Friday’s Guest Writer: Icepicks and Other Homeopathic Remedies (10)
I have three just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These are your greatest treasures. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.
– Lao-Tzu
Welcome
I’m running on four hours of a sleep.
Some things I’ve written in the last 36 hours are giving me nightmares. Maybe it will post tomorrow. Maybe next week. As soon as I exorcise the demons from the story I’ll post it. Sitting in my pain and not reacting is opening the door for other ungrieved pains and losses. They are all connected.
I miss C.
It is beautiful today. I wish C sitting by my side again. The ache for her wrecks me. My heart breaks over and over. I blew it. There is no making it right. There is no compassion. Mercy. Clemency. There is only silence and anger. My songs fall on deaf ears.
I feel the depth of her roiling rage and hatred through the silent treatment and across seven months, 40,000 miles and 17 states. It feels malicious. Cruel. Intentional. Is it? I’m left to guess…over and over and over and over.
I think I see you. I thought you saw me.
Her hurt must run as deep as her love. When I killed her love it must have left a black hole. The maelstrom where her heart was must be devastating. I’m so close to her as I overlook the lake. I couldn’t be any further away from her.
I weep at this table. Alone. Broken. The sun’s rays reflect off the lake’s waves like diamonds…and all I can think of is C’s smile. I cannot look away. The hurt and loss defy expression. It simply exists. I simply sit here. I don’t drive to C’s. I don’t walk to C’s. I don’t write to her. I don’t look at her business FB page. I don’t look at her Instagram. I don’t look at pictures or memories or stories.
I simply sit here and weep and hurt and breathe and write. My heart pleads to be heard across the endless empty void my betrayal and pride created between my heart and my Love of my loves. I hate what I did to Us. To her. To me.
I long to hold you. Dance with you. Laugh with you. Travel with you. Love you.
The silence breaks me. I carry it alone. I cannot breathe. It suffocates me. In my mind’s eye I see her dancing, holding, laughing, loving another man tonight. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
She’s gone.
A friend wrote this about her ex-husband. It is exactly how I suspect C feels about me. It is how I want to feel about C yet I cling to her memory and hope like a child to a blanket.
I’m a fool.
Seven months later I just want the pain to stop. Why can I not stop caring and hoping? Why do I keep trying? I’m a fool…I can find no peace.
Let the pain have a purpose.
About the Authors
The author lives in rural Wisconsin trying to remember how to love and live. She lives with her dog and the echoes of seventeen years of narcissistic assault on her identity, her body, her sexuality, her mind, and her heart.
Icepicks and Other Homeopathic Remedies
How do I get you out of my head? Maybe if I pour gasoline in my ear, and light it on fire. Or stick an ice pick through my eyeball. Will you stop talking to me then? Will you no longer influence what I do, or what I think of myself? If I could just open up my skull, pull out my brain, and scrub it with steel wool, or maybe a magic eraser. Perhaps an ultrasonic toothbrush could loosen those pesky, caked on stories – the stories about how I am not valuable, or beautiful, or enough. The ones that cling to nooks and crannies in my brain like plaque. I might need one of those scrapers the dentist uses to get those out.
How do I make you not matter anymore? I still hear your voice in my head and it still has power. I still waste my time and my energy in my insatiable quest for your approval. Approval you will never give. I still use up my emotional and mental resources trying to figure out a way for you to see – really see – the harm you caused, that you created the mess you are in, and, if I let you, you will hurt me again. I want you to actually care that you hurt me. Not just hurt, you almost destroyed me. Your cruelty was seemingly endless. And intentional.
Why does it matter what you see or don’t see? Why does it matter if you care or don’t care? Why would your approval be so important to me? Is it just so unreasonable for me to believe that a person can love in such a painful way? Is it my own foolishness that I am hiding from? Can I just keep the things you taught me, the things that brought me to where I am at, without the things that now hold me back? Ahh. The paradox. The eternal fight of dark and light. The things that shape us in the best of ways can also be the things that tear us apart.
We are forever changed by everyone who touches us, especially those who are part of our lives for a long time. I can’t bleach out my brain of you without losing me along with it. But I can lay you to rest. I can speak my truth, knowing you will not approve. I can choose to redirect my thoughts when you are consuming my thoughts. I can choose not to answer the phone – literally and figuratively. When you call in my head, I don’t have to answer. I don’t have to replay the fights. I can walk away at any time. I can say no.
Maybe, after so many years of giving all of my resources to you – sometimes willingly, sometimes not – I am afraid that there will not be anything there if you are gone. That I don’t really exist, that there is nothing to me. Maybe the question I should be asking is: Who am I without you in my head, and who can I become?
Thank you. Your thoughts reflect mine. The author’s express mine. (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind…)
My thoughts about C’s distance are this. It isn’t necessarily that she hates you.
She might.
I don’t know this. But from my experience, it is to protect herself. From further pain. But also fear. Fear for me is that I still love mine. Truly, madly, deeply. And the distance keeps me safe. Because mine made all the right noises, had me almost convinced that he loved me and only me. And as I worked on my healing journey, undertaking a Masters degree, he ‘felt lonely’ and started at least three dating profiles. He lied. And cheated again. Nine years after Dday. And my fear is that I would still take him back. If he hadn’t found a willing accomplice, and his exit affair partner did not exist. Distance and silence probably feels safe in her pain.
Or, she hates you. I wish I could hate mine.
If she hates me I’ve earned it…
“Heav’n has no rage like love to hatred turn’d; Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”
I showed your comments to the guest writer, she really appreciated your comments. It’s nice to know she isn’t alone.