The Death of Muchness

It’s all empty.

It is a cruel irony that after 43 years of begging for love, begging to be deemed “worthy” of love, life, existence, the right to have feelings and thoughts, to count as a human being in this world I never requested to be brought into….
That I give up because I don’t. I don’t deserve those things. I can’t even give birth to anyone who will believe the nonsense hope I’ve been holding onto since my earliest memory… That I, too, am worthwhile.
I don’t know why God or whoever, put me here…a punching bag of regret and ridiculous dreams I guess…a cautionary tale in why not to love or hope or believe we all matter, each and every one. I make the easiest target. Hell, it’s not even sport!
He came to me last night… out of the very same deep blue abyss from where I starting losing my muchness. Imagine that?
I think it’s been since October that I saw him last… No communication whatsoever between then and now. …until last night. Until last night…gosh, that could be THE defining description of the past eight years of him! Until last night… Until last night… Until last night…
And I can’t possibly know why. I know how – via cab. I know what – nothing but a moment. I know where – right here. I will never know why though. Why last night? Why after all this time again? Why…? Why me? Why not she? Or that one? Or this one here? Why?
And that defining moment of which I’ve now had 1,462,892 and chosen the same definition again and again. Ugh…fuck that moment dammit AND my stuck-like-a-skipping-record repeated choice.
And driving him to his truck this morning, I ask myself the question, why? Do I even feel anything anymore? Once upon a time, I was simply trying to hold desperately to my muchness. My muchness is long gone now, so why?
The physical element isn’t totally gone…so is that my why? Without my muchness, even that physical aspect is altered from before. It is good, but not the phenomenon it was with my love, hope, faith, and muchness. Now, it is simply what it is, which is nothing. Nothing whatsoever.
The good part is, I can take it or leave it finally…so “taking it” actually feels like a choice, an option. And, it is good to feel it won’t kill me either way. Can’t kill that which is already dead.
Yes, I am dead. At this point, it is all just borrowed moments. Tiny flashing moments borrowed from a collection of my muchness memorabilia. So… why?
Why not? What matters is gone and the rest…well, it just doesn’t matter either way.

Velvet Validity

It felt like his innocence was gone. I saw that in him in glimpses before of his cruel apathy, but this time was different. And not just an age thing either, it was a sexual thing… I think any time you go back to someone you had before, it’s never the same. And it’s certainly never exactly the way you have formed the memories in your mind over the absent time. For me, it’s always a bit of a disappointment; it’s somehow just less than it was before…or maybe than it had been in your rose colored hindsight.

And yet, not exactly; not with him. No, my every moment with him, comical, serious, sexual, friendly is all blanketed with the velvet validity of everything I remember. All my time with him is though. He is my exception. My exception to every rule. I said to him, “I do want to be friends…and I get sad when I think we can’t be. I mean, I love you…I love you either way, you know?” He responded, “I know you do.” Yes, he does know.

I’m playing Rose Colored Glasses – the song that in my mind always defined my dad’s unconditional and enduring love for my mother. How strange that even as a child with no comprehension of my parents’ marriage or romantic love at all really, I always felt that song was my daddy’s song for my mother. Maybe it’s the conversation we had one day while riding in his red Bonneville with the pin striped velour seats I thought were so soft and pretty. I was maybe 10 or 11 and this song came on the radio and he turned it up and said in his deep joyously loud voice, “Oh baby, your daddy sure burned this one up!” I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked him what he meant by that and he laughed and said, “I used to play that one on the jukebox over and over and over again until people would tell me to knock it off!” Wise beyond my years even then about lost or unrequited love, Daddy didn’t even have to actually say the words, I knew he meant this happened during the worst of his heartbreak era after my mother left him.

I am undoubtedly my father’s daughter. My mother never suffered from silly nostalgic memories or wasted time wallowing in a broken heart from lost love. My sister surely doesn’t suffer that affliction either. Neither of them would ever be such ridiculously silly romantics. Just me. Just me…and my daddy. So maybe it’s my family legacy that I uphold with this unconditional and enduring love I have for D? Maybe this kind of everlasting depth of devotion just runs in my veins?

Perhaps the only love that could have forever kept me from accepting my love for D again is my daughter’s… Her beautiful heart was the only thing which gave me the strength to at least minimize the depth of emotion I have for this man and place it on that tiny back burner. …And as life’s cruel steel-fisted irony would have it, I now no longer have hers.

For the love of Pete, will my life ever cease to fully represent the sappiest of country songs? Having been born into a situation of unrequited maternal love, chronic loss, regular betrayal, a thick aura of unrequited love surrounds me as I live my silly old Lifetime Movie life. And I don’t fool myself anymore into believing my happy ending might come. I think this is just what my life was meant to be for some reason: a cautionary tale about love and loss – the kind where you cry at the end because your heart aches, not tears of joy that it all turned around and the heroine overcame at the end. Hell, maybe I’m not even the heroine? Maybe I’m just the sideline story going on in the background, as the good guy gets the girl and rides into the sunset hand in hand with the love of his life? Maybe my daddy was the star of the show and it ended bittersweet…or maybe it’s one of my daughters’ show? And the happy ending will come for her life?

Oh well, I just love him. And just as I feel some sense of resentment at that blasted stubborn truth I can’t seem to change no matter what I do(ugh!), I hear another song which perfectly identifies my daddy as well, Here For a Good Time.
Daddy enjoyed life to its fullest all the way to his very last second. He may have felt the acute sting of lost love just like I do, but he never let it stop him from laughing, loving, and living to the fullest for very long. He had hiccups from it and he kept right on going. Unlike him, I have full-on break downs.

So, in his honor, I’m not going to beat myself up today for loving this man the way I do. I’m just not. It isn’t going to change anything, so I may as well just embrace it. After all, the unconditional love of my daddy is gone now and my daughters don’t care either way anymore. And even brief moments with D give me the bittersweet glimpses of joy my daddy miraculously maintained with his rose-colored love for my mother till the very end of his life. Bittersweet was good enough for my daddy till his dying day, so it’s surely good enough for me to appreciate and not resent or fight.

After all, it really just is exactly what it is.

With or Without…Him

Will I ever stop loving him? I truly think not…

Things are better, but only as friends… a friendship which is slowwwwwlllyyyy developing and gaining trust (I think!?). I’m okay, no actually, I’m grateful for the friendship we are creating. I would rather have him as a dear friend than not have him in my life at all.

Just when I really believe my feelings for him have finally transformed into a more brotherly-like love, I will look at him and…

I just stopped over to his house to get a donation for a cause I’m collecting for. Coincidentally, as I’m driving over there, the song he once told me in the smack dab middle of our personal not-together-but-not-separate hell starts playing. Even as I pull in his drive, the song (With or Without You) is still playing. I can’t help but play the moment when he asked me to be sure they played that at his funeral through my mind. A thought I’ve not allowed myself to re-live in quite a few years. But I do now. It’s safer now, right? We are truly just friends. Pulling in his drive, I hesitate to turn the car and song (and sweet memory) off, but I gotta grab the donation and get somewhere else.

He’s just fresh from the gym, wearing sweats and kinda sweaty… I actually think my feelings have changed. No, I mean I really believe that.

Then he holds me for a moment and after all this time of craziness and whatnot, I feel for the first time in years, more than a mere friendly hug. His arms wrap around me just a bit softer and more tender than they did for our last few hugs. They hold onto me just a tad tighter and longer. At first, I don’t want to let go. I want to cling to him for life the minute I feel that something more from him. I do hold on, not for dear life, but like him, just a smidgeon more from my soul and not just from my trained-to-love-him-as-a-friend mind (that protection mode I’ve developed after all this time).

And I think to myself, am I imagining this? Is my eight year long fantasy running away with my rational side? I hold on for a minute right back, then gently push away from him and tell myself, Yes, you’re only imagining that something extra. Okay yeah, the hug is slightly different than he’s been hugging you for the past few years, but it does not, and I mean does NOT mean anything.

Snapped back to the reality, we continue a friendly chat for a few minutes. As I prepare to leave (no matter what type of visit/relationship/hug/whatever, I always, always hate leaving his house!), he grabs his donation to carry to my car for me. I walk next to him to grab my handbag sitting on the table. I’m not sad we are just friends. I don’t look at the picture on his refrigerator with the girl he’s dating now and feel any jealousy or even any hurt or twinge of “what if” like I once would have felt like a nail piercing my heart. No, I don’t feel that anymore. So yes, my love for him now must truly be friendly only; love coming from that pure place in my heart which loves forever when it truly loves at all. So, as I’m standing rather close to him grabbing my bag and he’s got his donation bag, I’m preparing to leave. We are laughing about something trivial and suddenly he sets the donation bag back down…(what? what is he doing? No donation after all?).. Yeah, he sets it back down….to hug me again!

This is an even longer hug than the first one…and just as tender..but maybe I sense something almost sensual in this one as he holds me close and brushes the small section of exposed skin on my upper back. Is it? No! I only love him as a friend… yet my heart soars, pitter-patters, skips, and plays hopscotch like a little girl. And this time I struggle with correcting my feelings and I rest my head in the nook of his neck and shoulder where it has always fit just right and I want to let go and melt into him like I have a million times before.

Oh, will I ever, EVER stop loving him?

Moving, flowing, stagnating…decaying…

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

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!

the home that wasn’t

In exactly one week, we head off to a whole new life…a new world to us, new environment, new culture, new (to us) house…..everything new and different!!

I am scared, excited, fearful, exhilarated, anxious, and sad…  I see the sun peeking up as I write and I think of the thousands of sun rises and sunsets which have encroached upon this world for me…  I’ve had the happiest sunsets I ever thought possible right here in this little frustrating town.  I’ve had the absolutely most phenomenal sunrises here as well.  I can say with complete candor, I’ve had experiences and moments here which were the very stuff that dreams are made of…the very fiber of fairy tales come to life.  I have made some unbelievably wonderful friends and known some interesting people.  I’ve laughed till my stomach hurt for days following and my cheeks felt like they had done strenuous Pilates.  I’ve cried more tears than I knew I had in me.  Here, my heart has been so full of love I thought it would burst and so broken, I thought I would die.  I’ve spent days on the beach about which I could have written novels, both comedic and romantic.  I’ve met pilots traveling through, partied with hundreds of people inside military planes.  I’ve gone swimming by moonlight, laughing through the waves.  I’ve skipped in the rain and laughed in the snow. I’ve sat out and I’ve danced.  I’ve lived in ten different houses here, all with unique people and experiences.  I’ve been single here.  I’ve been married here.  I’ve been a mother here and responsibility free.  I had my first real boyfriend here and my first grown-up love.  I’ve learned lessons I never even imagined as a child.  I’ve grown, I’ve stagnated, I’ve flown free as a butterfly and I’ve been imprisoned like a criminal.

I’ve played house and wife, mother and employee.  I’ve played conservative party-girl, lost hippie child, and unemployed beach bum.  When I moved away for college and a few years later my world crashed, I ran here.  This has been the only home (“base”) I’ve ever known.  The only place I’ve been able to return to (come “home” to)in the whole world  no matter what happened.  As much as I’ve often felt out-of-place here, out of sorts, and like an “outsider”, over the years, I’ve become this place; both the things I love here and the things I don’t.  This place is a part of me…a huge and irrevocable piece of my growth and my essence.  I will carry people and memories, lessons and experiences from here as though it’s part of my genetic DNA.  In spite of the fact that I did not “grow up” here, I very much did grow up here in so very many ways.  The people and things I’ve done and known here have shaped my soul in a good ways and bad.  The sand from the beaches has become embedded in my skin forever.  The memories rooted in my soul, never to be un-done, even if someday forgotten.  I carry every person, every moment, every encounter, every drop of beach water, every crashing wave, every love, every hurt, every tear, and every laugh with me for the rest of my days.   I’ve been hated here, loved here, nurtured and abused here on every imaginable and unimaginable level.  I’ve wildly dreamed of escaping this hell-hole and I’ve ached to return to its embracing shores…

I’ve never known a “home”, a home base, a place to run to…never.  And yet, I knew that here; the home of a place to go when I was lost and scared in the world (my dad).  The home where I felt I was always supposed to be, the place I walked into and realized I had been holding my breath for so many years, I didn’t realize how beautiful breathing could be (Dave).

This has been the only home I’ve ever known by any definition or connotation of the word “home”.   I am scared to the pit of my soul to leave here…and yet I’m scared equally to stay.  I fear I can never come “home” again, in the way that this is now my home.  I’m a mother and a college graduate and I wasn’t even raised here, and yet somehow it almost feels like I’m leaving the nest for the very first time.  I feel like a high school graduate heading off into the world on my own into the far and unknown beyond.

What will be here when I next return to visit, to live, to escape, to…????  What feelings will remain?  How will I be changed?  Nothing will ever stay the same as it is now and has been.

Life is scary.  Change is inevitable.  This was never my home…and yet strangely it’s also been the only home I’ve ever known.

Dream intruders

It’s so unfortunate that we can’t control our dreams…

Fitful sleep tonight…tossing and turning… Dave K. everywhere!!  I don’t want him invading my dreams like he did my home for so many years.  It’s such a relief when he’s not running through my mind much.  I feel such a sense of relief, and then he shows up rampant in my dreams anyway…ugh!  He has no business there except to torture me.  It’s frustrating to think that I’m fading him out at last and feeling successful with eliminating him from my mind and life, but my subconscious is still holding on so tightly, it seems.  Otherwise how could he get in my dreams?

And this was not a good one by any means of interpretation.  Seemed like a cruel reminder and additional experience with his denial of me as a human being and a loved one, past or present!  His house was all rearranged and that was excruciatingly uncomfortable for me for some odd reason…I looked for “the” sofa and found it covered in an obscure corner somewhere.  Relatives showed up (his not mine) and questioned my motives, my actions, and my behaviors over the past 5 years.  They didn’t have even an eighth of the truth and were very critical, but still kind.  He still had all my letters from days past, brought them out to show everyone, and cruelly laughed at them. That was painful.  I hated him for that. So mean.  …And a gambling problem…a BIG one.  I told him that a psychic lady had told me of that problem years ago, but I hadn’t believed her.  All in all, it was like I was at an informal trial at his house with Dave and his relatives as judge and jury and I wasn’t able to convey any truths or experience because I had already been deemed “bad” and of course “crazy” too, so nothing I said mattered.  Very hurtful and frustrating…

As though he had never loved me…..had never hurt even a moment over all the things he’s cried and beaten me up about for so many years because of how much I “devastated” him.  Just one big charade apparently for the sole purpose of getting in my pants and keeping me covered in guilt so he had emotional control over me.  As if there had never been any reality or worthwhile substance of emotions…

It was such a painful dream and leaves me wondering are these just my deep fears trying to make desperate sense of all the nonsense that has happened or is that the ugly reality?  After everything, it’s nauseating to even ponder that as a possibility.

Why NOT play Kick-the-Carcass?

No consecutive hours of sleep for what seems like weeks, although I can easily remember not so long ago when it had been more like months, so I logically know I can pull through this “short stretch”.  However, when n the midst of the sleeplessness, it feels as though I’ll pass out, die, or just maybe snap into forgettable pieces.  I keep reminding myself that it’s been worse and try to be grateful for the little bits of sleep I do get blessed with.

Stressing the move, finances, the gossip and lies (of course, as usual), THE ex, the children, packing, moving across the entire country from everything I’ve ever known, living out of district for my kids’ school out west, my ex husband, and his motives and choices, and how they’re going to relate and affect our lives out there, so far from the only  home we’ve ever known.

With all of this, I’m struck hard with acute awareness of the severe alteration of my heart, my perspective,  my very essence…  Who I once was is gone, with all that’s happening now and all I am responsible to be and do, with all the fears that are hanging just over my head like a shark’s mouth ready to swallow me whole, I really just want to sit down and bawl myself sick.  Grief hangs all around me like buzzards and flies on a  carcass.  I know, I know…  This is nothing new…I’ve been a barely-breathing carcass for years now, my only traceable movement being the slight shakes and involuntary shuffles and slides  of a dead body that’s being kicked a few extra times for good measure.  Big thanks to Dave and friends for that lovely prompt..without it, the buzzards might literally begin to feast on my mourning flesh, not just the metaphorical feastings of Dave and friends on the leftover remnants of my heart, my soul, my reputation, my freaking character!  After all, at this point, the pickings are so slim and meager that I genuinely can’t understand the interest…surely there’s not enough there to satisfy even a starving soul?

Apparently so, as I can’t even plan my pathetic, late-as-hell “escape” without a kick every once in a while for good measure.  I’m struggling and fighting this damned sense of victimization which I hate so much it makes me sick even to write of these things any more.  Or maybe it’s that burning sense of injustice and flood of unkindness and continued crucification which keeps me from withering up and dying completely.  It’s almost cost me a great degree of my voice and I do not know what I could even be after he’s fully taken my voice and my ability to write.  It just might be my lingering indignance which is holding the shell of my existence together at all, keeping it from crumbling quietly into dust. Perhaps I should stop fighting this victimized-feeling and embrace it, allow it to strengthen me out of my hopeless feeling of being powerless, beaten, and small?   Hmm….

I have comprised a plan of revenge.  In my circumstances, I have no way in which to actually carry it through, but it’s a lovely fantasy nonetheless.  I imagine that many people love me and know the truth of these past five years…the whole down-n-dirty, humiliating truth and they are so outraged and angry they begin a letter-writing campaign on my behalf – no, on the behalf of all people who have gone through emotional and mental abuse.  Upon me leaving my home, he receives hundreds of letters from people who know the truth, faceless people who are not afraid to stand up against this man’s cruel persecution of my spirit.  Each day or week he receives lovely pieces of mail from people who know what he has done and refuse to buy into his lies and bullshit, as a regular reminder that he did not just “get away with it”.  And he, like me, has no chance, opportunity, or method by which to combat the attack.  He would just have to sit in it, regularly reminded of his cruelty, its effects, and his powerlessness!  Then he might have to spend some time in paranoia, looking at every stranger who meets his eye and wondering, does he know?  Does she?  Just as I still worry with every person I meet or pass, “Did he tell them I was crazy?  Did he tell that person I’m a psycho?  A slut?  A lying cheater?  Wonder what story  that person heard?”

For it seems, just when I’ve let the worries go and have convinced myself anyone who believes his garbage at this point is merely a victim of sorts themselves and is entitled to my sympathy, when I finally get to the “I don’t give a damn what he’s said to anyone”, another lovely twisted story of his finds its way to me…piling on top of the huge pile of garbage he’s dumped on me that I’m already trying to climb out from underneath.  And the exhaustion revives itself in me.  The sense of powerlessness and damned victimization I hate SO much, gathers al around my soul to begin feasting again.

I sent him a message asking him just to please SHUT UP.  Leave me alone.   Reminding him he has not a single reason at this point in his game to speak my name even, let alone tarnish it further.  He has won by yards and miles already. The damage done is irreversible even now.  I’m leaving and his story will always stand in my place of absence; not mine, not the truth, but his sick and twisted deviation of my person. I can’t imagine any greater victory for him?  So why continue beating this broken and beaten thing?  Does he really still get that much pleasure and self-satisfaction from it…even NOW?  Why not just SHUT UP?   No, go above and beyond to make everyone always, think the person you’ve victimized is psycho crazy, then you never have to worry about being held accountable for the cruelty you perpetually heaped upon her…  After all, she’s just “crazy”.  Nothing she says will ever account to anything after you’ve told that to enough people ad nauseum.

Why am I so surprised anyway?  Why wouldn’t anyone want to continue kicking and beating the person they’ve already slaughtered?  After all, she’s dead already…. It’s not like anyone will ever find out the truth now…or believe it coming from a crazy-psycho dead girl even if they did!                                 

Ohhh it would be Christmas every day to just imagine this letter-campaign of outraged people, addressing the truth to him which he feels he has sufficiently buried beneath his heavily placed offensive-tactic accusations and insults. He could just laugh away a few letters, but if hundreds came to him long after I’m gone, that would have to make him think maybe he wasn’t really fooling everyone after all.  His mailbox becoming the screaming, lingering Tell-Tale Heart of an Edgar Allen Poe story!  It’s a harmless, but juicy thought in my weak state of stress, fatigue, and hopeless indignation…

(insert evil cackle here)

Washed in a forgotten moment

There was one night…it was pounding rain in fat bullets from the sky.  We ran quickly in the house, but still we were drenched!   Tiny Jake was soaking wet and shivering. Grabbing a towel, I wrapped him up snuggly and tight like an infant swaddled.  And you…. You….  I could see directly into your heart through the look in your eyes.  It was big and warm, vibrantly green  and had rays of hope shooting from it like a starburst.  So bright and full, it shimmered all the way through your eyes, dusting me with a mist of sparkling light as you watched me drying Jake.

I could have sworn at that moment that love was not merely an intangible emotion or some silly concept for romance novels and love songs, but solid and as truly touchable as a soft, furry, smiling puppy… shivering and wet from the driving rain. 

Maybe that is why I still ache for you every time it rains…

“…Ladybugs Katherine! Lots and lots of ladybugs!”

Lazing in the glorious sun in my back yard yesterday, chatting with girls and Mark about the big upcoming move, feeling mostly excited and thankfully, only mildly overwhelmed at the moment thinking of all that has to be done…all that’s to be left behind, and what’s to come…  Sweet ladybug lands on my thigh, just hanging out for a moment.  I try to recall what this means.  I have a vague recollection of some movie or some symbolic meaning of this ladybug in this moment.

 “Ladybug: Perhaps best known as an emblem of luck, the Ladybug is a love symbol too. Asian traditions hold to the belief that if caught and then released, the Ladybug will faithfully fly to your true love and whisper your name in his/her ear. Upon hearing the Ladybug’s message your true love will hurry his/her way to your side. Ancient farmers of the land have considered the Ladybug a good omen as she controls aphid populations. The number of spots on a Ladybug’s back is said to indicate the number of months to pass before the wish for love comes true.”

My ladybug flew off and then returned briefly to the same spot on my thigh.  She only hung out with me for a moment…long enough for me to curiously wonder.  Later I found the above explanation when I Googled animal symbolism.

Strange feelings stirred this weekend with Mark’s visit.  He shared some upsetting news with me and it turned my world around.  It was as if some ancient forgotten feelings were gently brushed. There seems to be a woman he has casually dated, who is claiming she is pregnant with his child.  Oh geesh…hello and welcome to the Jerry Springer Show!  What the heck is this?! I remained fairly calm at first but the feelings slowly snuck up on me as I pondered and tears threatened to spill.  I was hurt. 

Only last Christmas I asked him if we could have another baby.  He was adamantly and decidedly against this. Mostly I was teasing him, but I was really hoping at the same time.  A part of me longs to know what a planned pregnancy feels like before I hang up my reproductive abilities forever.  I love our children and wouldn’t think to change a thing regarding them, but I have the saddest sense of never knowing the excitement that comes with learning I am pregnant, in spite of the fact that I have two fabulous children.  I only know the, “Oh my GOD! I’m pregnant..what the heck should/am I going to do?”  I don’t know the, “Yay…LOOK we’re having a baby!” feeling.  At one point, I was absolutely certain I would have this with Dave, but that’s not going to ever be and I resigned myself to the mercy of my children’s father hopefully granting me the third and first expectedly planned child.  Again, not to be…

And now this…a “stranger” having a child with MY children’s father?  A half-brother or sister right in the delicate era when I’m desperately trying to explain intelligent life-choices to my teen/pre-teen girls?  Immediately following my pleadings for a planned child? It’s upsetting to me in a very selfish way and in a not-so-selfish way in regards to my daughters and the family we have created in spite of the divorce.  Mark confessed strong hunches and disbelief that this really is his child.  I admit I share these hunches, but I can’t tell if this is wishful, desperate hope or actual intuition.  Really feels like intuition, as the circumstances surrounding this pregnancy as relayed by Mark, are clouded in a dark suspicion.  Apparently he had “the” conversation with this woman and even prior to their intimate relations which resolutely explained his unwillingness and total lack of desire for any more children.  I certainly am no hypocrite and fully understand taking chances and what happens sometimes, as I have one unplanned child with this man and another one who borders between the planned and unplanned – but purposely and knowingly (on both our parts) taking a BIG chance area.  However, something just feels different with this.  Mark and I never had this conversation he had with this woman, until last Christmas…years after our two children’s births.  And keeping these children was never a thought to Mark.  He would discuss no other options with either actually.

I did finally find my voice to say softly, “Dammit, I wanted us to have one more and I even begged you last Christmas!” I was a little comforted when he replied, “I know and it would be totally different if this was you.”

Something passionate and historically forgotten (but not lost?) for this man, this unbelievably fantastic father of my children, awoke with those words. Momentarily I forgot my sadness and the- what-will-this-do-to-our-children fears and it dawned on me that there IS one person on this planet with whom it is different for me in a good way.  A place on this earth where I have carte blanche and the huge margin of error I’ve never known and always hoped to have somewhere in my lifetime…or recognized might be the more appropriate word?  Hindsight tells me I always had it here, but never fully realized or comprehended. And as hurt and afraid and sad as I felt, it was temporarily overcome by love for this beautiful man, who after everything, does love me and does put me in a position of greater respect.  This man who, other than our two terrific children, has more reason than anyone to NOT put me in this position.  The same man who knows of so many of my faults, mistakes and truly ugly characteristics…still chooses to give ME this place, this status, this beautiful acceptance and WIDE berth of error. 

I flash back to the deciding moments I’ve had with Mark.  The tearfully spoken “Ummmm…guess what?” moments in which this man responded with every support and every ounce of respect any one could offer a woman in such frightening times.  He never once veered in his choices to want and to love our children, unexpected, unplanned, whatever….  Never once.  I did.  I was confused and scared and undecided..reflecting on ALL our options.  While he, he was stout and strong and beautifully decided.  And my selfish, spoiled self rears its ugly head now to scream at this other woman, “Na na na na boo boo…I’M the mamma dammit…I’m the wanted Mamma.  He was never willing to discuss adoption or abortion with me!”  It never even occurred to me that Mark had any other responses to, Guess what?  I’m pregnant than full and total support and strength.  Seems he does.  Although in my defense, I was not a grown woman with a professional career who engaged in the I DO NOT want any children discussion with him just prior to our pregnancies.  Seems as though our accidents were more in the area of mutual accidents and never came across as even possibly planned or pre-meditated, as this situation screams.

I have not always acted honorably in our various life challenges as people or as parents with Mark.  In fact, there are many occasions when I have acted horribly and been just mean and hateful.  I can blame some of these on circumstances, innocence, and youthful self-righteousness and I have had cause to regret them anyway, but they will now always be sources of shame for me after this one little sentence he spoke like a gift from God.  Have I really given Dave K.  every chance, every forgiveness, every excuse for a million horrible and hateful beyond explanation behaviors and actions against me while being selfish and stingy with these in regards to my children’s father, who has repeatedly and thoroughly proven himself as far more deserving of forgiveness and acceptance than this, or any, other man?  Am I this blind?

I was.  I must have been.  Was the intoxicating joy and perfection I felt with Dave and never once prior so much that it knocked me senseless and blind to see the beauty of Mark’s love and respect for me?  I’ve always been admitting and openly praising of Mark as a man who worked hard to change his early shortcomings and surprisingly became the greatest father I could have ever hoped for my children.  I have almost always been open to seeing this and believing in it from the actions-speak-louder-than-words faith, but I just never really “got it” fully.  Am I part of the reason he succeeded so well in this?

I never would have guessed or presumed this.  EVER!   And it smacked me so beautifully and lovingly that I was taken aback with a brand new love and gratitude for Mark, the most beautiful father, ex, and friend any woman could dream of.  I fell just a little bit back in love with him this weekend. Whoa…life sure is surprising in its sudden and totally unexpected twists and turns!  I can’t even imagine what this will or will not bring… or what it even means…