Monday, December 21, 2015

Three

I had three interesting dreams last night.

1 - I was swimming in a bay of some sort.  The water was calm, and I was swimming lazily out from shore.  I was staying on the surface.  I could easily see seaweed just below the surface of the water.  This has always freaked me out - which I acknowledged in the dream - seeing objects below water.  I don't know why.  So I decided to do the back stroke.  This dream, I think, was telling me that there is stuff below the surface of my current situation.  Whether I'm to look at it or not, I don't know.

2 - I was driving in a hilly area, through a big rainstorm.  (What? That's exactly what I did this weekend?? Huh.)  I was looking for an address and had pulled off the road to the side.  I needed to deliver something to this address.  Ahead of me was a bridge.  Cars were coming towards me over it, but the side I was on was blocked off.  Workers in hardhats and reflective gear were telling people to get off the bridge, that it was in danger of collapsing.  I decided to get out of the area.  I started to drive away, up a hill.  At some point I think I had to abandon my car.  I was walking and found an outcropping of bedrock.  This made me feel safe.  But I still had to keep moving.

3 - I was on the set of a play or a movie.  There were two areas where we were allowed.  I left one of them to go look at the mechanical shop.  I feel like my friend Evan from Croo was there, but I don't think I saw him.  Maybe he was the one who had brought us there.  I ran into what I think was my ex at the shop.  He was happily watching the employees do some sort of work.  Things seemed good between us.  I think we had come there together, but maybe not as a couple, just as friends.  This was the last dream I had before I woke up, and those always seem a bit fuzzy to me.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

And then...

And then I see something like this (again) on Facebook and I wonder "what the fuck am I all in a twist about?"

murmuration

Thoughts and decisions

So I still feel like shit.  The ex- doesn't seem to stay away from my mind for very long.  It's annoying.  Because it seems to cause me nothing but pain.

I've been listening to this guy named Betinho Massaro.  He's some sort of self-help guy.  But not cheesy.  He's hella young and seems to have found his bliss.  Or he has found a bliss that he believes we can all access, and he wants to share it with anyone who is interested.  What he says reminds me a lot of Stranger in a Strange Land by Ray Bradbury.  As if there is a higher level we humans can attain if/when we open ourselves up to it.

And I believe that.  I think I've believed that since I first read Stranger (circa 1980-something).  Betinho's talks are sometimes thick and hard to follow.  I'm only just starting to listen to him.  We'll see where that goes.

But I do believe that we are all connected, as one primordial goo, and that we can (and should!) tap into that goo in order to keep ourselves on balance.

Why I'm not doing that right now is a concern for me.

Instead I'm here at my local pub, eating a hamburger, drinking a beer, and wondering what the hell has become of my life.  Why am I at this fucked up place, and how do I get home from here?  Figuratively, of course.  I know how to walk home from the bar.

Decisions.
I think I need to get back on anti-depressant meds.  I'm thinking this inability to move on from the breakup is part and parcel of being drug-free.  Or, perhaps more accurately, the crutch of drugs might help pull me out of this rut and allow me to see things more objectively.

I move through phases of rationality (or what I decide to call rationality.  Perhaps it's acceptance, lying to myself, rationalization of the ex's crappy actions, seeing the situation from all sides, whothefuckknows), into phases of complete immobility and depression, then through some phase of neutrality.  I don't like the immobility, nor do I like the neutrality.  And being so fucking understanding is noble, but annoying as fuck.  Because there is still this anger lurking below the surface.  Just below the surface sometimes.

I believe that the understanding me is true.  I love the fact that I can see other's perspectives, that I can commiserate with them, that I see a view other than my own.  But when it's so close to my own experience it's both admirable and shitty.  Great that I can objectively see their view, shitty that it can hurt me so much at the same time.  Too bad I can't be like others - lashing out when I'm in pain.  In some ways it would be easier.  However, that's not my truth.  My truth is that I'm very fucking empathic.  And, ultimately, I like that about me.  I value it more than I value protecting myself from potential pain.  Apparently.

The anger I have is long-standing.  It's not anything new.  When I was in high school I would day-dream about having access to an old car and a bat.  I would think about taking the bat to the car, beating the shit out of it.  Take that, you fucked up old car.  It's never been too clear who the car represents to me.  Easy to assume it's my dad.  And maybe it is.  But that is so deep, so entwined into my person that the anger can be triggered by things others do.  So is that anger at that person, or at my dad?  Or both?  Who the fuck knows.

It's why I bought the punching bag.  It's why I'm thinking of spending the little money I have left on taking a boxing class.  Learn how to properly punch the shit out of something so I don't hurt myself.

Fuck this sucks.  I'm in so much pain and I can't quite figure out the source in order to tame it, corral it into some corner of my being so that I can function.  And I don't feel like I have many people I can really talk to about it.  Yes, I have friends who will listen.  Until they're bored.  Or until they have an opinion to add.  Then they stop listening.  My therapist, my friend Trish, my friend Angela and my sister are the four with whom I can really have a substantial conversation about my shit.  I don't believe others are that interested.

This town is so soft!  Maybe it's the rain.  Someone recently told me that Portland has a very strong female essence (or something like that).  I'm such a fucking tomboy that I don't fit in here.  I'm harder than those around me.  It's not that I don't believe in all the left-wing liberal values - I do.  But I'm tired of soft-peddling myself.  I'm not the all-understanding, "up with people" kind of gal.  I'm rough around the edges, I swear like a sailor (and more often, and better, than quite a few of the men I know), I don't ascribe to the "ease everyone into the new thing" method that so fucking many people here seem to live by.  Throw them into the deep end is my thinking.  Stand by to rescue them, of course, but let them learn their own strength through experience.

Abominable ale, Grumpy Elf ale.  It's my mood, I told the bartender.

Decisions.
I need to let go of the ex.  I need to ignore him, even.  Forget that he was ever in my life.  Let that wound heal for a while.  I still love him - at least I love what I thought he was.  Whether he is actually that image - or even somewhat close to that image - is unsure to me at the moment.  I want him to be that person so badly.  I want to believe that I saw the truth of him.  That I saw a possibility for my own future - to be in a partnership with someone who really, truly loves me.  Whether it's him or someone else.  Right now I want it to be him, but fuck.... only time will tell on that one.

Silly me.  I've read so many love stories.  They talk about the "tough times", and then the hero/heroine moves through that time in 20 pages or so.  To bliss.  To happiness.  Those books don't make it clear just how fucking horrible those 20 pages are.  And that those 20 pages last a Long.  Fucking.  Time.

What do I have to complain about really, though?  It's been 1 1/2 months since the shit started to hit the fan.  Maybe only a month since we actually broke up.  One month.

Fuck.

I'm a mess.

Friday, December 04, 2015

Ah Shit.

It's the end of 2015.  And I feel fine.

Not really.  I just broke up with my most recent boyfriend.  This one I thought was the man of my dreams.  And he still may be.  But he is coming out of a 15-year marriage which was blown up (at least in part) by actions he chose to pursue.  Not little actions, either.  Big ones, which span years of that marriage.

And yet, I still love him.  Warts and all.

He is in dire need of fixing himself.  He hates himself.  He has an unending amount of guilt.  He doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of his past.  He doesn't want to do to me what he did to his ex-wife.

All of which I understand and respect.  But it still hurts.  He gave me a taste of what I have longed for - a man who treats me well, who is fun to be around, who can be that manly man I want and still let me be the tomboy I am, who seems to be more emotionally aware than any other man I've ever dated.  So it hurts to have to walk away from that.  (He's not perfect, not by a long shot.  But I know that.  I've seen where he is imperfect.  Can I live with those imperfections?  I guess that's a moot question at the moment.)

I also have my issues, and this relationship really brought them to the forefront.  My dad abandoned me and my sister when I was very young.  It was abandonment in slow-motion.  It happened over the span of 10 years, from when I was 4 through 14.  He had remarried and had another child.  Along with being the daily father figure for three children from his wife's previous marriage, there wasn't room for my sister and I in the picture.  My dad didn't know how to stay in touch.  And he couldn't just cut the ties and walk away.  Rather, he kept us in limbo - never quite accepting us fully, not letting us go either.  And over the years I kept the hope alive that someday he and I would be able to reconcile our lost time.  Then he died this past January and that hope went with him.

And my anger towards him came out.  But that's a different story from the one I want to tell now.  Right now I want to talk about this breakup.

The signs that things weren't good in boyfriend-land started a month ago.  He had gone away for a weekend by himself, to contemplate his life - his recent divorce and the causes of it.  When he came back he was distant.  I should have known that the relationship with me was all too much for him this close to his divorce.  But his distant demeanor tapped directly into my abandonment fear and suddenly I was back in my 4-year old mind, scared shitless that I was going to be left alone.  So I wasn't thinking very logically or, well, normally on any level.  I'm only now coming back to my senses, really.

We kept going for three more weeks.  Things got a bit manic.  I saw it, but couldn't stop it, couldn't recognize it so well because I was part of it.  I was manic with fear.  He was manic with... I don't really know.  We were on a path to somewhere bad, we had started to go off the rails.  Fortunately he saw it too, and was able to do something to end it.  I wasn't.  My abandonment fears would have made me go through hell so that I wouldn't be left behind.  I had done that before, and it had ended poorly.  But I don't always learn the first time around.

He came to see me one evening, and we talked.  It was painful.  I thought I was hearing the same "I don't know what I want" comments from him that I had heard before.  After that he somewhat disappeared again.  I had another week of emotional hell.  My mind was playing tricks on me.  What did he want?  Why wasn't he calling me?  When was I going to see him again?  What if he wanted to break up?  What if he doesn't love me?  What if it was all just a big cosmic joke on me?  Again.

My 4-year old self was in sheer panic mode.

The idea to ask "what do I want" only came up by talking with my sister.  This wasn't just about him. She asked me what did I need?  What did I want?  Well, what I wanted wasn't possible.  And I knew it.  I couldn't fix his issues, and I was only just starting to work on mine.  We were both in the wrong spots at the wrong time.  Dammit.  So my options were to continue on in my misery or to break things off.  In my heart of hearts I could grudgingly accept a break up - as long as I was the one who was calling things off.  My little 4-year old self would be destroyed by being left again, but she was very familiar with the self-preservation tactic of getting out before you got left behind.

But I still didn't like that option.  Somehow the hope that, magically, everything would be fine kept clanking around in my brain.  Magical thinking.  When, really, I knew what needed to happen.

He came over to visit.  We chatted a while about what had been going on in our lives.  It was awkward.  We were talking, but not interacting.  Finally I asked what was up with us, were we just friends now?  He said that was all he could offer me and that he thought he had made that clear the last time we saw each other.  I said no, that hadn't been clear.

Sigh.  So there it was.  We were broken up.

In the long run, we said we both want to leave the possibility open that we can revisit a romantic relationship together in the future.  So it's open.  It's a possibility.  We're both still attracted to each other.  We still care a lot for each other.  Really, it's a very positive break up on the surface.  No yelling, no recriminations, we talked about where we were each at and agreed that to continue on would be in no one's best interest.

But underneath my surface I'm still hurting.  Every break up hurts.  This one only more so because I saw what it could be.  Maybe.  In the future.

In the meantime I have to get back to myself.  My lonely self.  I need to fix my own issues.  My ex's actions (his distancing himself, his issues with clear communication) are not the actions of my father.  Full stop.  They are similar, and thus they raise the spectre of my dad.  But they are not the same.  My dad was an adult, was supposedly my protector.  But he failed at that task.  My ex has actually succeeded in protecting me - by stopping our relationship now instead of later.  But I'm still hurt.  I still need to convince my 4-year old self that this wasn't her fault, that she is still lovable, she is still valuable, that she has always been those things.

I may not be a mom, but I know how hard it is to convince a 4-year old of something she doesn't quite believe.

End of the year.  Time to emotionally clean house.