Wait, What?!

I was not at all expecting today to go as it has.  Not one bit of it.  I wish I could make this stuff up (I’m just not that good)…

I’ve written a few times about this guy I’ve been seeing on and off for quite a while.  We met on OkCupid about six years ago and dated for maybe six months or so initially.  Things got really intense really fast (we have always had a strong connection, emotionally and physically), then I got some weird medical news that sent me reeling, and I took out my fears on him and told him that I couldn’t see him anymore.   I regretted it and I regretted how I treated him, because I liked him a whole lot.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago and I ran across his profile again.  I took a chance, reached out, and we quickly fell back into our old feelings.  We talked almost daily after that.

The first year after we started talking again it was a struggle to see him, a struggle to meet up.  I felt like a lot of that was me, though.  I was still processing my breakdown, still feeling pretty new in recovery from my childhood trauma, and had a hard time being social at all.  He expressed an understanding that not many in my life have and he was always there when I needed someone to talk to.  There was a point about a year ago that I wasn’t sure if I could continue on with the relationship because we were seeing each other so little, but we had a serious talk about it and he promised me that we would see more of each other.  He lived up to his word and in this last year we started hanging out more and more.

Our chemistry continued to be electric, just like it was when we started dating six years ago.  We talked about anything and everything under the sun and he was patient and kind and gentle about all of it.  I told him about my break down and he didn’t judge me.  I told him about my childhood and my ongoing tumultuous parental relationships and he didn’t judge me.  I told him about my (sometimes day-to-day) struggles with trust and anxiety and depression and he didn’t judge me.  He has been my rock as I’ve spread my entrepreneurial wings and especially supportive since I started this weight loss surgery journey last year.  He stayed at my house to help me when no one else would/could the week after surgery, he has patiently and gently walked me through my many minor meltdowns figuring out how to eat, and he has encouraged and motivated me as I recently started getting my exercise on too.  Honestly, I don’t know if I could have made it to this point without his support.

It’s no wonder that I fell in love.  How could I not, right?  It was sometimes a very confusing love, but it was love.  It was a love that was growing, and quickly, the more we got to see each other.  I’m not sure that our relationship would always have been romantic and physical as it has been so far, but he and I both talked all the time (yesterday, included) about how we felt like we had a lifelong connection.  It was a love that I hoped, no matter what would happen, we could continue to grow in.  At least until today.

I woke up today full of hope about a busy week, but not long after I opened my eyes and started to prepare for my day, I got a text from his girlfriend.  The girlfriend that he’s been with for the last two years.  The girlfriend he lives with.  Wait, what?!  My hopes and dreams about this relationship came crashing down around me in an instant.

So many thoughts about this man have passed through my brain over the last six years, but never once did I imagine that this kind of lie would be the end of us.  I don’t know that I could have, he had me so snowed.  Hindsight being what it is, there are plenty of things that seem crystal clear now of course, but at the time I had no inkling of what was to come; none whatsoever. I’ve been walking around feeling like I got punched in the gut all day.

I wish I could say that this is the first time that a man chose me as his other woman without letting me in on the secret, but it’s not (normally I find out much sooner, though).  I wish I could say that I felt like it was all their fault, but I don’t.  I mean, I’m the only common element. I can’t help but feel that there’s something inherently wrong with me or, at the very least, my ability to choose a good partner.  I have read plenty of articles about those who have suffered childhood trauma have poor relationship skills in adulthood, after all.  It seems that I’m no exception to the rule.

I am proud of how I handled my emotions today.  Though incredibly difficult, I let myself feel them (can’t eat them away anymore).  I cried a messy cry.  I reached out to all my girlfriends to tell them how much of an asshole he is.  I went on a walk, blasted the Cranberries and moved my body with real purpose (I almost didn’t, because walking reminded me of him too).  I did some work, then had a break.  I did more work and now I’m here.  I’m sad.  Beyond sad.  But I am moving forward.  Looking backwards is not an option for me.

My real fear is being alone forever, being rejected yet again (and again and again).  I want companionship, I want love, I want it all (except maybe kids).  I just don’t know how to get it and keep it.

Thank goodness for therapy this week.

Holding Back

If I could have the conversation I want to have…

Before I begin, you know the gory details of what I have been through in my life and, while I know that you cannot REALLY relate (and I am glad for that), I wish you would try.  Please try to understand that when I say my heart breaks, I mean that it crumbles and bleeds and falls to the floor in agony; after all, it is pieced together with tape and Elmer’s glue as it is.  Please try to understand that when I say that I have fear, it registers in my brain and my body in just the same way as the gut wrenching fear registered when my mother snapped her gun belt before a beating; sharp and quick.  Please try to understand that when I say I love, I love selectively and deeply, into the marrow of my bones.

I have not meant to withhold my feelings and I am sorry that everything came out in a messy texted torrent yesterday, but I have been anguishing over our friendship for months.  Your news uncorked a shaken bottle of champagne.

I have seen a pattern in the way that you have been treating people, the very important and permanent people, in your life lately and it has made me examine my own role there too.  In the last year, and over the past few months especially, whenever one of them doesn’t serve some need within you, disagrees with you or your life choices, or has a difficult time coping with their lives and inarticulately comes to you needing support, you you spout about the incredible difficulties of your own life and the zero fucks you give and you turn them away.  It has seemed so easy for you to let them, to let your love for them, go.  Where do I, a mere friend, a temporary fixture of life, fit into that?  I haven’t been sure.

My heart has been breaking for you over your recent choices.  My heart has been breaking because you are knowingly setting yourself up for future heartbreak.  My heart has been breaking because your children will suffer their own heartbreak when you do.  My heart is breaking because they will take on your burdens and they will carry them for life, because that is what children do.  My heart has been breaking because my heart (and so many others) will break right along with yours when this house of cards crumbles around you.

I have feared that by expressing my concerns, you would reject me as you did them (and I was kinda right).  I have feared that our friendship is as disposable as those relationships appear to be to you.  I have these fears because of my own past, because of our past, and because you and your friendship mean so much to me.

I have felt a real void where the much needed presence of your friendship used to be.  I have needed you for some real nitty, gritty and unpretty lately, but you been aware of little but yourself.  I have needed your help surviving the surge in emotion, flashbacks, and hormones since surgery.  I have needed you when I regretted the decision.  I have needed you in my walk through the hurt of ending my relationship with my mother.  I have needed you, and you are a cheerleader when things are going well, but our textversations all seem to end when the topic turns toward anything of remotely difficult substance about me.  I have felt increasingly rejected and ignored by it, but I have presumed that it was only because you, too, were going through your own heartbreak and could not bear mine as well.

I have struggled with all of these feelings, but I was confident that they would pass as your fog lifted and you got back to your happy.

Then you tell me that you have been happy.  So, while I could understand and process your absence from my life because you are hurting, I could not (and cannot) fathom your absence because you are happy.  Is this our friendship?  Is this what it means to be your “best friend” now that you give zero fucks?  To be there to support you through your darkness, but only have you around when my life is comfortable for you?  Is my ability to be involved in your life contingent on my faking a smile?

I am happy that you feel happy, but I fear that it is a right now kind of happy.  I fear that you have been overtaken by the intensity and intoxication that right now happiness is made up of.  Right now happiness will deceive you (please don’t forget how it blinded you to a narcissistic monster just a year ago).  You let people in so freely and, while I admire that so much about you, I am afraid for the way that you appear to be chasing that right now happiness like a drug.  I fear it because an addiction to that right now happiness will destroy you like any other, my friend.  Like any drug, right now happiness can only fill the holes in your heart for so long before it leaves a wake of devastation in your life.

Don’t be mistaken, that right now happy can last for years.  You, however, deserve forever happiness.  My fear is that you are risking your forever happiness for temporary glee; and it breaks my heart.

Negative Self Talk: Perfectionism

I touched on an important idea in my first therapy session of the new year.  Plenty of my shame-driven negative self talk (and I have a whole lot of it these days) isn’t even my own.  It dawned on me in a way that it hadn’t before: a whole lot of the bad things I throw at myself in my own head began with someone else’s shame (my mother’s mostly), which was was transferred to me before I ever knew what to do with it, and I’ve now adopted it as my own.

The negative messages began early; perfectionism, especially.

Though highly intelligent, my brother and school were like oil and water and never really worked.  He acted out a lot and hated authority (gee, wonder why), and was regularly abused by my parents for that and his bad grades.  I was powerless to do anything about anything that happened growing up, but I got a big message loud and clear: imperfection could be very dangerous.  My good grades, staying squeaky clean, being naive and innocent, over achieving, it all kept me safe.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be any surprise, then, that one of the first panic attacks I remember having came after I got my very first B in second grade.  Perhaps it shouldn’t be any surprise, then, that my anxiety goes crazy and my negative self talk is at its most nasty and vile when I feel like I have failed in even the most minor way.

It can be debilitating, constantly berating yourself at every turn for every little thing.  I am continually working on it in therapy, but lately if I’m not beating myself up about something I think I’ve somehow failed at, how I’m not perfect at whatever it might be, I stop myself only to beat myself up about beating myself up.

Today, for instance.  Since it’s a federal holiday and the courts and 98% of law firms in this town are closed, I’m trying to give myself the freedom to take an additional day off from working to process my life, to write, to do laundry, to enjoy my family, to clean my room, to eat well, to maybe get creative and/or take a walk.  I have incredible amounts of guilt and anxiety over it, though.  I have guilt and anxiety about taking good care of myself on a day when I have the actual ability to take care of myself.  I have to repeat it because it’s so clearly illogical – I have guilt and anxiety about taking care of myself.

I am not an idiot (that was my favorite self-insult this last therapy session).  I am not dumb either (what I was just calling myself for feeling guilty about taking the day off to continue to care of myself).  I am not a failure at business (like I constantly tell myself I am or will be).  I am not failing at weight loss surgery (appx. 90 total pounds down).  I am not failing at exercise (I got 5 miles in over the last week).  I am not a failure.  And I don’t need to be perfect.

Now how do I let that go?  How do I embrace the idea that I don’t even NEED to be perfect in the first place?  Perfectionism doesn’t serve me anymore; I don’t need to be perfect to stay safe, but the message is still there.  Still loud, still clear.   I suppose I may fight against the message of perfection for the rest of my life (in all kinds of ways), but at least I’m fighting.

Let me try to keep this in mind today as I continue to allow myself the freedom to take care of me before all else…

2016 Begins With a Bang

2015’s ridiculousness spilled right over into 2016, unfortunately.  It’s been a crazy few weeks, but the worst seems to be over…for now.  Of course, life happens in threes.

I was avoiding therapy at the end of last year because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my relationship with my mother.  Should I bring her in to therapy, be vulnerable in a big way, and try yet again?  Turns out, the answer is no.  I can’t do it.  I’m not ready and I may never be.  I’m back at a point where I have given up on my relationship with my mom.  I mean, we still speak occasionally.  I can still be around her.  So, I suppose a more accurate statement is that I have made the decision to give up on the idealized version of the relationship I have been hoping I might have with my mother someday.  I have to let go of it, once and for all.  We will never have a normal relationship and clinging to the (very false) notion that we might is only hurting me.

Letting go meant sending her an email telling her why and what it meant for us in the future.  It was really hard for a few days; it still is.  But I’m beginning to feel a sense of relief about the decision.  Letting go is freeing up my heart and mind for other things.  I have amazing people in my life that I CAN and DO have normal relationships with that are indescribably wonderful.  I have a business that is slowly building up steam.  I am on a long-haul journey of physical and mental health.  It’s nice to have the ability to turn my energy toward the people and things that actually matter in my corner of the universe, including myself.

Well, as I’m still somewhat reeling from the finality of sending my mom the email I did, my troubled nephew’s problems showed up on my front porch.  Whatever happened, or didn’t, the wrong person got very angry with him.  Thankfully my brother handled it, but scary people now know where my family lives and, if my nephew makes a dumb mistake again, who knows what could happen to any of us.  Hello, anxiety for days.  It really makes me sad too, because I wish there were something more we could do for him.  Unfortunately, though, addiction is a cycle only he can break.

Then, just as we’re getting our feet under us financially, my sister in law loses her job this last week.  Woosah.  Goosfraba.  There really are those days that I’m not sure how much more I can take.  There are days I can not get out of bed because it’s too difficult to deal with everything that happens.

Then I write.  I started walking more often (it’s kinda shameful how far I can’t go, but I gotta start somewhere).  I went back to therapy.  I keep working.  I move what I need to move around.  I’m honest with people that I “don’t feel well.”  I beat myself up in my head (man I am m a super bitch).  I cry.  I laugh.  I’m sad.  I’m scared.  I freak out.  I try to remember the good things.  I reach out.  I isolate.  I just keep living life.  Somehow, I keep living life.  Thank God.

Keep living life, friends.  It keeps going, so we might as well enjoy the ride.  Or at least try to.  Something like that.  :)