Love Letters to a Healing Heart

23: More of This and Lots of That

January 3, 2019October 3, 2023 Wanders

Money can’t buy happiness but it can buys cows and cows make milk and milk makes ice cream and ice cream makes you happy.

The Tao of Maaren

Wait for It

For nearly a year I gave away my Power and self-respect to Silence.

I know what needs to be done now. Maybe I always knew but lacked the will to act on it: C and I are over and I am more than okay. I’m actually really good and have been for a time. The Hero and Damsel Theater in October was simply confirmation that C is committed to her pattern.

I get it. I really do. No judgment but let’s call things as they are and not how we think they are. I have Patterns too. I see now our Patterns have a lot in common. I look back on her actions, our sex life, and her behavior over money and it feels like she was done for months prior to K calling her.

Those hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting alone in the car or staring out the window of another hotel taught me how to feel and how to sit. I didn’t really have a choice. Pain took away my strength and I was forced to listen to Pain’s song and breathe through the tears. It taught me to focus on the next intersection and the next mile all the while moving with intention across the next bridge to the next destination.

As a result, I experienced the impermanence of the moment, the thought, and the season. I’m not able to do it all the time but having it just once was enough to help me find it again.

I know what it looks like now.

Which just goes to show if you sit long enough, and move with intention, Patience will carry the solution too you. Sometimes you have to wait for it. I know the idea of sitting while moving seem in conflict, but it actually makes perfect sense to me now.

For a while, I was angry about the losses: angry at myself and angry at others. Only in the last three months have I realized I got the better end of the deal. I had nowhere to hide so I was forced to deal with more of this and a lot of that.

I miss aspects of my life with C but I know now, where I am is for the best. I cannot do all the work for both of us.

She Loves Me. She Loves Me Not.

I am of the opinion © loves me deeply, passionately, and intently still. At least as well as she is capable of loving anyone else.

Every opportunity to lash out she does, even if it is behind the scenes. Whenever she thinks of me it must piss her off to no end. Which explains her ongoing revenging and tantrums.

Because if you don’t care you don’t react…if you are healing you don’t keep repeating the pattern over and over.

A year later she had an opportunity to do a simple kindness recently by forwarding the tags to my truck to me, returning things I brought to the relationship with me, and discussing what we are going to do with the things we purchased together.

Instead?

More rage, wrath, jealousy, and pettiness.

Her actions remind me there was far more wrong with our relationship than my betrayal. I’m reminded again why I will never go back to the way it was. She would have to be open to looking at her part. She isn’t.

I wish it were different. It isn’t.

She cannot even control her anger when it is in her best interest. Instead, she throws a tantrum and lashes out. As I read her complaint I realize she seethes with rage still. She denies 8 months of our relationship, she denies we lived together, she accuses me of things that never happened, she makes accusations about things she thinks I’m doing as opposed to what I have actually done.

She is still convinced everything I do is about her. It breaks my heart.

Therefore last Monday, as I watched another Drama Triangle unfold, with one more Hero De Jour, I felt a deep sorrowful for C’s pain and fear. Everything she is doing is about avoiding the vulnerability that would allow her to heal.

SIDEBAR: To be clear healing is not the same as reconciliation. I can love her without reconciling. Just as I can heal without her so can she. It’s a choice.

She’s scared. I get that. I was scared for three years.

I wish I could help her. I can’t.

Her healing – or lack of – is about her, not me. She can blame me, but that won’t make it true. I could die today but that wouldn’t fix what ails her. I’m just one in a long line of Heros. I’m just one of many secrets.

Just as I have my Ugly, so does she. The difference is I’ve been forced to own it. I have no one to blame if I don’t.

Hoping for the Best

C said to me, “My pride will never allow me to take you back.”

That’s honest.

Yet still, I had some hope she had enough courage to face me.

Clearly, I was naive.

In the meantime, I will keep focusing on my part and trying to make direct and indirect amends where I can.

But the amends are for me. They aren’t for her.

My objective is to have a complete answer to SpaghettiSam’s question, “What has changed in this person so that the next time a crisis occurs they don’t opt to go fuck another person?”

As someone, I’ve known for 10 years said to me on Twitter recently, “You may be a cad, but you aren’t a prick.”

As I’ve gone through this process, I’m reminded over and over: I’m a good man and have a lot of excellent qualities. My integrity was broken…but it is recoverable. Maybe not with C (or with you) but with myself…and at the end of this moment, that is all that matters.

Intentions and Stories

In reality, © is going to do what she is going to do.

She always has.

I’ve tried to always give © the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tried to adopt the view that her intentions and her motivations were not ill-intentioned. I repeatedly told myself over and over and over, “Hurt people, hurt people.”

It’s tough sometimes because her response feels so personal.

Friends perceive © as a narcissist while I perceive ©, like me, as wounded – not just by me but by life. © is responding, like my Doctor reminds me, like someone fleeing pain. There is nothing wrong with that. I fled the pain for nearly three years as I tried to cover up my betrayal. It is simply a coping mechanism.

I still don’t believe © is acting maliciously even if it has felt like it. Especially after the bullshit recently over the truck tags, the LinkedIn Account, and the continued fueling of her self-serving Drama Triangle.

I have to actively remind myself it isn’t personal unless my thinking makes it so. In truth, she deals with her pain by lashing out. If true, I know what that is like to be so frightened of being vulnerable again that is is better to salt all the fields and poison the wells instead of taking the time to decide what is and isn’t true. Anything to avoid feeling.

As I try to find perspective, I remember if © cared about our relationship she hurts. Hurt people hurt people. Like hiding my 1099 in March, what she did with the truck title, calling my client, and the LinkedIn account was an unskillful form of grieving.

But if she is behaving the same way today she did eight months ago, and I’m not, it is an excellent indicator of how I’ve adopted a new pattern. I’m not the kind of man that responds hastily just because I’m hurt.

As such, I am currently reconciling with the reality © feels entitled to behave this way and will continue because this is her pattern and she has no reason to change. If it works why change?

Why should she?

As long as she can pretend I don’t exist, or I’m something I’m not, she doesn’t have to deal with the pattern directly. Every hurt and fear can simply be projected onto me. She never has to take responsibility for her own healing.

My spirit aches to know the woman I love is traumatized, not just be me, but by life so completely.

Although, as my Doctor reminds me, C may be thrilled to be rid of me and have zero trauma. I shake my head as I remind myself, everything is a story I create to fill in the vacuum.

Read This

I’ve been rereading all of the emails between K and I, from C, and written at me by the Warren’s Flying Monkey Patrol.

All too often, it’s heartbreaking.

All too often, I assumed the Vara spoke for © but as I reread their nonsense six, eight, and ten months later, through rested eyes, body and spirit, it becomes apparent how often they fabricated stories to fill a narrative.

Regardless of ©’s intentions, or my behaviors, others have used their own crap to split Us, to triangulate, to try and hurt me personally, financially, and professionally. In the process they also hurt her, turning her into a victim.

They didn’t empower her or protect her, they hamstrung her. They aren’t an army, they are are a mob.

For example, in their Public FB rants in May they discuss the need for a restraining order and encourage people to keep an eye out for me because they consider me mentally and emotionally unstable.

When the well-meaning, but ill-informed, pile on and say, “Hell yeah! Get a restraining order!” Only then do the Interlopers admit C doesn’t want to do that now, “For reasons…”

*eyeroll*

There was a time I felt it necessary to defend myself against their lies because I thought their lies matter. They don’t. Their bullshit only matters to them because they have nothing else in their lives but to tear others down. They live to be the Hero because they have nothing else.

The more I talk to people in my community the more I realize that their behaviors reflected more on them than on me.

Mob Rules

Before I left town last week I had dinner with a little birdie and leaned into the conflict.

Because I’m not stupid, because I listen to people, and because I ask questions I discovered in the 160 days following discovery this birdie called at least three people to discourage them from having any contact with me.

At least three.

When I asked her why she called people and talked with them, she responded, “Because I didn’t know what to believe about you.”

I responded, “I considered you a close friend. Why didn’t you call me and ask.”

“Because of what C said, I just assumed the worse.”

I asked her, “Who did you call and what did you say.”

She told me. She told them what I did to C, based on what C showed her. She told me what they said in response: “It’s none of your business and you don’t have all the facts. You have what C wants you to know.”

My former friend admitted C threw me under the bus with her and with anyone that would listen. At that time C intentionally, willfully, and consciously used my Ugly to paint herself a victim and rally heroes to her side painting me as something I’m not. She acknowledged there was a squadron of flying monkeys with a plan to isolate me.

And this is why we don’t let mobs run the world.

C introduced the term narcissist.

As I listened to the little birdie, I thought of something my Good Doctor said to me months ago: “You spot it you got it.”

Meanwhile, against all evidence, my heart remains defiantly – and more and more grudgingly – at her side. It will return when it is ready.

Winding Down

I have a few pieces of business left.

Things I’m doing so that I can walk away knowing I’ve done everything I can do to demonstrate my commitment to Us.

Now it isn’t about her. I’m doing things so I can reclaim my integrity and look in the mirror again.

I’ve talked about my efforts over and over. I’ve acted consistently and lovingly. I won’t get into it here. It needs to stay between C and me.

Now there is not much left except the mono no aware. My hope is gone but maybe the Universe will surprise me.

I doubt it. Her Etsy account demonstrates again C is deep now in her pattern with a new Partner. A new Hero. I want the best for them both.

None the less, I’ll continue to grieve and move on.

And Now

I finished the year out in YoYo Town and am deciding what happens next. I said no big changes in the first year. I’ve managed that mostly.

But now?

Now the fire that has been the last year feels contained. It still rages, but it doesn’t rage across my life.

After the silence, rumormongering, and another Hero De Jour trying to draw me into one more drama triangle, I’ve had enough and it’s about time to stop trying.

As my doctor reminded me again recently, if © and I meant what we said about Us, we will find a way to work it out.

If C ever cared that doesn’t simply disappear. If not, we won’t. Our loss because, IMO, we were always better together than apart. I may want her but I will live a wonderful life without her.

In the meantime, the Power and Passion is mine to share how and where I want. © knows where to find me. I wonder if she will ever have the courage to look.