An Impetuous Buffet of Loving Indulgence
Grace and madness on a delicious journeyHaunting smells
Been trying to chase away the thoughts and memories that hurt so badly. Can’t get rid of them…can’t stand them….they hurt too badly. And I can’t help but think of George Jones’s song, He Stopped Loving Her Today..,.and I wonder if, as the song suggests, I’ll have peace when I move on from this world?
This morning, my mind unintentionally flashed to him…the way he would look at me from across a room… His eyes full of pride and admiration, sometimes lustfully as though he wanted to devour me right there, and always with the softness of love; pure and simple love. That look of love that says, “I adore everything about you”.
And I smelled him….my favorite smell…when he would come home from boating early in the morning and slowly wake me with the softest kisses…wrapping himself around me, smelling of fresh air…like breathing in a breath of air while sitting at the beach. Will that smell ever leave my memory? Will it ever cease to be the most beloved smell I can imagine?
I wonder lately if this is my punishment. Of course I’m being punished for my careless thoughtlessly hurtful actions, but I wonder if I’m also being punished for not taking love seriously prior to knowing it for myself? What about all the broken hearted people who would come to me and although I felt bad for their pain, I truly could not understand why anyone would dwell in that… Move on already…quit wallowing and just move on… I don’t think I’ve ever been cruel enough to say that, but I can recall a few times when those thoughts ran through my mind as a friend was crying over a break up. I literally had no comprehension of the inability to just think, “Aww that sucks. Will really miss him/her. Guess I’d better move on….boohoo..ok…moving on now….” Really, isn’t it just that easy?
No. And maybe I needed to understand that so fully to help me never ever think that way again when someone comes to me with a broken heart. I pray I was never callous or evidently non-compassionate in those moments past. I don’t believe I ever was outwardly…but I had no basis for understanding a depth of love and happiness that physically ached when it’s removed from your life…the physical, emotional, and mental pain that takes over and makes “moving on” so difficult it could be compared to climbing Mount Everest…
I don’t think I’ll ever truly know why this is how it has to be but I certainly do fully understand the pain of losing love now. And now I can just pray every day that my heart will change, lighten up, and let me be free from the heavy chains of loving him…or that at least someday I’ll find some peace from it…
dreams or premonitions?
After being away from my blog for some time, today I read back a little and saw my post where I dreamt about what’s currently happening with Dave. I had visions and things, but rather told myself they were natural because it would be my fears coming true….yet, now in hindsight, I think, “Wow…I really did see it coming before I knew!!”
So, that makes the last dream I had even more unsettling and of course I wonder, just fears or premonition? I was with him in the dream, of course – as always (arghhh!), but something wasn’t right. It was a sexual dream, which I (sadly) rarely have (~:P~), so it definitely made a lasting impression. I could not blog immediately, so many of the little details have escaped my memory, but I do know that I was with him and I actually think I was upset because he was cheating on the new one with me! Which is not at all like him and I can’t imagine would really happen, but is it me hoping (gosh, I hope not!!) or wishing for that? Is it me refusing to accept that any female could be as important to him as I once was and so I dream about the most intimate betrayal I know he’d never do to the woman he truly loved?
What made the dream very sad though was that in the dream, although we were being physically intimate, I sensed that he was not interested in me like that or any other way. I was very sad, as this is still the one thng I’ve not yet ever experienced with him, but he has never been involved with another woman in any serious, committed capacity since we (technically) split almost four years ago. It felt wonderful to be with him in the dream, but I was sad, sad, SAD….
There were so many tiny nuances/messages within the dream and I so wish I could remember those better, so I might better decipher the message or warning it may have been trying to send me. It was a rather emotionally complicated dream, that much I remember. And I tell myself I only had the dream because I miss him damnit and I put him there subconsciously for no other reason than I miss him so very much. I actually said that out loud twice today, “I miss you”. So, that’s probably the only reason for the dream.
I don’t want to be the kind of person who would accept or allow infidelity, even if it is with the man who feels like he will always and has always belonged with me. He is not with me and I don’t want to wish that kind of pain on any other person.
Yet, good Lord in heaven, I miss him…even if I can’t admit that to anyone but myself and my blog….I do miss him and nothing about being apart from him today feels one iota more right than being apart from him the day we split did… It feels as if fate has been negatively altered and like nothing will ever fall in its proper place again. Now it’s chaotic “order” because the ground level is messed up..nothing is as it was intended…
I’m trying to tell myself that regardless of it feeling that way, really, everything is probably as it’s intended, because this is what it is, but nothing in my soul or spirit can accept that, even now, after everything…
I’m grateful I got to spend some time with him in my dream, even if it wasn’t as I would want it to be….but I still very much wish he would leave my mind and spirit forever and stop haunting me like he does…like he always has from the moment we met. Or I wish he would just come back to us. We all miss him so terribly…and love and value him so very much….
Hindsight…..arghhhh
Bit broken down and whatnot, but was encouraged by a dear soul to write anyway…. (thank you, my friend!)
Reflecting lately on hindsight…wondering why foresight can’t be 20/20?? And contemplating second chances..who gets them? Under what circumstances should a 2nd chance not be granted? Pit party mode: Why can’t I be in the good graces of 2nd chances, anyway? Some get so very many “2nd” chances, while rarely get one…..
Obviously, I fall into the “no 2nd chances” category for whatever reason…the higher powers that be have deemed me unworthy of such grace… and within that frame, I swallow the bitter lesson that perhaps it is not better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I mean, who said that anyway? Whoever it was certainly had more grace and gratitude than I!
Losing a love is excruciatingly painful…and after all, before you’ve loved, you can’t even know what you’re missing, so…hmmm……??
No, I have decided I would rather not have loved at all…. Would I miss all the beautiful memories of being loved, feeling loved, figuring out what love is? Oh yeah…but I’d not know that I missed it at all, so better off, I believe I’d be!
On the other hand, were I more gratefully graceful, I could confess that I have once been loved deeply and far beyond my expectations. Perhaps I just wasn’t ready for something so huge? I sure didn’t know how to appreciate it fully or accept it as reality until it was long gone from my life. So, instead, I spent 2 years in bliss I never fathomed prior and three years desperately trying to make up for losing it…beating myself up every inch of the way, as though that might make me worthy of a second chance….
No such luck. No second chances. Just vivid, painful hindsight and sweet memories that sting with the heartache of that hindsight. Memories which haunt my every waking (and sleeping!) hour. Memories that tear at my soul, rip at my self worth and shred my ability to forgive myself my erroneous errors.
I’d like to think that perhaps it wouldn’t have lasted even if I hadn’t erred………….but that’s not something I can convince myself of because the evidence proves it would have… Evidence shows it was the greatest, purest chance at love that I may ever have…and I couldn’t see that until it was too late…. And hard as Humpty tried to put it together again, alas, it could not be done…. Too little…too late..ahhh cliche’…
Maybe there’s only one chance at such depths of love, in order to learn that second chances aren’t a given in any situation, so I’d better get it right the first time from now on…if there’s ever another chance to demonstrate what I’ve learned from this experience…. Haha… I suppose it’s called once in a lifetime love because the opportunity comes only once…..
Yes, I would most definitely erase every beautiful memory, so I could live blissfully in ignorance of what love can be…and pooh-pah in hindight’s hateful mean face!
However, as that is not an option, instead, I get to trudge on, hoping it all makes sense someday….and hanging onto everyv possible shred of hope that nothing is ever final…until it’s final…
Different kind of nightmare…
Truck was in the drive yesterday and curtains opened in middle of the afternoon. It’s been a few months since I saw that… I have to admit, I was a little hopeful that it meant something good. And I felt badly that I felt that way as well… Do I not love him enough to wish him happiness? That is too selfish to be love and it’s not who I want to be on the planet, but it might be the plain and ugly truth… Eww…
Heavy on my mind, I just woke from a dream that they were moving in together. It was a dream where there was so much going on at once within the deream that I can’t recall any more details than the main premise, which was the moving in thing. She had lots of money and I think they were quite happy… It burned inside me so much that it was shameful to acknowledge. And I’m left wondering…dream/nightmare or premonition? Certain that the basis for my dream was the underlying chronic fear that this is going to happen soon. Wishing I could recall more of the sbtle details within it though…but I can’t. Perhaps the details are too painful for me to allow myself the details?
I’m willing to admit how hurtful the concept is, even though it goes directly against my concept of love and is embarrassing to me to acknowledge. Yet, with this situation and thought, I do feel the tiniest release of the bonds chaining me to him . This is part of what I’ve prayed for for so very long. So I should be grateful for the answered prayer, really… and in some awkward way, I actually am. I just hate the sick feeling that’s coming with it!
AW says this is what she told me a year ago that had to happen before he came back for good – for real and of course, I long to believe that’s the case. Simultaneously, I almost hope it’s just over and done (???!?!!) so I might have the chance to move on finally. And what do I love there anymore? I’ve not been with him since early June. This is the second period of time in the past four years that it’s gone over a few weeks wwith him staying away. I get that mild sense of hopeful comfort that this time it’s really over. The same uncomfortable “comfort” I got once before, just before he returned as usual, shocking my world and my delicate balance.
Embarrassing to admit that I can’t truly fathom it’s genuinely over, while I hope that it is AND desperately pray that it’s not…all at the same maddening time!!!
Taking baby steps (for me – leaps) to start over. Spend a lot of time with Greg. Met Eric Friday and liked him okay. Saw JC and wonder if that’s anything at all, although I did not speak to him. All in the name of deperately trying to start over and open myself to the possibility that it realy is finished and done at last.
Angie devastated our lives yet AGAIN. In such an ugly way that we are reeling from it still! The girls are struggling to understand such utter deceit and ugliness from someone they cared for so much. I’m trying to help them through that, while feeling the same way myself AND kicking myself that I let myself believe in something better than that from thet likes of her. She has wrecked our home, thrown filthy lies and senseless deceit all over our hearts, and then threatened and accused me for good measure. Amazing! What a mess. I’m tired of being the hopeful optimist and can’t stand the thought of losing that quality entirely at the same time…leaving me open to the fear that it’s still not the last time I let someone do this to me – to us.
I also feel sorry for her that it must be terribly difficult to live life within a web of lies constantly fearing they’ll be exposed and juggling people and places to keep them all in the air. And in some ways, I wonder if she’s better off that she can do that and avoid the painful truths that hurt? As opposed to the blatant harsh realities of myself that I’m forced to accept?
Realizations
Writing is my breath, my oxygen, my life-line. I suddenly realize that I can’t write anymore unless I’m gloriously in love or have a knife stabbing in my gut. The rest of the time, I’m too numb to breathe… I’ve become like a person on the operating table so full of anesthesia that they have to be reminded or forced to breathe.
I no longer have the ability to feel anything less than absolute excess. Am I dead? How did this happen? Is the rest only a formality?
Discombobulated
Out of sorts of course because I went there yesterday morning. Had a safety plan in place, but of course that didn’t work. And wondering why I go anywhere of my own volition where I feel the need to have a “safety plan”. My masochistic side must run deep and rampant after everything.
Nope. Didn’t work. Of course it didn’t! Who do I think I’m foolin’, kiddin’, and messin’ with here? As though any feeble attempt at controlling the situation in any way would be successful… I am the definition of insanity at work every day and attempting to function. My tiny, respectful demand was ignored…and I allowed that because I don’t have enough backbone anymore to even look out for my own self interest in even tiny, feeble, pathetic ways…
Yukkk… I am discombobulated and disgusted.
Actually flirted (!!) with someone Thursday night and the immediate response is to run to him first ting Friday morning, as though I’ve got something to make up for. It’s a weird game I’m playing with pretty much myself and it makes no sense!
Tiny deaths of devotion
He showed up Friday around 2 am. First time since the letters the girls sent. I somehow knew he would or at least, had this sneaking hunch. That’s rather typical, but more interesting is that Lexi somehow “knew” he was coming too. Said she’d felt that all day long and instead of staying at a friends’ house as we had planned, actually decided to come home with me. She told me the next day that she’d had the feeling he was coming all day the day before. I think he intuition is far stronger than mine could ever be because she believes in herself and I’ve taught her to trust that voice inside. So interesting to contemplate the similarities between us and the differences within those similarities due to vas environmental experiences.
So, I really felt he was coming. We hung out for awhile debating whether he could stay or not. I told him Lexi could not see him here under any circumstances. That’s when he went into talking about Lexi’s letter and how he didn’t want to ever “damage” them, but that he’d only been here “once”. For the love of God…are you kidding me?? I said, well, you might only remember once because you’re always drunk, but the girls and I are always sober and we remember 30 times easily. What do you mean “once”?? It must be such a convenient gift to have memories only of our choosing. I sure wish I were so blessed!!
So, after mild debate, I drove him straight home. No sex..only a few kisses in the kitchen before we left and a few in the car in his driveway. I felt really proud of myself for this, but sad too. I would have loved to sleep and wake up next to him….but I chose not to regardless how much I would have loved that in the moment.
And here is where it gets irrevocably disgusting: Had lunch with my boss Monday. She asks if he came over Friday. I said “Yes, gosh how did you know?!” She says she saw him out at the bar. Hitting on everything there that has at least 2 teeth, stumbling around lost, and barely functioning while throwing himself at any female whose path he crossed intentionally or otherwise. My boss said she was disgusted and desperately wanted to go up to him to say,”Sober up and go to her. Stop this ridiculous garbage. You have a wonderful girl who adores you and waits for you. What the hell’s the matter with you? Get over this and go to her.”
Apparently his good buddies he was with just walked around laughing at him throughout this. That makes me so mad! My friends actually care more about his dignity and self respect than his own “good buddies”. How sad! And that’s only because they know of the man he once was. My boss is now thoroughly disgusted in spite of all the wonderful things about him I’ve told her over the years and literally feels sorry that I love him at all. She would now be about the 100th person to say to me directly, “You deserve SO much better than him. You could way better than someone like that.”
And after he was rejected by every nasty and maybe-not-so-nasty(?) bar fly, he came straight to me. He must have walked. My boss said his friends were still there and suddenly he was gone. He must’ve walked those few miles straight to my house. I think of how sad I was that I didn’t hold him or make love to him or wake up with him. …How it bothered me all weekend that I’d had to pass on one of the few deeply happy moments I can still experience (however pathetic it might be). And then I think of the only reason he was here was because he was rejected by everything else and that it sure wasn’t for a lack of trying. And I want to vomit that he comes to me and I struggle with the choice to reject him and I hurt for days afterward for making the “right” choice and not the choice I so want… My daughter was the only reason I found the strength to succeed in making that choice.
Do I dare say that I felt the tinies bit of devotion to him die? I’ve hesitated to even document this experience/information regarding him at all because if it doesn’t die at least a little…then I’m truly the most hopeless female that has ever walked the earth. Yet, my fear that it won’t be enough lingers in my gut, surrounded by excuses and memories of the incredible human being he once was…tempting me to distort it all and color it inside my pink fluffy bubble of lasting love and devotion. It’s not as though this is the first “unsavory” story I’ve heard in the past three years of this nonsense. In fact, it’s one of the more typical. Sadly, there are many far more disgusting. I just feel the need to protect my love for him and not give them the validity of writing them down anywhere.
I do have enough hope this moment to almost believe that yes, a teeny-tiny piece of adoration for him has died. Which I’m praying lasts long eough to give me the strength to see him without the deceptively loving and forgiving glasses I always wear. Maybe even the deepest devotion can actually die incrementally in time with enough disappointment, deceit, disgust, and manipulation? Have I knicked the surface even? Do I dare completely give myself that possibility- that hope?
I desperately would like to think that if he came back to me this very second, begging and sober (too many times he’s done this drunk!), that I would be able to say with confidence and conviction, “I love you with everything in me that is pure and true Dave, but I do not choose to be with you again.”
That is my prayer. To be able to say it and mean it…and not feel like my heart is dead inside my chest as soon as the words come out and I watch him walk away…. If that is God’s will of course.
Heaven help me. Thank you.
No answers
Today my heart was sinking faster than the sun and I drove past two small children sitting in a big easy chair in their front lawn. REmnants of a yard sale I presume. Their little legs sticking straight out with their tiny feet just dangling past the edge of the cushion… and I remember being little and the worst thing I could imagine was rain for a baseball game, my sister crying over anything, or my mother not loving me. I knew the broken heart of the child. My heart broke every time I wanted to do something more than anything in the world, but was not given permission or the crush I had on the little boy next door who liked my best friend instead. I vividly remember the pain of those things and feeling completely heart broken. And now, I looked at those two little kids, sharing the big comfy chair in their yard and what fun that must have been for them and I wished with all my heart that I could just go back for even a minute’s reprieve from the vast brokenness of growing up, the vulnerabilities you have that come with age, wisdom, and fears you didn’t used to know even existed as a child, dangling your feet over a sift chair and giggling. The security that tomorrow will always be coming, the trust that that’s just the way the world works and the confidence that you never have to think any differently because you’re going to be a child forever….until you grow up, which is so very far away it’s unfathomable. The only deep pain I knew growng up were the moments that my mother’s lack of compassion, understanding, time, attention, or love were slapped in my face too many times to give me the chance to slip into fantasy world where she did love me. Aftyer those times, I would sit in my room and write stories about how much my mother loved me and all the hugs and kisses she gave me because I was special. And in time, I would feel better. I could almost put myseslf into those stories so well that they became true,- in my openly imaginative mind and the deperation of denial.
I don’t have that luxury anymore. And instead of my hopes and wishes that I would grow up to be loved by a husband and family of my own; people who would love me every day, not just when other people were present. The deepest irony of my lot in life is that life has placed me in the very same position I was in as a child. Ensuring that I never feel the safety and comfort of love I can depend on. Promising me nothing except more insecurity that further serves to make me so difficult to love and respect.
As an adult, I know have some tiny bits of understanding as to why I never got a puppy or a kitten and even why I wasn’t allowed to go to the fair, the carnival or the circus. And I even understand a little that my mom just didn’t feel developing friendships was what mattered for children and why she chose to inhibit and prohibit that seemingly natural part of childhood. I understand the beauty of those tiny broken hearted moments which I was fortunate enough to be able to escape with the simple tools of pen and paper and hiding places. I can think of those sadnesses and smile a little because I almost miss them, as horrible as they seemed at the time. I would trade so quickly to be my daughter’s age again. She has a mother who holds her and tries to understand, although sometimes I don’t really because her life is so entirely and drastically different than the childhood I knew. I love when she is confident that even if I’m upset with her for a minute. I see the confidence that she knows unequivally that I love her no matter what. She knows she is wonderful, beaitiful, capable, and loved…no matter what life throws at her. She has the blessing of that strength and conviction and all the confidence that comes with it. The confidence that children should be given to grow within from it.
And I am still a child without security, longing for love and respect and compassion from the one person who insists he will never give that to me again. My worthiness doesn’t matter, my beauty, my abilities, my spirit, the light of my soul…none of it matters because just like my mother he will never choose to love me again, at least not with his heart and maybe not even with his body. I should somehow find the blessing in that and be grateful for even knowing I once had something so beautiful, but I’m apparently a stubborn, hopeless case who just pines and hurts and waits for the pain to kill me and make the life-long suffering of this very affliction cease once and for all.
I wait and pray. I write and wish. I hope and dream. And nothing. It’s all a twisted repeat cycle only furthering my insecurity becvause now I know that he once tried to love me exactly the way I always prayed and hoped for. And he does not now and I don’t have the ability to write it all into a happy ending strong enough that my mind can forget for awhile that I’l grown up with the same broken heart and the very same unfulfilled prayer.
Maybe God’s lesson for me is that love should never have been so important to me;that perhaps some of us are not intended to receive it, but just to be gratefulo for the ability to feel it and give it away to others. I don’t know what God has in mind for me. I only know that it has never been what I’ve dreamed or prayed for and the chances of that ever changing are almost down to zero due to the circumstances life has placed upon me.
Hex 2: “Receptivity to Love”
Question to I Ching:
What do I need to do regarding my situation with DK?
Answer:
Hexagram 2:” Receptivity to Love:
Your love life is on fertile ground right now. This hexagram denotes “devotion,” “readiness,” and the creative spirit of the Earth. A powerful relationship has begun or is soon to manifest. This hexagram reminds one to be open to the idea of love, as love can come from where you least expect it. Give and you will receive. Offer a kind word to someone, a hug, a greeting or an offer of assistance. See love for what it is: A conscious act of devotion and a willingness to stand by a special person. Creativity and the act of creation are referenced here, and creative energies will play an extremely significant role.”
Thinking if I stay any more “receptive” to him, I’ll begin to take on the characteristics of his garbage “receptacle”!! Or maybe it’s too late….and I already bear those characteristics… I already define giving till it hurts and have no further interest in the martyrdom lifestyle that brings me. Nor does there seem to be a whole lot of Return on Investment. And martyrs are rarely respected until they actually die for their cause to humanity. My cause to humanity in this is to cease getting on humanity’s nerves from being a whiney cry baby:-D
Listen to me as though I get nothing in return! I get everything in huge amounts spread out among tiny small moments!
Facing repercussions today. Little nervous, but way-laying that by reflecting on how I ever got to this place at all and the madness that holds me here! Things will be fine. I know it. It’s all going according to some greater plan, I’m sure:)
