Gratitude…
19 Jul 2010 5 Comments
in Ex's, Life, Mark D., random kindness Tags: blessings, gratitude, hope, Life Lessons, ponderings, Questions, relationships, self-respect
Lately I’ve really been thinking a lot about gratitude. I look for it in others to see how it looks on them. I regularly exercise my own gratitude and stay in a grateful place…
The more I’m aware of gratitude, the more I see a chronic lack of it in so many. And I wonder, perhaps mine is too large and thus, easily taken for granted and/or manipulated? Or do I just happen to have regular contact and life dealings with basically ungrateful (selfish?) people?
My ex-husband is a most generous man for the most part. I would never deem him selfish in any monetary sense and yet, the man has a perspective that is selfish to such an extreme that I have trouble comprehending his view, much less reconciling it with the man I know who would help me or our children out with money to just about any length we requested, as long as it wasn’t just an obnoxious request… So, I wonder just how a generous man so regularly maintains a perspective of every day dealings quite as” ME, ME, ME!!!” as this man does?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful for his financial generosity and I do understand that’s a rare circumstance and blessing for a divorced, single mother. I just can’t help but wonder how someone so financially generous can maintain such absolute selfishness? The two just don’t mesh. And my petty side, when faced with this realization over and over, wants to say, “My gosh, you are the most unbelievably selfish man I’ve ever known!” And yet, I could never in good conscience say that given the overall picture of his mostly quite generous nature, which I strive to stay grateful for and feel it’s the utmost of ingratitude to even think such a thing about him!
…there just seems to be a point though, when generosity goes beyond merely being willing to write a check to help. Or more importantly maybe it’s less about the money and more about the mutual experience and feelings involved. It’s so much easier to stay grateful toward a person who is full of gratitude in return! But a person who think his act of financial generosity is so far above and beyond anyone else’s kind gestures that he treats them as though they just don’t count…or as though they are expected…and still don’t quite make the cut of something to be grateful for…
I’m sure I sound like a spoiled brat…and perhaps I am? No, I’m not able to help many out with much money compensation or assistance(although I certainly do when I’m able), but I am that person who does any and every thing else I possibly can in order to feel I’m a helpful human being, if only generous with my time, compassion, or other things which don’t hold a price tag of any kind and therefore can never be measured by today’s materialistic standard of “generosity”. Somehow it just feels frustrating to stay grateful for every little smidgen of generosity from a person, when that person is completely oblivious to any gifts of kindness he’s been offered. Almost as though anything I could ever offer is merely expected, while anything I receive should fill me with gratitude.
I just don’t know. It isn’t that I DO things for the gratitude. I prefer to do kindness anonymously actually…but when that’s not possible and the person does know what you’ve done (or at least knows your intentions), a little gratitude goes a long way toward feeling that kindness made any difference in this world or for that person whatsoever. I think feeling like your best efforts mean nothing just sucks a lot of the momentum to make any attempt at this at all.
And at least when it’s done anonymously, one can always assume and pretend that it was indeed special and a valuable contribution to some person’s life, day, heart, etc, somewhere. Even if it’s not appreciated at all, you’re just not so acutely aware of how useless your kind intentions and attempts were.
Moving, flowing, stagnating…decaying…
11 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in abuse, broken heart, Dave, Ex's, just messed up, Life, LOVE Tags: abuse, abusive relationships, broken, broken dreams, broken heart, confusion, Dave, DAVE K., destruction, fucked up, karma, Life, Life Lessons, lost spirit, LOVE, ponderings, Questions, relationships, unconditional love
Now what? Will the stench of my battered and beaten soul carry over? Will the people here smell it as easily as the people there seemed to? Will the breakdown of the very fiber of my being, atom by atom, continue here to break down?
Woke up this morning to thoughts of him, resentfully wondering when will the first day in six years that I do not think even once of him? …not remember some cruelty, or worse yet some ancient loving kindness which should by now be so stale and moldy that I’m not at all tempted to revisit a site or feeling so ancient its very authenticity should now be questioned…because it’s validity has been so thoroughly contaminated by age and drenched in poisonous toxins of regular cruelty… When?
…can people smell the decay of a rotting heart, the bloody and beaten spirit from 2,000 miles away from the scene of the crime? And four years after the initial deadly stab? All the countless following merely a swift revival of that heart, just to rip its tenderly mended pieces apart yet again? Does mere redundancy smell of the bitter metallic scent of the initial blood-fest?
“Stalked” his FB page the other day, overwhelmed with curiosity. (Maybe that’s why the thoughts? Haha..who am I kidding here?!) Yes, he has an official (albeit not FB status official yet) new bi-annual flavor. So interesting! Took the man four years after our split to make a commitment for anything beyond a one-night-stand, well other of course than the 2 AM booty call “regular”… And now he’s suddenly a serial committer? WTF?! His booty-call turned engagement split was a mere 7 months ago or so and he’s already on to another “girlfriend”? Is this due to the hardened heart he’s claimed so many times that I caused as he stabbed another knife into my heart, yet another time? Or is it desperation on his part to stay away from me..or desperation to have someone, anyone, something meaningful in his beginning-to-age years? A sudden newly developed fear of being truly alone? Exaggerated quick commitment because his fear of commitment has grown beyond his control?
After crying and whining for over four years that he could not find what we had..nothing even close to the passion, joy, and love we shared, suddenly he’s meeting these types of suitable replacements back-to-back?
What is that even? Other than either just plain good fortune (I mean, WOW!) or mere pathetic desperation stemming from a weariness of chronic one-or-two-night stands with faceless, nameless people full of drunken meaningless redundant sexual escapades?
I shouldn’t even ponder any of this..it certainly matters not a smidgen on any level at this point… However, it’s mystifying to me… What on earth does this even mean? So odd…but hopefully he’s found “the one”. In spite of my resentments that he refuses to leave my heart and mind once and for all (ugh!), I actually do wish him happiness…..well that mixed with a bit of karma too perhaps…hehe… After all, I am still a human being, perhaps barely, but I am…I am…still flawed and human after all!
Goodbye Tomorrow
02 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in abuse, Anger!, broken heart, Dave, fears, just messed up, Life, Life Lessons, LOVE, moving Tags: abuse, abusive relationships, broken, broken dreams, broken heart, Broken hearts, confusion, Dave, DAVE K., disappontment, dysfunction, fucked up, heartbreak, Life, Life Lessons, LOVE, manipulation, memories, ponderings, Questions, relationships, unconditional love, wishes, WTF
Tomorrow is the day!!! We fly out of here with a one-way ticket….no return, no changing minds, no turning back…. it’s one-way, baby! Scary and exhilarating. I will cry. Good-byes are in the realm of unbearable for me…literally. I often find I’d rather be rude and avoid people than ever say good-bye. I’m not even good at saying good-bye to the people I don’t like! I just detest good-byes! Typically, I avoid them like the plague…
There is no avoiding tomorrow… Which means there will be crying, sobbing, heaving, the embarrassing kind of tears…the “OMG Dave and I broke up” kinda crying probably…ewww!
I returned DK’s clothes I’ve had for a while. I wouldn’t want the next ridiculous accusation to be that I’m a thief. Sadly, that’s not even an absurd or paranoid fear with the way he bashes my character. Crazy to realize that after hitting the best of the best and the worst of the worst, the man has zero feelings for me at all. After all the nights he came running to me, crying and sighing, full of words he couldn’t get out, as well as words he never should have let out. After it all, there is nothing. Empty. Void. Zero. Nada.
I thought of keeping his clothes out of spite even, but realized I just don’t want them and he does, so why not take the high road? It’s not as if keeping a few articles of his favorite clothing would ever compensate for all the cruel damage he’s done anyway…and it would mostly just serve to make me feel petty and small. So, I dropped them at his house when he wasn’t home..nor was the new “bi-annual flavor of the month” there either.
Strangely, I don’t wish him ill. I almost wish I did or could, but I just don’t. I even sometimes have little prayers and hopes that perhaps this is finally “the one” for him..this latest strange car parked at his house down the street from my soon-to-be old house. Perhaps this is the happiness he needed, minus any inconveniences or challenges which I represented to him after all the years and tears? The mean part of me wants to hope he just gets what he’s dished out to me for so long – cruelty. But, my heart would ache to think of him hurting even a moment the way he’s hurt me. I don’t know if that makes me strong or just plain stupid..but I’m leaning toward the “stupid” answer.
I’ll never know how someone could be and do so much good (and horrible) in my life and then just be absolutely nothing. The two just contradict themselves. I feel as though this sets a low-level of importance on anything. As though the most wondrous of experiences and feelings will always be significantly lessened in my mind and heart because maybe someday that very thing will merely be a void of anything, like this whole experience was. If anyone had ever tried to tell me that I would be literally nothing to the man who loved me so much he cried, I would have laughed at the ridiculous thought alone and been certain as I’ve been of nothing in my life, but certain that it all meant something significant.
Nope. It all was merely nothing. Every tear, every effort, every cruelty I allowed hoping it would make things even again, hoping it would open his heart back up, hoping we could at least have a friendship…..all for nothing. It feels as though I’m so dispensable and worthless that not even a shred of emotion, good OR bad, can be mustered up on behalf of it ALL….that just feels “off” to me…impossible actually…and yet it’s totally possible and realistic today.
And I wonder if I’ll ever bother to waste a tear, an emotion, much less an effort on any other person who claims to love me? After all, if it’s possible to just mean nothing as though it never was or happened, then why would one ever waste even a moment on such trivial, useless-ness? Seems pretty silly really…
And I think to myself that either he really IS a sociopath (that’s a hurtful hard thought really) or I am just a crazy person (always a possibility). All I know is that this feels like I’m having to realize that one plus one does not equal two, macaroni does not go well with cheese, and french fries are not commonly eaten with ketchup. Feels as though the whole world is not what I once knew; as though nothing at all is what I’ve ever thought. It’s almost more upside down and confused than the day we broke up. I knew he cared and I at least knew why we split. This though…this makes no sense whatsoever.
Radical acceptance here that the grass is orange and the sky is green. Nothing is was or will be what it seems…. I can only hope that this realization will keep things in perspective for me from here on out and I’m never again tempted to place value (much less such precious value) on such trifling and trivial matters as this has apparently been.
What a lesson!
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