Sabotage

I don’t know if I can accept unconditional love.

Growing up, my mother didn’t know how to communicate a love without expectations. Even to this day, when I mentioned to her that I made a good grade on a recent MSW assignment, my mother replied with “Looks like you’re going to be my ‘A’ student again!” In short, anything lower than an A is just not quite as good. I remember actually getting disciplined with a belt because I made an F on an assignment in the 4th grade. The hyper-critical nature of my mother implanted a subconscious notion in myself that if I can’t do things perfect, it’s just not quite as good. Along the way, I accepted I wasn’t perfect, but I never wholly abandoned that gnawing, perfectionist voice.

I’ve noticed a pattern since Carlie died and my marriage fell apart. I am terrified at the thought of losing someone I love again. This terror leads me to many bouts of self-sabotage. The moment there’s friction in my relationship, I give up. Even if I’m in the wrong. Because it’s just too damn hard to put your all into a person without the guarantee that they will stick around forever. Sometimes I wonder if my ex got the best parts of me. Perhaps I’m a used up, cynical shrew who will never find happiness in a man again.

It makes me angry to know that my ex fed this insecure monster inside of me. That a man like Kyle, who loves me, is patient with me, and intuitively understands what I need, is still viewed as a threat. If he expresses any form of anger, disappointment, or frustration… I freeze. That voice inside of me pulls me into the darkness I create. I start to have flashes in my head of my ex giving up. Smashed glasses and computer screens. Hidden Facebook conversations he had with other females. The many times he called me crazy. The time he grabbed the video camera and filmed me as I was falling apart. Making me feel insane for so many years, only for me to find out later that he was the one with a mental sickness; indeed, sometimes I wonder if he brought on my own mental health issues. My ex gave up, while I gave him the best four years I could physically, emotionally, and spiritually muster. I tried to do everything right. I played the crazy role so that he could pull me back into sanity, because that is the role he put me in. And it still failed. He still abandoned me. And I cannot handle the possibility of another abandonment.

So, when I’m hurt from an argument and curled up inside, the easiest path to take is running from the pain. But it doesn’t happen before I spout out all levels of verbal vomit, like a wounded animal afraid for anyone to get close to tend to the wound. And he can only take so much. He becomes upset at my ability to give up so easily, and I become upset with the same fact. However, sometimes eliminating the source of pain is the easiest way to numb it. Many times I think he’d be much better without me. I look at the bags underneath his eyes after I’ve fell apart for a millionth time, and I know it is wearing on him. And I don’t know if I can allow myself to damage him any further. If I’m miserable, I should be miserable alone. I shouldn’t drag anyone down with me. That is selfish to the fullest degree. But I also don’t know if I can do this without him. Which is also selfish.

Sometimes, truly, living is just too damn difficult.

I’m an Alien.

“Sensitive people are the most genuine and honest people you will ever meet. There is nothing they won’t tell you about themselves if they trust your kindness. However, the moment you betray them, reject them or devalue them, they become the worse type of person. Unfortunately, they end up hurting themselves in the long run. They don’t want to hurt other people. It is against their very nature. They want to make amends and undo the wrong they did. Their life is a wave of highs and lows. They live with guilt and constant pain over unresolved situations and misunderstandings. They are tortured souls that are not able to live with hatred or being hated. This type of person needs the most love anyone can give them because their soul has been constantly bruised by others. However, despite the tragedy of what they have to go through in life, they remain the most compassionate people worth knowing, and the ones that often become activists for the broken hearted, forgotten and the misunderstood. They are angels with broken wings that only fly when loved.”
― Shannon L. Alder

For the majority of my life, I have felt alienated.

I can recall moments on the playground, unable to navigate complicated friendships and instead seeking solace in my books. I attempted to trick myself into thinking this was my choice – to stick out like a thumb tack, alone and propped against the brick wall of my elementary school; re-reading the same sentences over and over again to maintain composure and grasp a semblance of invisibility. The truth was that I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to spend time with me. I tried to maintain a friendship in which I only saw the friend during the summer. By the school year’s start, she seemed to forget I existed. Every single year. I became tired of pretending I didn’t know the girl who I’d shared midnight laughs and Dollar Store candy with. Words on a page were safer than any human contact.

Before I understood that normality wasn’t a necessity, I used my preteen fingers to claw around, searching for stability, acceptance, and understanding. My own mother was strapped with stress that couldn’t be added to, so I often suffered in silence. My mother did the only thing she knew to do in response to a sensitive child…she left me alone. I was allowed to ride my bike to and from the library of my tiny town in Illinois. Sometimes, if it was a special day, I could stop at the DQ after retrieving my freshly-ordered literature. I learned sugary foods triggered the feeling of love, and for that, I went through a chubby phase for several years. The other pleasure chemicals were released while reading books. Subsequently, many summers were spent inside, reading at Speedy Gonzalez frequency ( a Goosebumps book a day) and checking the back of the book for other titles I could order. I moved onto Fear Street a year later. I had a fixation for darkness, for I couldn’t verbalize or connect that I had my own darkness inside of me yet to be released. I learned to cry until my throat ached, a flood of peace following thereafter. I did not learn to regulate my emotions.

In 8th grade, I found momentary acceptance in a crowd I didn’t belong to. These people had parents who were addicted to drugs. The peers learned the coping mechanisms of their parents, and were participating in things too mature for their age. I finally had a place to release this darkness. I threw myself into macabre literature and poetry. Anything below the status quo spoke to me in a way as if to say “you are not alone.” I could never measure up to the demands that normalcy placed onto me, so I rebelled instead. I learned my emotions were burdens to those who didn’t understand (which were the mass majority), so I repressed through cutting and solitary crying spells.

I remember feeling a comfort in my alien nature when I became a Christian. I’m not so sure now that Christianity was what made me feel better, but the fact that I finally found friendship that gave back. Christianity always created an emotional conflict inside of me — for one moment, I could feel I was god’s daughter, perfect in his sight. However, a convicting Sunday morning message would leave me feeling like chewed up bubble gum on the bottom of a shoe. I could never regulate the two. So I seesawed between loving and hating myself, sometimes simultaneously. Most people didn’t even know I was going through this, for to confess it would alienate me further. I also thought feeling perpetual guilt was a healthy symptom of heavy conviction, so I didn’t think to try and correct these cognitive distortions. If I was ever aloof as a child while apologizing or meeting consequences for my actions, my mother would often unintentionally use a certain tone or words to manipulate my emotions and give her the reaction she thought I should have: shame and guilt. I learned through this that every negative experience was associated with these same two traits. This made it difficult for me to bounce back after a personal defeat.

Adulthood has a way of bringing on certainty, or at least the illusion of it. Things finally seemed to be falling into place by my early 20s – a stable job, a husband who appeared to be good for me, and minimal financial struggle. Following my heart into foreign missions put a major strain on my finances. Though I felt connected to Thailand and Asian culture more than my own country of the United States, I couldn’t linger there for as long as I’d like due to income. I returned to the states, and the alienation seemed to return as well. Marital issues in the midst of intense involvement with my church was enough to make me feel like that little girl with the bookmarked Goosebumps again. I did just enough to “fit in,” but I never felt connected.

Shortly thereafter, alienation by stillbirth joined my many foes.

Some of this alienation I pursue by myself — not having energy to exist in a world without my daughter, staying up all night watching Netflix on the couch, unable to go to sleep in a bed that once held my pregnant body. Isolation was also placed on me by society and PTSD — expectations for me to return to work before I was ready, flippant sentimental quotations and half-hearted advice, pressure from my husband to have sex when I couldn’t even think of getting out of bed, guilt for my rage toward god and anything to do with that belief, anger for the abandonment I felt, nauseated any time I walked into my bathroom and remembered all the blood on the floor, haunted with images of her paper skin ripping as the stress of her tiny, formed bones poked through its barrier, the moment of  giving her back to the nurse for the last time echoing over and over until I was driven to insanity by my grief. I wanted to die, and I’m still not sure that’s gone away. I think when you lose something so precious to you, death is always a welcoming thought. My alienation continues — a mother with PTSD returning from the battlefield of loss. I lost a significant piece of my innocence, which I will never regain. I can’t pursue anything significant in my life without the echo of it possibly failing.

The next phase of alienation is a time I still linger in. I was abandoned by my husband, and left to deal with my grief alone. The fear I clutched in childhood was now made a reality with his absence. No one is permanent. While object permanence is something we learn as children, I always understood this didn’t carry over to relationships. However, being an idealist, I always hoped for more. The rise and fall of expectations verses reality was debilitating.

My belief system no longer brought me comfort. It tormented me instead. Each time I couldn’t agree or believe what I was reading in the Bible or hearing in church, I felt the voice underneath it all telling me what a horrible Christian I was. When I could no longer connect to what I felt was god, the voices in my head from Christians expecting me to persevere were deafening. I would be tortured with the thoughts of Christians who went through far worse, and could somehow bounce back. Why wasn’t I that strong? Why was there yet another thing wrong with me that couldn’t be fixed? Why couldn’t I pull it together?

Friends lessened the frequency of interaction while I went through this time. I don’t blame them, and not all of them disappeared. Their absence is understood to me. It is difficult to comfort a hurting soul when there aren’t words or actions to make things better. I myself am guilty of this. And I’m sure I pushed others away, for I knew my own burden would curl its adult fingers around the neck of the comforting friend and pull them under with me. I didn’t wish this pain on anyone else. I had grown comfortable in my alien nature, so it wasn’t anything I didn’t expect. The choices I made might’ve sped up this isolation as well. I’d grown so used to harboring these feelings and emotions inside of me, that I didn’t tremble at the thought of being alone. Not for a little while, anyway.

I’m reaching a new age of alienation. This is the alienation of living in the South and no longer believing in god as a being. If Christian friends ask me to explain this, I’m left fumbling for words and looking like a cult-following idiot. I’m still in the beginnings of this transition, but it has been just as difficult as the others. It’s difficult for me to accept invitations to talk or hang out if I know the person will use that time as a way to witness to me, as the person who has “fallen away” or is “back sliding” from god. I also develop social anxiety at the thought of explaining, as when I became a Christian at 15, I didn’t have all the answers — and yet I’m expected to have all the answers if I’m leaving the Christian faith. I don’t. Not at all. There are times where I even doubt if this is the right thing to do. Though meditation and healing crystals offer me more comfort than any organized religion, I am left alone in this journey. Christianity has the wonderful appeal of immediately connecting you with a support system. Not so when you are exiting the Church. I had someone in my life who kept pursuing me and checking on me until I told him I wouldn’t be attending a Bible study anymore; a Bible study he held at his house. Suddenly, I never heard from this friend again. I suppose I was checked off of the list of ‘people to pray for’ and introduced into the pile of ‘ will revisit when she reaches out for help again.’ There is no built-in support system when you say you don’t believe in god as a being. If anything, there is a wall of opposition waiting on the other side.

I have never felt more alone, in many ways. I’m an alien belonging to the highly sensitive, young divorcee, bereaved mother, and former Christian mothership. I know this place is not my home. I understand that I am a starseed, which makes things more challenging. I feel as if I have been tossed with the waves of this life — constantly searching for the shore of stability, yet never quite finding it. For this, I find myself increasingly tired and homesick for a place I long to return.

Above all, I desire, without any doubt or misconception, to be understood to my eternal core.

Milestones.

[The absence I miss the most is captured milestones].

---

 Year one – 11.2013

 First birthday.

I am empty and poured to entirety. I compromise values to ease the pain of uneaten, baby-pink cake and silent nurseries.

I befriend demons.

They take,

and take

and take. I am kidnapped from sanity. I teeter in the waves of grief amidst a pirated ship.

I still haven’t gained my sea legs for such a zealous voyage.

Year two – 11.2014

Left or right handed?

Thirty pounds of body shed –

I wish for the addition of your weight instead.

Sometimes, lightness is captured like Christmas morning’s unwrapping.

And other moments, I still correct my footing;

Knees akimbo – hoping the deep arches of my ballerina feet attach in strength and poise.

---

For every experience, I wish to take yours instead.

Because I know my greatest adventure will always be you.

Post Traumatic Divorce Disorder

I think this should be a new clinical term for those who suffer painful divorces.

Finding out your ex is a sex addict who can’t keep his eyes off of other women, who prefers fantasies to reality, was a devastating revelation.

I tried so hard to help him with his “purity” — I bought him Every Young Man’s Battle, which he mostly only read if I highlighted some notes and pointed it out to him. His untreated ADD and sociopathic tendencies made it almost impossible for any real change to stick to him. I mothered when I should have been girlfriending, and further mothered as a wife. It was exhausting, honestly. While visiting my sister, she made the statement “I just wish you guys could’ve worked it out.”

“I don’t,” I replied confidently. She seemed surprised.

I concealed a lot of the dysfunction in my marriage. There are still some things I will only reveal if asked or if I feel the person doesn’t truly understand why I’m happier now.

In my newfound belief system, I’ve discovered and confirmed that things go smoothly if you are vibrationally compatible. What this truth means is that, when we have seasons where certain relationships are challenging or friendships have gone silent, it is usually due to incompatibility of personal vibration. So, rather than viewing the things my ex did while we were dating as divine intervention, I’m realizing now that the universe was TRYING desperately to pull me away from someone who would inevitably hurt me tragically in the long run. If a man will cheat on you once, you can guarantee he will do it again. It wasn’t my job to tell him how much God loved him and how he had better for him. It wasn’t my job to be the ear to listen as he described why he had commitment fears. At that moment, I should’ve walked away. I should’ve noticed and realized my worth. But I didn’t. Instead, I allowed someone else to personify my worth, and I lost Ashley in the process. In the process of raising the vibration of someone else, I forgot that I was putting my future in the hands of someone who didn’t match my vibration. Someone I constantly doubted. A relationship which provided a constant companion of suspicion, insecurity, and trust issues. How on earth could I think this was a good idea?

Because my ex presented to be every mother’s dream for her daughter’s companion. He was an expert at wearing masks, and he falls into the Christian mask very easily. People praised him for his talents, the way he cared for me, and how he would sometimes talk sense into me. You know. Because I was the one who was obviously wrong all the time. And even as my ears rang from a blow to my ear after a fight in which he lost control, his family came home mere minutes later, and I had to assume the role of happy girlfriend. I am not trying to demonize him. I am simply explaining my PTDD.

He had subconsciously convinced me I was crazy. I sat in my therapist’s office my second day of inpatient after suicidal thoughts placed me there. She looked at me, very confidently, and stated “You are NOT crazy. You never were crazy. You are having an expected reaction to a bad situation.” Was that true? It seemed everyone else couldn’t understand why I had to separate from my ex. To this day, his family still thinks it’s my fault the divorce happened. Even as their baby boy, the child who can’t seem to do any wrong, had multiple friends with benefits during our separation. I wasn’t innocent, not at all. I ran to the comfort of other men when I knew he was doing the same with women. But I also never put on a mask that communicated that I was innocent. I was ashamed of my behavior — my desperate need to build up my confidence again after it had been ripped to shreds. But I never gave up. Up until the day he had me sign the papers, I still had some naive hope he would come to his senses instead of just deciding to start over with another woman. But he had gave me the ultimatum that I must let him move back in or he would divorce me. We separated domestically because there were some things that he personally needed to work on. He did none of them, yet still managed to have plenty of time to sell a car to his future third wife and develop a friendship turned romantic relationship with her. In my heart, I think he refused to believe that he was in the majority of the wrong. And his pride prevented him from seeking the help he (we) needed.

I was driven to insanity the last months of the relationship. Finding out he was having sex with other women, finding porn on his tablet, watching him slowly lose interest in me, watching in real time on Facebook while he chatted and made arrangements to “make out” with a girl the same day we celebrated our five year anniversary. Slowly, the suspicions I had became truth. I think the first time I truly realized he had a serious problem was about two or three weeks after we laid Carlie to rest. He initiated sex, and I tearfully rejected him. I couldn’t at the moment — my body wasn’t completely healed, and any sensation in that region reminded me of her feet that were constantly felt on my pelvis in the days before her death. I tried to explain to him, but he became angry, and then cried. I struggled to understand him — knowing that he felt intimacy through sex, being a male — but I slowly realized that his tendencies were not normal.

—

As a child, I always pinched at the fat on my stomach. I remember first trying diets at age 10. I have always had a horrible body image. This experience wrecked what little confidence I was grasping to. With each stolen glance I’d catch him in while we were in public, for each time I knew he wasn’t eager for sex because he’d been busy looking at pornography and/or relieving himself to the pictures/video/mental images of other women in his mind. For the times I felt like nothing more than a way to relieve sexual frustration… I broke a little more. I am now conditioned to immediately fight a panic attack if I am in the same room with a man I care about and a half-dressed or naked woman is on the screen. It’s like clockwork. I gauge the man’s eyes — are they looking at her? Does he think she’s sexier than me? If he looks, what does that mean? Does it mean he will go off one day and cheat on me? Am I not good enough? Alluring enough? Enough, enough? The whole process is maddening, and yet sometimes I feel I cannot control the tidal wave of insecurity before it pummels me. What man could put up with such nonsense? I’m also aware of the fact that what you fear most is what can end up happening if you give enough power to it. So I also have to fight to not make it my reality by not allowing my thoughts to run rampant about what COULD be going on.

There’s times I still feel insane. I hold tight to the affirmations of my therapist — I’m not crazy, and I was simply a suffering woman flailing in a drowning sea of grief and rejection, who reached for the first thing to try and pull her up. I hold onto the truths she’s given me, such as telling me earlier this year that she wouldn’t be surprised if my ex was engaged and married before the end of the year. I told her “Surely not. Not that soon.” But she was right. And I had to experience an entire new cathartic release as I saw how easily he could replace me. At the same time, it was poetic justice. All of my suspicions were suddenly confirmed. What a relief, but what a heart break.

—

The universe understood I needed someone who can read my thoughts as well, if not better, than myself. It took care in matching my vibration with Kyle. Even thought it was over a year in the making, the universe still found a way to lead us back to each other — even as I found myself caught up in a rebound relationship, and Kyle refusing to talk to me for awhile because he knew I deserved better.

I had an insecurity attack yesterday. I was already feeling vulnerable due to the holidays and the absence of my Carlie Wren. We were watching a music video which happened to have a half-dressed woman in it. Never seeing the video before, Kyle didn’t know what was in it. We watched for a little over a minute before my eyes shifted away from the video and to a random fixation in the room. I couldn’t let this monster grab hold of me again. I had to figure out a way to be secure in myself, to trust Kyle, and to understand that not everyone has ill intentions if they love you. Before I could let the logical take hold, the insecurity had already taken over. He looked just a second too long at the video, and my whole world felt like it fell apart. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. In a lot of ways, I feel I need trauma therapy for my separation and eventual divorce. I hate handing this baggage to someone and expecting them to understand. I know it’s illogical. I know it’s silly. But sometimes, I simply cannot control what route my mind is going to take – or my emotions. I try. I try very hard. But one vulnerability in any other area of my life (for example, I was feeling sickly yesterday) and the carefully constructed coping skills I’ve learned seem to dissipate out of my mind and actions.

I left the room. I gathered myself, used crystal healing with my favorite therapy crystal (Rose Quartz) and tried to calm myself down. When I feel that way, it’s like a trigger to remember all of the hurt and pain I went through when I felt that particular way. Insecurity attacks actually cause flash-backs for me, and I’m back in the hospital with Carlie, or I’m reading my ex’s words to another female, or I’m thinking about all the things I should have done that could’ve prevented Carlie’s death. The feeling in itself is a trigger.

I say all this to explain… vibrational compatibility is essential.

I returned to Kyle’s room with puffy eyes, trying to hold it together. There were so many things making me sad, I couldn’t seem to get a strong breath. I tried to hide the tears, but Kyle was pulling my head into his lap and stroking my hair before I could explain. But I didn’t need to explain. He understood.

“I know what’s going on with you. You shouldn’t feel that way. That’s silly. You’re hot as a furnace. Besides, you’re only a point of light. We’re all a point of light.” I don’t think he even understood the impact those words would have on me, or he might’ve said it more eloquently. But in that moment, it was exactly what I needed to hear. He understood me, my soul, and my essence.

I have spent my whole life trying to explain myself. What a relief to finally find someone that doesn’t need my explanations. He knows me — the good, the bad, the ugly — and he understands my essence verses when my emotions are trying to take control of me. He helps me work through those ridiculous thoughts. When I’m able to gather the strength to let him know the thoughts, he immediately counters my worries, fears, insecurities, etc. with logical arguments that make much more sense than the delusional thoughts my brain tries to invent.

I have met my vibrational match, after thinking I could never fully trust love, men, or relationships again.

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”

-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

New Beginnings

“Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”

-Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

It started quite oddly, really, about a year ago.
In the midst of an impending divorce, I joined a dating website. I fooled myself into thinking the dates would somehow rid me of the emptiness I felt as my life slowly collapsed. Let me clarify – I joined the dating website for friends only. However, I quickly realized this particular website didn’t accommodate such mature themes. I found myself frustrated when people thought I meant I desired a friends with benefits relationship. Was it not enough just to be friends with someone of the opposite sex?
In my dating profile, I’d quoted the movie Fight Club. “You’ve met me a strange time in my life.” I cited Tyler Durden as being the source of this quote. I received a message from KyleChaos. “The narrator quotes that; not Tyler Durden.” And that was it. The comment piqued my interest, as it was clear he was also a fan of the film. I replied something along the lines of “Oops, you’re right! I’ll change it right now. Good catch.” A couple of weeks went by before this user graced my inbox with their presence again. Numbers were exchanged after prolonged conversation, and pretty soon I was meeting Kyle for the first time, in my apartment that felt lonelier than ever before.
I liked Kyle. I was attracted to him from the beginning. It felt like there was this chemistry I couldn’t quite put into words. This man was intelligent, dripping with witty sarcasm, and provided me the best conversation I’d had in months. We watched a movie on Netflix, and then he was gone.
The second time, we watched another movie. Dahmer, which is still an inside joke between us to this day.
He told me he did feel a connection to me, but he didn’t want to date. I told him I understood, and was the same. However, my loneliness soon crippled me into a dysfunctional relationship. Kyle met my ex once when he was visiting, and Kyle told me that day that Jason wasn’t a good person. I ignored it. Jason didn’t like me talking to Kyle, even as a friend, so I kept the conversation few and far between. After the second time I kicked Jason out, Kyle was looking for a place to live. I offered him the possibility of being my roommate, but again, my pathetic need for affirmation trumped a healthier situation, and I invited Jason back into my house. Kyle told me how it was a mistake, and how I would regret it. He was right. But at the time, I fought it. And Kyle and I didn’t talk for a period, again.
When Jason and I finally broke up for good, low and behold Kyle was looking for a roommate after just moving into an apartment. Not able to afford my current living situation, I happily obliged. Kyle offered the contingency of this: “as long as you don’t develop feelings for me. Nothing will ever happen between us.” I told him that while I had feelings for him, I would never let it get in the way of our friendship.
Crazy, right? Willingly moving into a housing relationship with someone I have feelings for who didn’t reciprocate them? But somehow, by all accounts… I had the hope that he would come around, eventually. And I didn’t necessarily want a relationship at the time, so I could be patient.
Our nights were usually the same – congregate in Kyle’s room, watch a various choosing of shows (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Breaking Bad, Hell’s Kitchen, to name a few) and talk about all kinds of things. The plethora of conversation in each sitting never ceased to surprise me. We could go from talking about The Universe, to meditation, to favorite memories from being overseas, to performing random quotes from Fargo. My feelings grew, but I hid them away with two locks and a key. A part of me was terrified to have such feelings for someone else, as the last person I offered these to completely annihilated my heart.
I don’t know when the dynamic changed, really. I could say it was the day we had an argument, and he sent me a link to a youtube video apologizing for being a jerk at the time. The song was I Never Meant To Hurt You, and I melted with every word. It made reference to feelings, and I knew he did care about me in that way. But Kyle was scared of labels, and I taught myself patience.
Kyle and I celebrated Halloween in New Orleans. I didn’t understand the affect alcohol would have on me after not drinking for a long time. I made the mistake of drinking shots, and Kyle had to take care of me for the rest of the night. I am not proud of this, but I want to reiterate what this man did – at one point, I was puking in the bathroom. I couldn’t muster the courage to get up. A few girls tried to come in the restroom as I laid my head on the porcelain altar of regret. He stopped them from coming in, and waited for me to feel well enough to help me stand up. I later threw up in a bar, and they told Kyle he had to get me out of there. He defended me, saying he would as soon as I was well enough to get up. There was a man cat-calling me and making me uncomfortable. Kyle got him thrown out of a bar and armed his pepper spray when the guy tried to come near me again. We lost the parking garage where we parked the car, and he tugged me along as I was whining about the cold and eventually got us back to the car without having a nervous breakdown. While visiting my family, he sat beside my ill uncle on the couch and engaged him in conversation for over three hours. I texted him, offering him a way out to sit next to me, but he said he didn’t mind.
It was after this trip – after seeing me at my worst in months – that he decided we were a team, and there is no reason we shouldn’t label the relationship. I was ecstatic, humbled, and comforted.
I remember the first time I knew I loved him. It was a trip we took to Burgess Falls. I noticed we both followed the same pattern of behavior, without prompting the other. We both went off to the side of the trail and took pictures. We connected with nature by taking our time, while whirs of families raced past us to get to the end of the trail. This was someone I could explore the world with.
Nothing is ever perfect. Kyle is more thinking-minded, and I am motivated more by feelings. This can cause misunderstandings and disagreements. But you know the greatest difference between Kyle and most guys? He will research what it means for me to be an INFP. He will try his hardest to understand my feeling, the F in the Myers-Briggs. He has looked up my life path number, zodiac, and natal chart, all with the desire to understand me better. I have always done this in relationships, but rarely has it been reciprocated. He is constantly thinking of ways to improve the relationship. I am ever thankful for this.

Meet Kyle, my life partner.

Emotion Sickness

All my life, I’ve struggled with what I like to call “feeling attacks.”

Something will provoke overwhelming emotion inside of me, and in turn I must choose how to respond while brewing with said emotion.

This made for a chaotic, insecure, controlling teenager. Couple this with the fact that I was raised in a household that taught me to either stifle your emotions or let them explode, and I didn’t have a healthy model for display of emotions.

However, this fact about myself has made it extremely easy for people to dismiss my emotions or use them against me. I made the mistake of attracting saviors for friends, constantly unloading that I wished I wasn’t so emotional, that it was a problem, that I knew I was irrational, etc. If I could beat them to the punch, I would see the hit to my ego coming. I could provide a controlled environment for sharing this vulnerability.

My sensitivity was always viewed as a negative: 

“You’re too sensitive.”

“I was just teasing.”

“Why do you take things so seriously?”

“Wow, you must be pmsing.”

“Lighten up.”

….and so it goes.

I learned that my gift of empathy was a burden. That me feeling the energy of others and subsequently experiencing that same emotion was erratic. The fact that I was a healer, empath, and highly sensitive person left me feeling alone and immature.

But this wasn’t the worst of it.

Subconsciously, and without warning, I invited assholes into my life.

These were the people that would make me second-guess my rational emotions. They would manipulate me into admitting fault, while their wrongs were carefully covered up. My mistake was immediately explaining my emotions as if they were a burden; a silly, childish trait. The wrong type of people latched on to this, shifting the blame to me. After all, I’m overreacting, right?

Not always.

So how does one break the cycle?

1) Recognize and understand that your emotions aren’t a burden.

2) If you consciously try and avoid being irrational, that is what you will do. Don’t let anyone make you doubt your own self-control.

3) Stand up for yourself and your emotions. Rein them in, but also know that they are allowed to be released, given the right context.They are a gift in a jaded world.

4) Never allow someone to reduce you to your emotions. Never allow someone to make you feel disgusted or juvenile for how you feel.

5) We usually attract shift-blamers who will comment on our feelings instead of taking responsibility for their actions. Don’t let them do that to you.

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Damn you.

Damn you for convincing me at the start that I couldn’t do better.

Damn you for making me feel crazy.

Damn you for giving up on us.

 —

I know I shouldn’t do it. Facebook sometimes has me believing I need to delete, if only to protect myself from unnecessary hurt. But I have friends on Facebook…friends I may never meet in person, but who are there for me as I walk through this barbed-wire road.

But I did it.

I looked at his engagement photos.

It turns my stomach. I swallow down acid that threatens to spill over.

Why would he do this to me? Could someone honestly be so selfish?

Timeline of events:

July 2012 – Sweet Carlie Wren ended her short time on earth

February 2013- Separation for reconciliation

November 2013 – Divorce finalized

June 2014 – He becomes engaged to the woman he met while he and I were separated. The woman he met when he was supposed to be helping me. Supporting me. Loving me. Grieving with me.

July 2014 – He will be married. Again.

For so long, I tolerated how things went. I felt as if I were to blame, so I internalized guilt. But now, to see how effortlessly he’s moved on is like a butcher knife to my freshly-mangled heart. And I realize, no matter how often he tried to convince me that I was insane, no matter how many times he manipulated me into believing that it was the majority of my fault… I now know that he is a broken man. I defended him, even as soon as the beginning of this year. My therapist told me she would put money on the fact that he would be engaged and married by the end of 2014. It sounded surreal. I denied that. Surely not.

—

It terrifies me, really. I was so sure of my life with him. I wouldn’t have married him if I wasn’t, or given him my virginity that I held so close to my heart and defined as my level of purity. I shamefully admit that I offered this to him in efforts to keep his eyes and heart from wandering, even when we were in the dating stages. I was that sure about him. Sure enough to forsake so many things.

And for what?

I never want to let a man in again. I don’t trust men as far as I can throw them (which, even with my 9 Round participation, isn’t very far). That may be a generalization, but there you go. The one person I thought rose above the stereotype I’m finding was actually detrimentally worse. He just craftily hides behind religion and good deeds so people don’t recognize this.

I fear he’s ruined me for life. For a life of a second family. The thought of even beginning that process again exhausts me. Yes, I dated someone shortly after the divorce was decided. I know now that was a rebound, and I wish I could take back those 6 months of my life. But the reality is, no matter how screwed up that person was and is, they helped me not feel so damn lonely. But never for one second did I even entertain the thought of marrying again. How could I?

I don’t pick men well. I didn’t have a father growing up, and my mother dated a few men who didn’t really communicate the definition of what I needed to look for in a man. I’ve learned recently that I gravitated toward men who were wounded, trying to fix them. I was attracted to those that would treat me as less than what I deserve, because I didn’t recognize I deserved more. I skipped over “nice guys” time and time again because they were “too nice” or “boring.” I instead looked for the ones who would make me laugh, who were child-like, and who sometimes used me as punchlines for their jokes. I thought this was normal. “You can’t help who you’re attracted to, right?”

Wrong. I’m learning that now. A man will have to shatter several walls in order to get to the place that I’ve sealed up now. I’m hyper-vigilant. The slightest indication that the person is anything like my ex husband, and I tend to run in the opposite direction.

He’s revolutionized the way I view men. I look at men as if they are going to try and get away with anything they can as long as I’m aloof. Enter the hyper-vigilance. It’s not like I had a firm grasp of what a man was, period. Absence of a fatherly figure will do that, especially if you have no one to fill that gap and explain to you what to look for in a man.

He was my everything. Now he’s nothing to me.

How can I put myself through the possibility of that happening again?

Progress

Today.

I did push ups the right way. I must’ve accompished thirty at least.

I did sit ups for 30 seconds straight, and my spring up from the ground was stronger and swifter.

I noticed that regardless of what the scale says, my body is changing. I’m beginning to have a cinch at the waist like I did before. My hourglass. Very small cinch, and my waist circumference is 5 inches bigger than it needs to be. But it is noticeable.

My face is thinner. My legs are stronger. My arms are leaner.

 

Regardless of what my negative self talk will try to convince me…

I am changing for the better. One day at a time.

 

Bubble Gum Cigar

A bubble gum cigar left on my desk today.

Taunting me; baby-pink with bold letters:

It’s a girl.

II

I never understood cigars as celebration for new life;

The men with their smug grins, patting each other on the back

As if they were responsible for anything other than spitting their seed into a womb.

As if they have control over things like babies dying or mothers grieving

The pride of predictability reeling to snatch up their hopes and dreams

for their unborn carbon-copy.

III

It’s a girl.

Her Kermit-legs flopping from the sugar of Sunny Delight

Kicking her way into our hearts; she is no longer a blob on a screen.

I am unable to possess the self-control to keep it a surprise.

It’s a daughter.

Later that day, I accidentally refer to the ultrasound pictures as “her”

And my family bursts into laughs and exclamations of joy

All of us mapping the future for this long-awaited miracle.

IV

You never understand the life you willed for someone

Until that life is taken.

Who was I to have plans from the start?

Who am I to assume the better in this worse world?

V

Baby pink balloons

kissing the sky where you rest.

I was never able to be showered with celebration for your arrival

VI

I chew up the bubble gum;

it tastes like powder and envy