it was a pit of self-flaggelation for me. watching the videos, saving them, watching and rewatching. letting the pain fill me with the promise that This Misery would be the fuel i needed to finally get rid of him. i obsessed on it. it wasn’t healthy at all. and then one day, her twitter was gone. no doubt suspended, as it had been numerous times for violations — of their rules and greater good of humanity. it was a pretty fetid site, with lots of highly photoshopped weird angle butt shots, posts about males being filth pigs who needed to pay her, and long diatribes about how “wifey” is a disgusting worthless POS. she also had trouble keeping clients, because she really didn’t know how to do the domme thing.  all of her obsessive posts about him irritated her small client base who had a hard time worshipping their findomme when she was basically begging one of the pigs to come back to her.  so, in addition to the wives and gfs that found her site, they probably also reported her. and she got shut down. and that was very freeing for me. once it was gone. i still had the pix and videos, but i was not compelled daily to see if there was more. because there was always more.

since it went down 6 months ago, I have occasionally checked it, scratching that old itch. i hoped, for her sake, she’d moved on to something she was better at. but then, yesterday, there it was, all fresh and new. this time, smartly, blocked. of course it’s easy to make a fake account and get approved by her to see her nonsense, look for more. and if we were still together, sadly, i might have done. but, we aren’t, and im not. im letting it go. but not before making the big assumption that he had something to do with it. that she was back posting her rubbish on twitter because he was free and they’re together. and while i have no control over that, i do have control, for a very short amount of time, of my kids. and i felt like no way is he taking them on a road trip if he’s self-destructing with this idiot again. if he’s back involved with her, he’s also binge drinking, and who knows what else. so yeah. that’s where my head was

its’ too long to transcribe*, but basically, I was like “no it’s not a good idea for you to go on this trip if you’re self-destructing (btw, that’s his explanation/description of why he did all the things he did: his dad got sick, he had a “mid-life crisis” (debunked phenomenon), and self-destructed).”

he was like “what, huh? idk what you’re talking about! i know nothing about it! dear god i hope she’s not posting pix of me again!”

and im like, “whatever dude, i don’t believe you.

and he’s like, “omg i love you i love the kids, i swear im not involved with her in any way. im hating this silence between us. dont you miss me dont you want to watch movies and cuddle? i dont know what you’re thinking, and dont tell me not to worry about it! why dont you let me come over and help around the house and we can talk about stuff.”

im like, “no i have plans.”

he’s like, “cancel them.”

im like “no. and btw the house is fine everything is fine.”

he’s like, “im sure you’re doing well i feel empty inside but please dont cancel the trip, im really looking forward to seeing you guys.”

so i said, “idk let me think about it”

today I wrote,

OK talked with kids, they aren’t into (one college)’s tour enough to warrant the risk of the pass. I am still willing to allow them to go if you swear you aren’t doing any crazy stuff (to include, but not limited to, whores and binge drinking). i decided not to go.

the (other college) tour starts at 1pm and with interviews could go as late as 4. that would put you back on the hwy pretty late. maybe consider enjoying the city that evening and staying another night?

as for the emptiness you feel. you felt it before you met me, so it’s no surprise you’re feeling it again. you will get used to it, and you may eventually, through your own effort or just dumb luck, find something that fills it again.

I thought this was a pretty decent summation. he flipped out asking why im being so fucking mean when he’s so sad. and im acting like we’re not getting back together. and no he’s not whoring, but yes he’s still drinking. he said it’s who he is.

i said “im sorry to hear that. alcoholism is an insidious disease” and he got riled anew.

so i said, “im sorry i gtg”

and he said,

u want honesty then don’t make me need to lie to you in order that u dont cut me off. that is fucking mean. why are you doing this? what do you want? 

i said, 

all im saying is I don’t want the kids around it. not just directly, but even an alcoholic who’s barely holding it together til they’re gone and he can get wasted again.

im sorry I really do have to go.

he said,

why are you fucking with me. im so sad.

I said,

it’s OK to be sad

he said,

yeah maybe its ok. doesn’t feel ok. I need to move on this drinking before it’s too late.

end of communication.

*the text i put in call-out quotes is exact, the rest is paraphrase.

so, all in all I think it was an OK exchange. i held my ground and didn’t get dragged into emotional back and forth. i kept it on topic. for all his ‘i love you’s and im sad’s’, the reality is, he doesn’t want to be together. breaking up is just hard. ours was literally (!) his first relationship, so this is his first break up. god. so nuts. ive been thru half a dozen serious break ups, so i can be grateful for that. i am trying to avoid caretaking, which is a role i so easily slide into and one he desperately wants me to inhabit. i gave him a tiny bit, that last text, and resisted more. as much as a part of me wants him to suffer for the bs he put me thru, i don’t really want him to. i love him and truly want the best for him in the long run. im just very angry and hurt by the way everything happened, but i am myself to blame in part for allowing it. i knew from DAY 1 who he is. not exactly, but my instincts told me to run, and i did not. so.

two weeks done.

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Day 11. A Wrench in the Plan

11 days is nothing. 11 days is a vast length of time. both are true. I feel like I have been through so much and that so much has changed in the last 11 days. it boggles my mind that it has only been this long. I decided we wouldn’t communicate for 30 days except for the utmost necessity, and yet i think it has been 4 times. they were at least 99% businessy. but now there is a possible problem.

my kids want to interview at a college two states away and tour at another in a neighboring state during the first week of winter break, the week of the 18th. this is a wise idea for them, but it causes a serious problem for me. either I stick with my plan to not communicate with him and let him take them, missing an exciting, memorable event with my kids, or i go and be fake nice, which is excruciating for me, after everything. unfortunately, i cannot take them alone because of my disability. 

my son asked him if would take them, and he jumped at the chance. flying would be ideal, but at this late date, it would be super expensive for 3 to travel to two different destinations (like 2k). my son told him I wanted to go if they drove– he misunderstood something I’d said, but i didn’t correct him. because im not sure what to do. my first instinct is hell fucking no! but staying home will make me feel like a loser no-good mother, and i’ll prob be depressed. 

besides this sudden stomach-turner, I have been doing a little better. staying busy, eating well & exercising no-matter-what is helping a lot. im listening to a book called, Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. it’s great because it’s written by a journalist, so it’s straight forward (totally non-emotional). so far, her main point is that you can have a satisfying midlife and beyond if you really engage with life. but the best part is, it’s not about breakups or infidelity or any of that stuff. however it does interest me greatly, because I am 42 and have been grappling with death anxiety since 2012 when I visited my father’s grave for the first time since he died in 1980. OK, i have been dealing with death anxiety since i was 27 and had a psychotic break, or nervous breakdown. yes, i think that’s when it started. 

BTW. death anxiety is a fascinating concept to consider. My favorite book that addresses it is Irvin Yalom’s “Existential Psychotherapy.”

Also, I have not responded to my ex-therapists offer to see me in two weeks for $30. it is a doable rate, but her response was cold, and i ended things with her for a reason. It’s just that this is a small town and her offer is affordable. but, is it worth it to get therapy that might not be good? hmmmm. another conundrum.

however, I did do some responsible things today. i scheduled to get my car looked at tomorrow, i set up the college interviews for my kids, i emailed their school counselor about something. all of this on top of walking, yoga, & showering. these things were almost impossible for me a month ago. so i really do appreciate this movement in a positive direction.

socially: I have tried to but failed to attend several AA meetings in my area. I am not an alcoholic, per se, but i have an addictive personality. i switch up my addictions. alcohol has been my drug of choice at times, altho less often than other vices. but AA meeting are ubiquitous and the conversations had in those rooms can be incredibly powerful. so im trying to get to one. still speaking about social connections, i look forward to my friend and her wife coming over for dinner saturday. it will be interesting because they only eat raw meat now, and im curious what that’s like. my son wants to try it D: but not me bleck!!! i barely can stand meat. and tonight i have a phone date at 7 with my old friend jake who i haven’t talked to in years, but have known since 2003. 

so, there’s a lot of positive things going on. focusing on that.

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Day 9. The Real Things

so the grinding heartache continues. today on my drive over to the lake where I walk my dogs, i yelled and scream-cried again. i involuntarily yelled something like, “god damn you mother f**ker!” at first i thought i was yelling at him, but it soon became clear that i was talking to myself. “what the eff is wrong with you? whyyyyyyy? why? why? did you stay for so long? whyyy????! when you knew from the first day that he was dark and broken and couldn’t value you? why didn’t you say no when he wanted to come back? because you weren’t sure? because it was hard?! its only gotten harder and worse! every day, every time you got close to ending it. harder and worse! until now! look at this!!! look at yourself!!!  and i know you want to think that in time you will find some value in it. that everything happens for a reason. but the only reason is your stupid insecurity and lack of self-esteem! because nothing positive came from the toxic relationships in the past, did it? look at andrew. look at charles. nothing good came from those. there was only wasted time and self- hate. that’s it. and those were only a couple of years!!! this is 10 years! ten years!!!

on and on it went. my poor dogs listening to this. ugh god I felt terrible

so I stop at starbucks to get a decaf mocha, what a joke — what is the point of a decaf mocha but to waste money and calories? it was symbolic. they mistakenly made it with caffiene, so remade, but gave me both and suggested i give the “real” one to a co-worker or friend. it was easier to take it, but i didn’t know what I’d do with it. hopefully not drink it. first, i really don’t want to splurge on junk twice in a day and 2 i don’t drink caffeine now. so when i get to the lake, i see this old guy who’s always there. he’s pretty rough-looking. he always parks his beat up van in the same strip as i do and walks to the picnic area by the playground and feeds the squirrels. he’s bundled up because it’s damn cold  out (below freezing), and just so happens to be walking back to his van as i pull up. i decided, fuck it, I’ll give it to this guy. im more of a not-friendly type of person, so this is out of my comfort zone. also, I’ve been sobbing and not about to clean my face up for anyone. but i walk over anyway and offer it to him. he declines, says no he doesn’t drink that sugary shit. hmm ok. i thought maybe he suspected i’d poisoned it, which is exactly what i’d have suspected, but i try to remember that most people aren’t as nuts as i am. tho this guy could be. later on my walk i passed him as he sat on the retaining wall by the lake. i waved. very strange behavior on my part.

obviously I am no longer above acting like a total weirdo in public. i listened to the end of Anne Lamott’s “Hallelujah Anyway” and openly cried as i walked. at one point i bent double and literally almost collapsed onto the freezing path because i was so fraught with the existential angst of her words as she recounts forgiving her father for laughing when a stranger, a fisherman, ridiculed her hair as a child.

Sometimes at the lagoon, the water rushes out with furious velocity, but between high and low tide, it lingers, flat, before flowing out to join the blue-gray ocean. I felt a crabby compassion for my father, isolated in his ego, that jocular kennedy persona, exiled from hs family. and anyway, he was not the person who needed my forgiveness. neither was the other man. the men were portals, practice, training wheels: we are always the ones who need to be absolved, taken back into our hearts. i forgave myself for the fisherman’s words and behavior, for taking on his ugliness and making it something i believed to be true about myself. his words had gotten on me and in me, and then i had hoarded them, building evidence that i was right about being fundamentally wrong. i forgave myself for my father’s contempt and fear of women, gently released him to himself, in the same way you gently lift a hitchhiking monarch off your shoulder in a butterfly pavilion.

I curled up with [my memory of] Mom and Stevie. my mother had beautiful english skin, and long dark hair, but these aren’t who she was, any more than my hair was who i was. we are the final inside nesting doll. a baby feels and smells like god…babies are waves, mosaic chips of the unified field…images of tiny things, babies, yeast, and mustard seeds can guide us; things that grow are what change everything. moments of compassion, giving, grief, and wonder shift our behavior, get inside us and change realms we might not have agreed to have changed. 

this addressed my self-hate in the car ride over: I must forgive myself. and the quest for the real self: the final inside nesting doll. and the eventual outcome of all this pain: long needed change in areas i don’t even have to be aware of. it will happen. i just have to keep going.

 

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Day 8. Misery

Today was the hardest day by far. I don’t know if it was lack of sleep, or because the last few days i felt strong, or because i didn’t exercise today, or because of the dream. im sure i dreamed it because of the book i read yesterday, “it’s called a break-up, because it’s broken,” by the Behrendts. they said (paraphrase), stop thinking about him, stop wondering if he’s seeing someone else. he is and its heidi klum. now move on. I laughed at that, because it’s great. who cares what he’s doing. and i wrote yesterday that i didn’t. 

then I had a nightmare that i was waiting outside his apartment and he was taking forever. then i realized he was in there with ~~HER~~ the last person he was involved with, the one who “made him” do horrible things to me to prove himself to her. so i stormed in there and sure enough it was her. i really believe (irl) that he is not interested in rekindling anything with her because he seemed to be truly afraid of her and to think she is totally nuts. but he lies. so in the dream i was aghast — “of all ppl!” i thought.  i dragged him out by his ear (violence!) and into another apartment (ours?) and forced his nose down into the dirty carpet (he’s a germophobe). i clearly remember his long skinny nose bending as i pressed his face down into the grime. and i somehow stepped on the tip of his nose with the point of my shoe. he did not resist, nor did he enjoy this. i knew that it wasn’t “working” because i was way too emotional. i gave up and we both sat back against the wall, and i cried and asked him, “why? why couldn’t you have put all that time and energy into making things work with us instead of doing all this…” he looked bored and said, “if id wanted to i would have.”

damn.

I woke up in a great deal of emotional pain. it was 6 am, three hours of sleep. i was wracked with the intense desire to text him right then. tshhh! so stupid! this is what i REALLY NEEDED to know, this is what i was literally going to text him:

what did you do last night? are you ok?

gah! how horrible and pathetic would it have been, my god. I struggled mightily for probably half an hour, it was crazy. i felt almost convinced that the dream was prophetic. i took a pill (legally prescribed, but still cheating) and fell back to sleep for two hours. it’s annoying because all last week i wasn’t tempted. i did text him once last week about a business thing and stayed distant. wasn’t at all tempted. but that book went on and on about not calling no matter what, no matter your desperate reason. i swear they put it in my head.

so I basically felt grinding heartache all day. i met with a friend from 11-2 and we talked for a while about my sitch, and i cried and felt awful. i haven’t talked to her in over a year. we’d both gotten busy idk. she is really the only friend that understand the nuances of the situation. the bdsm side of our relationship. she’s the only one i can trust to tell the whole truth to. my other friends, i had to give them the edited version, because they’d just get distracted with the “weirdness”. it felt so good to be able to say it out loud for the first time in 11 months. to be held in her understanding sympathy and to hear her horrified anger. i thought i was stronger but the way she reacted made me cry like a baby for the first time since he left. not just angry tears i fight off, but baby crying. the rest of the day i did my basic tasks: laundry, cheerful chatting with kids, made dinner, ate dinner, walking dead with my daughter, fed animals, cleaned. but the whole time i was split into two people. i was the robot doing the stuff, but i was also just me sitting with the pain. i was holding it in my two hands weeping. 

i wish i could end there. but…then I had to text him, no really i did, about a credit card thing for our google movie account so he wouldn’t accidentally be charging my card, but all i said was, 

I added my cc to google movies so i could rent smth. you will have to select “family payment method” from now on to charge your card.

my cc # is xxxx. don’t use k.

he waited 7 min after viewing to respond with,

ok thanks for the heads up baby (kissy winky heart face).

i did not respond.

I realize that it seems mighty suspicious me needing to text that. it’s twice in 8 days. but we have shared a household for 10 years and little things come up. still, i commit to no more contact for real now. because it just added to my pain. seeing that he’d read it. waiting for the stupid fake ass reply. why’d he wait? drunk most likely. or at a show. or with someone. maybe on the phone with family or some ho…

so yeah, this is why the no contact thing really is important.

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Day 6

after all the quotes last night and nietzsche’s questions, I fell asleep surprisingly easy. i slept over 9 hours. it was beautiful. i had a pretty wild dream too. the first thing i remember is apartment hunting with him. we approached this huge complex that was kind of like a project, but with a Hawaiian style. i was not thrilled. next thing i know we’re inside and it’s furnished and kinda cool with its island vibe, but it’s ridiculous. totally rickety. the floors and walls and ceilings are made of these thin wood beams and covered with a thin canvas. you could see down into the apartment below you, and above. so, like, if i got out of bed, the person below could look right up my nightgown at my butt. i remember thinking that with horror. plus it felt like the whole thing was going to collapse. and it was 7-8 stories. as if that wasn’t bad enough, some old dude lets himself in and stomps thru the bedroom indignantly, heading to the bathroom where apparently he lives? he looks at us and shakes his head, “oh no! no way! i told them no young people!” he says and heads to his corner of the bathroom. i turn to my ex and say, “um wtf this isn’t going to work. this place is like match sticks and that dude? with the kids here? i can’t!” he agrees and says he’s going to talk to the manager and get our money back. he returns and says, “so they said if we stay they’ll give us another better unit”. i decided to view it before saying anything. we walk in and it’s pretty nice. real walls, nice antique furniture. im liking it a lot better, but i want to see the whole place. we walk down a hall and there’s a crack in the wall. well, the wall is like a plaster canvas that isn’t covering the whole space, so you can see thru. about 3-5″ is open. what i see is an enormous warehouse, like super old, 200 years old. really old equipment just packed right up against the plaster canvas wall. weird gears, all rusted. i ask the manager wth.  im thinking its crawling with spiders. she says oh yeah we’ll get this fully covered. pretty sketchy. but i am distracted cuz he calls me into the master bedroom. first i see the master bath. it’s pretty fricken nice. huge walk in shower you step down into , all marble, bunch of shower heads everywhere. everything super luxe vintage. wow! i think. then i turn to the master bedroom itself and my mind basically explodes. it’s the most luxurious things ive ever seen. remember back, it doesn’t seem all that great, but in my dream im just agog. it’s really long and just huge with very plush carpet and amazing windows. at the end of the room (im running with my arms outstretched in joy haha for real), there is a massive set of french doors. i bust thru them and find a very steep set of stairs down into a beautiful blue-green lush grass expanse. i cant stop running in ecstasy. just when i think I’ll have to stop, i see that the fence is quite low and i can step over it. i keep going and realize that i am in a communal grassy area for 5 mansions. i look at them and turn back to look at the building from which I’ve come. its huge and brick and the windows are like deep black pits. it’s haunted, i think, but i don’t care. i turn and keep running towards the ocean it seems. i reach the ocean and know that its the atlantic. there is a small bait and tackle houseboat there and i go inside. a handful of yuppy boys are running it. my joy has ebbed and i go to the counter and wait for someone to buy a pack of cigarettes. he opens the pack and the cigarette is shaped like a small crab wrapped in rolling paper. i buy my own pack, but ask for a different one. i feel defensive. i open mine and they’re smaller crab shapes wrapped in paper. i go to the back of the building and find a mattress on the floor with some haphazard bedding. the guy who bought the first pack joins me, altho we dont speak. im fiddling with my weird cigarette and he lights his and passes it to me. he says its weed. basically they just wrapped buds in paper without breaking them up. weird. but i take a few hits and the guy and i start talking. turns out it’s Lip from the show Shameless. after a while i realize uh im really into him rn. i start poking him with my toe. he’s like “what”, and i dont say it but wow im suddenly completely turned on, and he pretty much knows it. then there’s overly romantic cuddling and kissing, which i vividly remember being not great, and then some kind of dry humping that was really, REALLY amazing, and then! i woke up.

typical of me to have a sexy dream, but no sex. 

I know there’s a lot going on in that dream, but im just not even ready to think about it.

today I felt a bit happy, that’s the good news. i lost my temper once and yelled “fuck!” when i lost a stitch for the 4th time on this cowl im trying to knit in time to mail to the UK by christmas. embarrassing cuz my son was there ughhhh sux. i did apologize. not for cussing, but for startling him, poor guy. but other than that it was a pretty damn good day. i walked, i did yoga, i made good food choices, i connected with two friends, i even told an old friend who i love how hurt ive been that she’s ditched me the last 8 months when i really needed her most. she got defensive and nasty, like i knew she would. but i wanted to be honest and vulnerable with her even though i know she hates that. im actually not sure how thats going to work out. it could end the friendship, but if so, guess it’s meant to be. im not wasting my time contorting myself to please selfish, passive aggressive people anymore. 

oh another thing is, the kids mentioned casually that he has been texting them, and that he asked them to come visit him this weekend. I wanted to rip the phone out of their hands and read the texts, but i played it a little cooler than that. like, i asked a few more questions than i should have. when they said why don’t you just text him and ask him yourself i dropped it. dang. wish I’d asked nothing. i dont want them to know he and i aren’t talking for december, because they would think it weird. i dont want anything to seem weird or stressful for them, becasue they have so much going on with their senior year and sports and work etc. i dont want to add to it. but basically i discovered that every day he asks them the same questions: how are things at home: lots of cat barf? (not so cleverly disguised attempt to see if im ok, i’d guess), how is school? how is the college thing going? also today he asked if they’d like to come hang at his place. they said no we’re just too busy, which is true. 

ive really been thinking a lot about christmas and his visit. its only 6 days into the split and I can’t stop thinking of the best way to handle that. ive gone from one end of the spectrum to the other, but i think i need to let it go for a while. there’s time.

 

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Day 4 Alone

I slept only 4 hours, waking at 7am with my left jaw dislocated from such clenching dreams. after easing it back into the joint, i laid back and thought about the dream. it was in my bedroom. i was laying on the bed. it was day. he was here, sitting on a table chair next to the bed. he was just as cold as ice, saying how he now realizes that this separation is for the best, that there’s no chance for us and he sees how truly fucked up i am. as he talks my anger boils, i thrash around on the bed and finally attack him. he is indignant and announces he will not be treated this way and leaves.

the emotions of the dream were so intense and horrible. yes, I clenched my jaw til the point that it popped out of place, not an uncommon situation for me lately, but i was so stressed and upset by the emotions of the dream that i could not fall back asleep and had a headache that lasted several hours. i thought about jung’s idea that everyone in your dreams is you. and how the him in my dream was me. how he announced his boundaries. some part of me wishes to be ice cold like that.

but the dream did answer my questions from last night. the questions were basically wtf is going on, why do I feel so turbulent, why am i so easily drawn into pettiness and pathos, when objectively i know better. the answer is that there is further betrayal possible. in the dream, he was essentially cutting me off completely. i understood that i would lose everything, the house, my animals. my income is from a pension that is insufficient for a family of three, certainly cannot support 5 animals as well. i greatly dread having to uproot my children and the idea of having to farm out my animals, or worse, send them to a shelter. i realize i am digressing, but being depressed for roughly 4 years now, i have spent most of my time with the animals and especially the dogs have been my only support system. 

anyway. I believe the reason i am struggling with moving on is the financial ties. most likely he will not cut us off. at least before june. i believe he wants to continue having a relationship with the kids, so he will try to keep things copacetic for their benefit. come fall, worse case…maybe i rent a room on a farm where i am allowed to keep my pets? i mean, it’s a possible option…?

I did feel good about the dream because it clarified for me the image i have of our dynamic. and it allows me to make a plan to be sure that nothing like that ever happens. i have, much to my deep shame, attacked him several times in the months following discovery of his infidelity. the attacks were symbolic more than anything, as he wasnt hurt. they symbol was for myself —

• “look at what you’re doing.”

• “this isn’t you.”

• “this isn’t working.”

• “you can’t make this work”.

that’s what they said. i remember several times being in an absolute lock down drag out battle with myself, my hands curled and trembling before me with an enormous and equal force both attacking and holding in the attack. it was truly bazaar and horrific. these moments, both when i failed and even when i battled successfully, are dark landmarks along the lowest valley of my life, and i hope one day to view them with compassion.

the dream showed me that things are not cut and dry and that’s why it is so hard. just because it is infinitely easier with him gone, doesn’t mean im in the clear. I need to be careful and plan. i deperately dont want to manipulate him even tho that is what young, damaged, vulnerable me would do, and even tho that is what he is eagerly hoping i will do. but i must make an honest plan for how to use this time in december, and how i would like to proceed once i see him on christmas. he will expect us to set up a different level of interaction — i think ! — and i need to decide what i want. 

right now I feel like never-never-never again. 

and yet, only 4 days into my month of no communication, I had to interact with him, first, yesterday, i emailed him a bill that he needed to see. when he didn’t respond i thought well maybe he’s too busy being thrilled with life, but then i remembered he doesn’t check his personal email often. so, due to the deadline noted on the bill, i decided i needed to text him. this is how that went

me:  pls check your email.

         also, i will need your correct address

him: hey (three heart-eye emojis) ok. (and his address)

me: thx (winking, heart blowing emoji)

him: miss you babe.

I need his address to send him his mail. i could have stopped texting once he sent his address, but i thought i should respond kindly to his heart-eye emojis. it seemed casual, and made me seem less pathetic, something i ranted on about yesterday. at least i thought at the time. but i probably regret it. oh well. at least i stopped there. i don’t know, pretty manipulative still. it’s so hard to not be manipulative when you dont have a connection to your real self. i read about it, but i dont know what it is. i can’t remember a time when i didn’t have to gauge my environment and adjust my behavior accordingly. my earliest memories are planning how to survive these people. my life has literally been saved more than once by my acting differently than i felt. 

which is sad. which is what this is about. no matter how much he misses me, no matter how he wants to proceed on christmas, no matter what I have to lose, i can’t go back. to him or any of the men before him. somehow i have to find a safe place where i can let it all come undone and see what crawls out of the rubble. 

 

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