No More

I have a lot of pain. This is how my therapist ended our first session. Just reminding me that I had a lot of pain. Like I needed reminding. Is there a direct correlation between how painful the recovery from the breakup is and how deep and true the relationship once was? When we fall deeply in love, is the fall out measured in equal but opposite emotions?

 I thought I’d been handling things pretty well.  I’ve had occasional moments when I’ve been blue but overall I’m trying to plow forward. True, forward is very blurry. In a month, I have no idea where I’ll be living. Or how. But I’ve tried to remain positive about it (as best I can). And just when I do start to get down, something or someone gets me back on track again. Whether it’s hearing from Dear’s brother how much the family still loves me and how they want to keep me part of them (and would rather get rid of Dear). Or last Sunday after a very blue day, meeting an impossibly handsome half Latin guy visiting from Switzerland. It was one of those perfect evenings, at the time we were cursing how we wished we’d met on the first day of his visit and not his last but thank god, we didn’t. He was just the sort of guy and it was just the sort of perfect connection that would have ended up in a heart-wrenching long distance vacation romance which is the very last thing I need right now. Although, he was everything I do want at a later date: handsome, hairy, tall, witty, manly and boyish at once and did I say sexy. Ah, well. It ended my weekend and started my week on a really good note.

This weekend didn’t end so nicely. Dear was supposed to come over today. We were going to sort through things in the house, go over our finances and help get my expenses in order so I can start the apartment hunting process. He never showed, nor did he call or even answer my call. I don’t know why I’m so upset by that. It seems to have hit me on multiple levels. Over all, it’s so reminiscent of all the times this happened when we were together. Those terrible long nights and days in the early years when I’d pace the house nearly out of my mind with worry. Or the nights of the later years when I’d  just think, not again. Not again after everything having been normal for so long. I know that now it shouldn’t bother me as much because well, I don’t have to worry. He’s not my responsibility. And I’m glad for that. It brings up so many different feeling. Yet really helps me once again see why it is I can never return to that craziness no matter how much I may love him.

What do I imagine happened? The first scenario is that Dear and Twitch went out last night to a big dance party. A party that friends actually tried to get me to go to. Anyway, one of Dear’s broken record tracks from his mid life crisis rant is how he never has any “fun”, how I was the “fun” police and how he and Twitch want to recapture that “fun”. The primary definition of “fun” in their gay mid-life crisis self-absorption is: going out and dancing on ecstasy. You see, Dear is trying to recapture a time in his life, in his early thirties before he had ever encountered crysyal meth and before his addiction issues had become fully manifested. A time when things seemed more innocent. I supposed you can’t blame him. Who wouldn’t want to go back to moment when they were more innocent, especially if they’d lived through some very dark days? But life doesn’t work like that. You can’t go back. He couldn’t see that no matter how much I tried to point it out. To point out that while all that was fun when he was 30, it was a moment in time and just as much about the people around him as anything else. I said how could he ever recapture that when everyone else had moved on? That all our friends had grown up and out of that and that he’d  be the tired old thing on the dance floor he’d always warned his friends not to let him become. I did say this in somewhat more tactful manner.

Anyway, Scenario One involves them going out last night and then spending all day today in bed, in post-ecstasy bliss, cuddling and talking babytalk (have I mentioned they have this nauseating language they use with each other?) This vision makes me ill mainly because it was something I would have loved to do with Dear but never could. The few times we tried either started out in fights because he couldn’t see why we should have to wait to get high at the party and why it wasn’t an open invitation to do anything he wanted all for days in advance. Not a pretty series of arguments where he would suffer through days  up to the night we’d go out and low and behold, it was actually fun just doing one hit of ecstasy and being in the moment with your lover and then going home but the wear and tear of getting him there was too much for me. It took the fun out of it. Then there were the times that ended up with him going off on a Meth bender. So that was it, I packed up my cha-cha heels and said goodbye to that part of my life. It wasn’t hard. I was growing up but I did miss it. It was such a nice feeling to be able to dance shirtless in the arms of the man you love, surrounded by hundreds of other hot happy men. But it was a small price to pay for earned sanity at home.  It’s nice to know I can put that back on my to-do list if I want.

 Scenario Two is the more tragic version of the same scene. In this one, they are out dancing but this time they run into the friends I was with last night (including the drop dead gorgeous mountain of a man that used to work at Dear’s company who hugged me in his big bear grasp while I melted in his soft eyes- more on him later – I hope!) These friends include the guy that planned our fabulous trip last year to a Peru. (It was an amazing, no expense spared surprise to thank Dear for letting me take time off to write my book. Needless to say, he is paying for half of it now.) So seeing these friends and others all asking about me spun him off into a depression and then he went off on a Meth bender. It’s tragic but certainly not that far-fetched.

Scenario Three involves his visiting former therapist who treated him right after he got out a rehab. They had dinner last night and she is a lovely person but sharp as a tack and really would see right through his shit. This scenario also ends in him going off on a bender. And honestly regardless of what actually happened, there is no excuse for him treating me like this. He is either a very selfish self-centered person or a very sick person or both. And I need him out of my life.

I know facing each one of my pains, addressing it truly and then trying to work through it is the only way I can ever move on but boy does it suck. I’d rather be six months down the line from all of this but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. I have to live through it to actually gain and grow from it. Is growth always painful? And is pain really that bad? When the pain helps you come to terms and move you towards a closure that’s a good kind of pain. Not easy but good.

 

Throw it Away

Yesterday was a trying day.

I’ve never cared for Sundays all that much to begin with. I think it dates back to the time when I was in school and you’d just had the entire glorious weekend to do whatever it is you pleased (read, daydream, listen to showtunes) and then Sunday evening comes and with it the awful realization that another entire week of doing things you don’t want to do is about to commence again. Of course, when you’re a kid, time stretches itself out so the weekends seemed to go on forever before the thud of Sunday night came crashing down and then an eternity would go by before the next glorious weekend. I never entirely lost that sinking feeling that came with Sunday nights, it just was tempered a bit as the years grew on. As my life become more filled with pleasures and I carried the responsibilities with a sense of understanding.

This Sunday was a trial. Dear and I were set to meet to go through our storage locker. To throw out stuff and get me a storage unit that I could start moving the things I wanted to keep into (I’m something of a pack rat). This seemed a rather innocent way to start the dismantling of our life together. After all, these were things that hadn’t been part of our daily lives. Some things we’d packed up long before we’d been together. Other things we’d put aside as we melded our lives and found these items didn’t quite fit. And then there was a bunch of weird odd and ends and a whole lot of Burning Man paraphernalia.

No matter how innocent and far removed from our daily life these objects seemed to be, they turned out to carry a great deal more weight than expected. Or more accurately the act of sorting through these items brought the reality of what we were doing and what we were about to face into sharper focus. I felt I’d prepared myself, knowing it might be a painful experience. To Dear it was far, far more difficult (more about that tomorrow).

Why do I hang on to the things I do? I found things in there that I hadn’t looked at in five or six years. I’ve saved almost every piece of writing I’ve ever done (which makes sense) but all those print outs of websites long gone, magazines (dirty and clean),  awards and various objects from my old job that seemed too personal to toss and yet what will I ever do with them again? We found at least five comforters in various states of yellowed dilapidation. End tables with half their parts missing. A leather thong that didn’t belong to either of us. Three shoe racks, two air mattresses and one bicycle covered with rhinestones.

We made a big pile of things to throw away and I dragged things I knew I’d want down the hall to my new unit but after a half hour a gloom began to set in.  Dear became more glum and I became more agitated. We gave up, locked the unites and knew we’d have to return in the future to try to face it again.

Why is it easier to hang onto things you don’t need anymore than to toss them? I know I feel a sense of liberation when I get rid of objects I truly don’t need anymore (clothes that no longer fit me because of size or style, old magazines) but there are things I find much harder to part with or even think about parting with. These I pack back up again and always think I’ll go through them another day.

Do we hang onto people too long in the same manner? Should we toss out the people in our lives the same way we would an old pair of jeans we’ve outgrown? Dear can’t seem to decide if he’s throwing me away or just putting me aside somewhere safe that he can retrieve me again from on a rainy day. And I don’t know if I want to truly donate him to someone else’s goodwill or keep him to myself. I know what my head says but my heart is another thing.

Sorting through the old junk, should you listen to your head when you toss things away or listen to your heart and save those things you treasured once that you might find use for again?

A House is Not A Home

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but for some reason our house hadn’t felt like a home in a long time. Was it the broken dimmer switch in the living room? The leaky faucet in the upstairs bathroom? The overgrown garden? It was all of the above and yet something much deeper. Does a house stop being a home the moment the relationship is over or long before that? Does home stop existing the moment your lover gives love to someone else?

I didn’t understand why we’d spent last fall having all these fights about Twitch. It didn’t add up. Why was I having to fight for time with him? What I didn’t know at the time was that in a home across the bay, the exact same arguments were taking place between another couple about Dear.

I should have been happy for Dear. He was so excited to have a new friend. He claimed Twitch was turning out to be the best friend he’d made in years. Since he’d moved to San Francisco. Now Dear has many, many friends in SF and many people that care for him. After all, he’s a very charismatic and generous, if troubled, soul. He’s the sort of person that lights up the room when he enters, whether you want that glare of not.I sensed that something was different about this friendship but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He claimed Twitch was the first person he’d met that reminded him of his two best friends back on the East Coast. What he really meant was that Twitch was a big kid and encouraged his fantasies around recapturing his youth. A youth that his two friends on the East Coast had figured prominently in. I like these two friends but they are a study. Not at all alike but somehow they have managed to get into their forties without ever having a serious relationship.

I sensed something was wrong. Dear had become so volatile that, at times, I just tried to avoid the confrontations. This avoidance behavior of mine dated back to a period almost two years earlier. I had taken a severance package from a job I’d been at for years and decided to take some time off to write a book. We made the decision together and Dear was very supportive of this. At first. Then it slowly turned sour and he would get very disturbed about the bills and how he was carrying the entire financial weight of our life. True but also, he had at no time curtailed any of his extravagance. We bought three investment properties during this time. Three! He created an elaborate 40th birthday event for family and friends. We traveled. We entertained. Basically, we lived life as we always had yet now he had a focus to complain about our spending without actually addressing the issue of poor financial planning.

When I started to look for work I didn’t realize how long it would take me, being that I’m in a rather specialized sector. I knew I’d be in a good position when I did get back to work and that’s exactly what happened. However, during those final months of searching he’d grown into such an emotional roller coaster that I did anything to keep him on an even keel. I’d carefully screen the bills and try to present them in stages so as not to have to deal with a scene. In retrospect, I realize I was living through a mild form of emotional abuse but the problem is that often when you’re in situations of that sort, you don’t see it for what it is until you’re on your way out (or it’s grown so unbearable that you need escape). Thank god it never got bad. It was more like a year of walking on eggshells. Not pleasant but tolerable.

When I started back to work I thought everything would go back to normal but instead he got moodier and more irritable. This also happened to coincide with the beginning of his “friendship” with Twitch. Was it guilt the caused those reactions? Did our troubles drive him to seek companionship with someone that was “easy” and had no expectations of him? I know that it was a strange year. Now I realize I was feeling him leave in stages. Little by little, over the year, I felt him slip away and yet I couldn’t put my finger on what was happening. I hate to be the cliche of the spouse that can’t see what’s right under their eyes but that’s exactly who I was. Once he confessed, everything fell into place. Those feelings of having to fight for time with Dear. The rants whenever I didn’t want us to do something with Twitch and Mortimer or didn’t want Dear to go away with Twitch. Every nuance of the past nine months came into focus. The overwhelming feeling that I was the only person in my relationship. The only one living in our home.

And now, I am the only person living in our home. But I’ve gotten my eviction notice. Dear says I have to move out on April 1st so he and Twitch can move in. It seems that Twitch can’t bear to spend any more time living in a sublet so I have to move on. Not at my pace but at their selfish timetable. Dear says he’ll do anything he can to help me physically and financially to smooth the transition (and sooth his guilt). If I don’t leave on April 1st, he insists he’ll go crazy and Twitch will leave him. I told him that’s really not my concern and I also told him that if Twitch really cared about him so much he’d realize that Dear and I have a life to unravel and that takes some time and he would be willing to sit tight in a sublet for a few months more if it makes the separation process easier for Dear and I. After all it’s been six years. If we were getting divorced I’d have more than two and half months to get my life together. But I’m dealing with two adolescents that want their creature comforts. They can have the house but it’ll never be a home again.

I don’t know where I’m going. I know I’ll be taking things from our house but I’ll have to create my home from scratch.

Ex-Husband Encounter

Tuesday night has been defined as the night that Dear comes over and mopes around the house, I mean, spends quality time with me and helps sort through the wreckage of our life.

Dear is all in a tizzy because he’s concerned that Twitch’s best friend has told Twitch’s family that Dear is/has been and/or will be a drug addict. Twitch vehemently denied that this has occurred. Especially after Dear said he could never be with someone that he couldn’t have a relationship with their family (Sidenote: Dear and I are very close with each other’s family and they adore me and to them, I am irreplaceable. This is where I stick out my proverbial tongue at Twitch). Twitch insists that this news has not reached his families ears but Dear doesn’t quite believe him.

Now, I know it for a pretty reliable fact that this news has indeed reached their ears in a story that would knock Britney off the front page of the Enquirer. Mortimer (Twitch’s Ex) told me this same friend had indeed spilled the awful unvarnished truth to Twitch’s family right after the whole mess occurred.  So Twitch is lying to Dear, what a surprise. Dear was especially melancholic tonight as it seems he’s not very comfortable around Twitch at times. Twitch, he said, is rather non-communicative, moody and mourning the loss of Mortimer. Dear, on the other hand, admits he doesn’t feel secure or safe with Twitch (as he did with me) and still can’t get his head around how the whole thing unraveled. I know I need to be strong through this whole thing. I know moving on is the best thing for me no matter how much I may love him and no matter how much he says and I know he loves me but it ain’t going to be an easy path.

He made dinner and we spent much of the evening discussing next steps. He wants to move back in the house in March and me to move out in April. I said I’m fine with him moving back in whenever and living in the downstairs guestroom as long as Twitch doesn’t come within 1000 feet of the house and that if I was able to pull the tatters of my finances together by April and could find an acceptable apartment I would but if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. I also mentioned that all of our friends said I was being much too cooperative and they thought I should insist on 50% of everything. (I don’t really expect 50% and I know Dear is going to be more than generous and will make sure the transition is easy for me, as that is the only way he will be able to ease his guilt the least bit.)

Then we spent the rest of the night talking about how it all came apart. He still doesn’t quite grasp how it all happened. I, on the other hand, believe we all played our parts exactly the way we were meant to and it couldn’t have turned out any other way. I also spent some time talking about the need for healthy sex life in a relationship, where and when ours had derailed and how, though I didn’t intend on becoming a full-time bottom, I did need to explore that and as he is pretty much 85% bottom that was probably one of the many reasons why our sex life had gone kaput. Also, we touched on the kids subject. I’m interested but time is ticking. He is too self-fixated and opposed. So, I said that basically I was going to look for a hot versatile top who might like to have kids. He made no reply and left soon after.

 It’s tough seeing him as when he leaves I’m more conscious of the emptiness in the house and yet I miss him, as my best friend more than anything. I hope our Tuesday night dinners and Sunday afternoons cleaning the house will help us not only sort through our lives but help us move through these emotions and to a place where we can support each other as friends without the taint of how it all ended.

Time Heals Everything

This whole breakup thing is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I guess I’ve been a little detached of late. I’ll admit it’s been fun playing the role of the glamorous divorcee, much easier than playing myself right now but the reality is beginning to sink in and it’s not such fun anymore.

The web is full of advice on how to get you through your breakup. Doesn’t matter who’s giving it There seems to be an inordinate amount of 19 years old out there giving advice on how to get past a breakup. MY GOD! I remember how painful everything seemed at that age and how much the world revolved around you and how each new love, was the great love, no matter if it lasted a week or a weekend. How I made it 41 without ever having a tragic breakup I’ll never know. Dumb luck or lack of commitment? 

So it seems there are natural steps of grieving that one has to go through after the death of a significant relationship. And also some pretty clear steps one has to work through to move forward. I thought somehow I was a little further ahead. To be honest, I’d been mentally preparing myself to leave my relationship for a long time. Months? Years? Hard to pinpoint the exact date? The first time he disappeared on me for days without calling and I realized what loving someone that still had a drug addiction really mean? Over the years, he grew stronger, he tackled his demons one by one and the disappearances became less frequent but somehow more unsettling when I’d live six months or more without a glimmer of trouble and then suddenly he’d be on his way home from work and never appear for two days. Was he dead this time? Did he have a seizure behind the wheel? An awful uncertain way to live but when 99% is so right and so easy, it’s disturbing what we’ll put up with in that other 1%. 

So I thought I was further past it, when he broke it off I was ready to be free. However, today the awful reality of what that meant began to dawn on me. Now, if you don’t like to hear spoiled people whining, please skip ahead to the next paragraph, if  you care to indulge the self-indulgent than by all means, read on. I’ve become accustomed to a certain standard of living. We have a lovely home in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. (San Francisco), with a huge backyard on a private street, high up on a hill (no view though). We own property in Hawaii (in which all my money is annoyingly and illiquidly tied up right now).  I drive a moderately fabulous car (BMW 325ci – I’m not really a car person but it feels so nice to slip behind the wheel), we entertain, love fine wine, travel infrequently but when we do we stay in the best hotels and I wouldn’t be caught dead in Economy for a long flight. My mother always said I had champagne taste on a beer budget but thanks to Dear’s income and mine combined – depending on the year – we’d often had a champagne budget to go with our taste. However, I make about a third of what he does and now I’m faced with the crashing reality that I’m going to go from penthouse to chicken coop since rents are astronomical right now (higher than a mortgage). Now don’t get me wrong, I make a lot of money. Enough to keep 6 families of migrant workers in comfort for many years, yet somehow I never seem to have a penny. It’s tied up in paying off back taxes and a very pricey trip to Peru last fall (that was supposed to be a big surprise and “Thank You” to Dear for letting me take two years off from work to write a mystery novel). And it’s those two years off, that we’re both still trying to financially recover from. I just didn’t expect to be thrust out on life’s mercy. Do they give food stamps to people who make 6 figures?

So all today I fretted and worried and got more and more anxious about what comes next. I don’t expect to be living in the same style as our home with it’s steel faced fireplace, Wolf stove, grand piano and slate shower. All I want is a place that feels like home. My own place where I can start creating the next stage of my life. Where I can figure out who I am again (and have lots of sex), with parking  (I’m the world’s worst parker), allows cats and walking distance to friends and a cool neighborhood. Not too much to ask, I hope. 

So I was in the middle of this muddle and got home tonight in quite a frenzy that such a place didn’t exist and even if it did, I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own. It was in the midst of that mindset that I came home to a barren cupboard. My natural reaction, when faced with dining alone would be to order out (I love to cook for others but I don’t find inspiration for cooking for one) however I knew I’d need every penny (literally- I’m rolling change every spare chance I get).  So I thought, what the hell, I’ll make meatloaf and really stretch my dimes.

So I headed out to store to get what I needed.This is when my night turned suddenly horrific. I wasn’t in the store two minutes when I ran into Dear. I was shocked. He and Twitch were shacking up on the other side of town. What was he doing here? Granted, it was the best supermarket in town but it was OUR market by OUR house. And then I realized that HE must be there as well. I can’t accurately describe the host of emotions that coursed through me. My face froze and it felt like the floor had collapsed from under me. Dear, seeing my distress, assured me they were going, that it wouldn’t happen again and left the store. I rushed around trying to get my few measly purchases and forcing my mind off the fact that that horrible, horrible person was in MY store. And then it happened, I turned down the wrong aisle and there HE was standing at the register. He saw me and I saw me. I felt time freeze and then my body took over without thought. I knew my first reaction was to scream out at him across the store “HOMEWRECKER!! HOME-WRECK-ER!!!” and through my peanut butter at him or smack him in the head with my umbrella, however, good sense took over or more likely panic, blinding panic and I threw my basket on the floor (breaking four tiles, I later found out), rushed out of the store, rain slashing down, got behind the wheel and drove home in the same manner of frantic hysteria Lana Turner so accurately portrayed in “The Bad and The Beautiful”. I was beyond rational thought. I was pure emotion and it raged and heaved out of me.

It was all suddenly, painfully too much. I could deal with that awful, hideous person stealing my husband and my home and my life but I couldn’t have him steal my supermarket.

And worst than all of that. I realized today that I’ve lost my future. The future that we created together. One dream at a time. Little dreams and compromises, over time weaving a history that worked for us. Was it all I dreamed my life would be? It was parts. And the parts he loved, that weren’t spun from my dreams, felt at home because we were working on creating this road together. Suddenly, I have no road. The future history I’ve spun myself is no longer a dream I can dream. So how long before I start spinning new dreams for myself? And will I ever feel trusting enough to so tightly entwine my dreams with another’s?

I hope so.