Love Hangover

"And yes, being lovesick is like being in mourning. Because you die, because your future dies and you with it...There is a hurting time. It lasts for so long. But it gets better. I know that now."

~Nina George~

So, when I got married to the first man I fell in love with, it was the love of a young girl that drove me there. I NEVER experienced heartache or lovesickness with the Dreaded Ex when we split up. I was relieved. Probably because he was a jerk. Or for those that actually knew him, you go by what the therapist who helped me unravel all the knotted experiences from that marriage called him-a sociopathic narcissist. By the time we split up, there was no love left. Only the bitter taste of disappointment and many years of regret. I mourned the loss of a nearly twenty year investment of time into someone that at the end of our marriage always let me down, cheated on me and would not change the character defects in himself that contributed to us falling apart.

Yes, there have been men who I've loved and left or they loved and left me since then. Mister. Gigantor. The Cowboy. Breaking up with them hurt at the time, but I got over the breakups pretty quickly. I had more anger or was offended more than anything, It was more of a let-down. But I didn't mourn them. Mostly because I knew there were others in the periphery. Waiting. I'm still friends with a couple of the men of my life. Like, they check in on me when I'm going through a rough patch. One sent me flowers to cheer me up after the break-up with The Man. Gigantor texts me regularly and we plan hikes when I have the time. Gigantor still professes his undying love for me. He's kind and funny and adores me. We're good friends. He's just in a different place than I am.

But, I've never experienced what I had heard about for so long with other people and their breakups. What do I mean? All stories you hear, the kind of things that happen with people that cheesy love songs are written about. You know "You left me and now all I want to do is drink til my cells are saturated with alcohol and I drunk text you at 2 in the morning or write bad poetry about our love." I never understood that. Or eating bad things to boost your seretonin levels. Or needing to fill yourself with someone else so quickly after. I never understood that. Until now. I understand the sentiment now. I understand how you can hurt so much you want to do that. Do anything to make your chest stop hurting, or the tears falling or for the memories to stop giving you pain.

In extreme cases, there can actually be physical manifestions of a broken heart in your actual heart. It's called broken heart syndrome. According to the Mayo Clinic, "In broken heart syndrome, there's a temporary disruption of your heart's normal pumping function in one area of the heart. The remainder of the heart functions normally or with even more forceful contractions. Broken heart syndrome may be caused by the heart's reaction to a surge of stress hormones.
The condition may also be called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, apical ballooning syndrome or stress cardiomyopathy by doctors. The symptoms of broken heart syndrome are treatable, and the condition usually reverses itself in days or weeks." Apparently, the symptoms mimic heart attacks. People have died of this. But upon a post mortem examination, no clots were present inside the heart. No obvious medical reason was given for the heart to give out. I've also heard about the tendons inside the heart breaking and the heart collapsing.

I went to the doctor recently. My blood pressure was sky high for me. I told my heart "Don't you believe what you heard about broken hearts...you're gonna be okay. I hope..."

I was scrolling through my facebook feed not long ago and came across this video. I thought it was brilliant. It made me cry because I have been feeling wretched.

Not long ago, I was talking to a colleague of mine who is a counselor recently about what I had been feeling. I had some personal losses in my extended family to suicide and those deaths were compounded by the fact that I was already raw and in pain. I was a mess. She listened.

I think what was the worst thing for me was the fact that I had more questions than answers about us. How can one person go from being so in love to being cold and unfeeling in such little time.

I've tried rationalizing. Cleaning. Getting so drunk that I couldn't think straight. Ate my weight in food I shouldn't. I've talked with friends. Family. Tried talking to him. I've tried dating someone else. Tried tinder.

Nothing.

I can't bring myself to delete the photos from my phone. I think about him every day.

It's not that he was such an amazing man. But, he was. He wasn't really all that remarkable. But, he was. He was ordinary and kind of boring. But, he wasn't. 

He made me feel normal and extraordinary all at the same time. He made me feel like I was exceptionally beautiful and smart and incredible when I didn't feel like it myself. We loved talking to one another.  We could talk for hours about everything and nothing. He never wanted to stop talking with me..it made him desire me more.

He took my breath away with the things he said to me. Unexpectedly saying things so profound and vulnerable about how I made him feel that it surprised even him. I could make him shy telling him how good he was. He covered his insecurities with false bravado and used his physicality to make up for things he felt he lacked in. I was completely in love with him.

I am completely in love with him still.

I never understood one and only until him. He is the yardstick by which I measure all men. I see him in the walk of someone I work with. I think of his hands seeking mine out and how he nestled into me when we watched football. I still have a hard time going into certain gas stations. Or hearing certain songs. And I haven't been able to watch football. But, I will. I'm making myself.

I can't help but think of that fateful day when everything changed for us...

It still haunts me.

The day of his accident, The Man changed. It was like a death. I grieve the man I lost, because I don't know this stranger who replaced him. The day of that accident, my love was transformed.

I grieve what I lost and could have been. I grieve my future without him.

The only question that still haunts me is...

Does he grieve us too? Does he think about me? Does he miss me?

The Man I Love died that day. Or retreated into himself. I think he's there. I just don't know where. So, I'm lost too...

I'm still a wreck. 

Dreaming Tree

The lonely tree. Llanfyllin.org

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

~Hermann Hesse~

I dreamt I was a tree.

I entered into autumn with you.
The last warmth of sunshine warming my bark with your smile as the leaves of distrust from former relationships I discarded and I dropped willingly at my root-like feet.

I dreamt I was a tree.

I entered into winter with you.
I was blanketed in the bliss of your cool affection, the glint of love and appreciation in your ice blue eyes sparkling at me like crystals being reflected in the wan sunlight. I was snowblind and surrounded and covered by you, content to hibernate with you in a cave you dug for me to survive. Winter was a time of stories, eating the harvest of warm days and bundling up together to stay warm. Being heated by the fire we built from my dead wood.

I dreamt I was a tree.

I entered into spring with you.
The new season being ushered in briefly with the smash of metal, sounding like the ice on a river at break up...groaning and filled with terrifying apprehension. Your affection thawing like decaying snow, still covering me, but with each one of your steps...you were unsteady. Afraid and unwilling to fall. With each drip of the iv, it filled the streams like melting icicles slowly and trickling away. The mantle of snow blanketing me disappearing with the sparkle in your eyes. Break up was inevitable...you could not survive the destruction of that February day when both of our lives changed.

I dreamt I was a tree.

I entered into summer with you.
New distrust and cynicism budding in my branches, unfurling and hanging with dispair. My branches shook with impotent rage when the last patches of affection melted like snow, My limbs quaking like the aspen...whispering warnings as the breeze blew change through us.. I could do nothing to stop the thaw, but my rootlike feet absorbing every last drop of the meltwater of our love. Hungry to feel your affection flowing through my veins, like sap. Nourishing me. Helping me grow despite my efforts to stay in another season.

I dreamt I was a tree.

Rooted in my forest. Unable to follow you when you walked away. The new leaves surrounding me. Looking down I realized, I hadn't gotten rid of my old distrust. It was decaying at my feet, being reabsorbed into my root system. Feeding me.

I dreamt I was a tree.

Unable to move. Standing stately in my grief. Swaying in the wind of change. Silent in my anger. Wishing to shed my leaves.

I dreamt I was a tree.

Not reveling in the warmth of summer like i should be.

I dreamt I was a tree.

Dreaming of winter. Dreaming of you.

Lost

 Losing Myself  by Jacky Gerritson

“When it's time to confess, you don't know what you're saying. Are you telling the truth, or do you confuse your lies with reality? The question is comical. The answer is lost in the maelstroms of consciousness. It's even impossible to pretend, eventually, that the question wasn't asked. You've been kidding yourself about yourself for so long, you're someone else. Your you is just a fragile fabrication. Every morning, you have to wake up, assemble this busy, dissembling monster, and get him or her on his or her feet again for another round of fantasy.”
~David Guterson~

Today I feel that my life has completely crashed down around me. Not because of anything except myself. I've looked at people and love my whole life and been awed. Impressed. And envious. I just want to be like everyone else. I have wanted to find love with someone my whole life. I haven't found this to be possible.

I love too hard. Too deeply. It causes me problems. It blinds me to the person I love-regardless of their character defects or shortcomings. And makes me gloss over mine. And when it doesn't work, it destroys me.

Right now I'm trying to recover from destruction. I was failing miserably until I had some stark realizations.

I realize after looking at each of my relationships, I realize it's me. I'm the problem. Yes, I know part of my problem is that I haven't always chosen well. I was with and married to an alcoholic, emotionally abusive sociopathic narcissist for close to twenty years. That didn't end well... I got involved with a few purposefully unobtainable men since then. I chose them because they were unobtainable or would remain unavailable to me. I chose men who I wouldn't see regularly. And could stay removed from. I have a million rules that we have to follow in relation to keeping my children uninvolved and separate from my love life. Another way of "protection"...When things get too close, I would break things off. Partially because of the havoc the "delightful" man I married wreaked on my consciousness, but partially because I'm the problem. 

I want to love so much, yet I'm afraid. Terrified. Not that I won't find the love of my life. But that I will. And with all my insecurities, all my character defects and the belief inside my head that I'm not worthy of finding love that lasts will be null and void.

I'm terrified that regardless of how much I love others, that the one person I love won't be capable of loving me how I need to be loved.They'll fall too hard. It'll be tragic. Just like all the rest of the relationships...

So, I ruin it. I run. I break it off. Or I push them to break away. Especially if they are dangerous to my emotional survival.

The break up I had recently wasn't what destroyed me. Although I do love and admire The Man. The realization that I wasn't equipped to just simply love is what's screwing me up.

Not only am I too cerebral and live in my head, over-analyzing everything...I'm too sensitive. Too feeling.

How?

If you're in love with someone, you understand how wonderful it feels to be completely enveloped in how you feel when you're with them. If you are in a deeply committed romantic relationship with someone, making love to them can be a truly magical experience. There are times you can be completely out of your head and swimming in sensation. Not to think. Not to wonder. But to feel just how good it feels to bask in their love and share this incredible gift...

Now, imagine a very sensitive empath in love with someone. And making love to someone they really love. Not only are they experiencing all the "feels" of being cherished in the most primal and intimate way two romantic partners can be, but they sometimes can feel the "feels" of their partner. You want to talk about a mind-blowing experience...

Now, imagine further, this empath is constantly drawing people to them with their "shiny-happy-light" (Read one of the many articles on how empaths tend to attract narcissists like this...). It's very attractive, this light...So much so that even their same-sex straight friends question their "attraction" to them not knowing it's just their energy. Imagine being involved in a sexual relationship with someone like this. Who can feel all the things that make you feel good and do things like they can read your mind. It can drive even the most sane person crazy (and heighten narcissistic tendencies) because it's not like anything you've ever experienced before. You get jealous. Irrationally. Because that's "your" shiny-happy-light. You don't want anyone to have it. Or to experience how you make them feel. You want to isolate it. Keep it for yourself, not knowing the light itself cannot be contained. And the loyalty of your girl is unshakable.

Your partners will use words and phrases like "obsessed", "I literally can't stop thinking about you...", and when things begin getting overheated or they can't stand being without you, will use words like "succubus", "witch" or try to comprehend what exactly it is about you that they are so obsessed about. Sure, you're attractive and intelligent and quite a catch. But, you're kind of average in lots of ways. The sex is ridiculous, but you think you're pretty average...nothing special. Lots of "hotter" women. Women who accomplished more. Women who make you look like a schlub.

So, when things start going south, this empath can feel it. The lies. The conflicted feelings. But also the confused love. The torment. The anguish. And the pain. The empath sometimes can't tell what feelings are necessarily theirs because they are so intimately connected to this love interest. And that may drive the empath a little crazy because all they want to do is love you and rub their shiny-happy-light and love all over you...but they push you away too. Just like you need to push this person away.

So, the dilemma lies here...a shiny-hapy-glowing empath falling for a narcissist. An emotional vampire.

"In an empath’s eyes, all they searched and looked for was someone to take care of and love and to ultimately fix.” That is where the trouble began and that is the most profound part of this that an empath must realise.

We are not here to fix anyone. We cannot fix anyone. Everyone is responsible for and capable of fixing themselves, but only if they so choose to."

So, that's why I'm kind of destroyed. I have to find myself again. Restore my energy and protect myself. And know that the feelings I have been having aren't necessarily mine. Being so tied to a person leaves residual traces of their energy with you. In you. When you're so connected to someone, you can still have vestiges of the close link tied to how they feel. It can affect you. Terribly. The sleeplessness. The uncharacteristic feelings or ways of coping. The anguish. The anger. And if it's a narcissist? You have to dump the toxicity out of your system.

I was trying to rebuild my consciousness without this person in my life without first cutting the invisible threads that bind us. I will do that. For me. For him. And hope he isn't damaged even more than he was when I found him. I have full confidence that he will find love and end up married to a wonderful girl. That's usually what happens after falling in love with me. You find a nice normal girl who isn't quite so sensitive or such a mind-reader and live happily ever after. If we manage to end up staying friends, you tell me how beneficial loving me was for you. And that you think of me still. I always wish them happiness and love and have good feelings about them. From far away.

One of my best friends asked me if I had ever considered walking into love. No falling. Although falling is part of the thrill, walking into love with someone who knows I'm fallible and human and makes tons of mistakes makes more sense. Someone who knows I have some very unusual gifts. And hopefully, knowing me so well will allow them to understand to tell me to back off when I need it, care for me in ways I tend to ignore for myself, but more than that...to rub their own shiny-happy-normalizing-light all over me.

I don't want to lose myself anymore. I want to be found. Intact. And lit up like a glow-stick. Glow in the dark happy. Like I'm used to being...

Until then, to any whom may still have ties to me...

I let you go now.

I release all connections to you in all directions of time.
I forgive you for any pain that you have caused, conscious or unconscious.
I let that go now.
I forgive myself for any wrongdoings I may have done, conscious or unconscious.
I let that go now.
I feel gratitude for what I have learned through this relationship, and I open myself to understanding why this has manifested in my life.
I allow wisdom and light to fill any empty spaces that are left within me as I let go. 

And so it is...

“It is one thing to lose people you love. It is another to lose yourself. That is a greater loss.”
~Donna Goddard~

 

Always left behind...

"When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

~Ian McEwan~

It's so ridiculous to find love so unexpected...that showed you a way to be that you never had before...only to negate it away with a lie...

I don't want to fight for it anymore. He should fight for me. He won't.

Love isn't for me.

I say that with certainty. Why? Every single man I've been involved in a relationship with has gotten married, had babies and found happiness RIGHT AFTER we break things off.

My boyfriend and I just went through the ending of our relationship. I'm devastated...

The last time I was with him, I woke up from a nightmare ABOUT him lying right next to him. In my dream, I'm with The Man. It was a really steamy dream. We were making love. Then I realize it's not my man I'm with. I get up and am leaving when I see The Man on the street. He's getting into his truck. I attempt to run to him but am stopped by an invisible wall. I'm pounding on the wall and screaming for him. He doesn't see or hear me. The person who LOOKS like my man stands behind me while I'm losing energy and pounding on the wall halfheartedly with tears streaming down my face. He leans in close to my ear and very quietly and deliberately says "He'll never be able to see or hear who you are and what you need. He's blind to you..."

I woke up and told The Man. Tears in my eyes and a catch in my throat.

He didn't say anything.

I was ready to change my life to be with him. I told him that. And I wanted confirmation I was doing the right thing.

"I'm not in love with you. We should go our separate ways."

Those six words killed me. Slayed me. Destroyed me.

He had a horriffic car accident a few months ago. His accident changed him. He began to distance himself from everyone. Including me. I felt him slipping away. Becoming quiet which is so unlike his boisterous, happy self. He was severely depressed. Maybe he still is. He's still got a long way to go with recovery. And he feels like he should be doing it alone. Stoically. Bravely.  Stupidly.

I want to throttle his ass.

I told him I knew what he was doing. Protecting himself in the impenetrable fortress of his moody soul. He hates being vulnerable. He hates needing anyone. I've seen him cry. He denied it.

I'm head over heels in love with his stupid ass. Completely bonkers.

Why? Because when he isn't being stupid or withdrawn, stoic and brave, he's the most gracious and kind man. Biggest heart. Sweetest and funniest soul. And he needs me like I need him. I can sense it in the way he clings to me when we make love. When we sleep. When he doesn't know I'm watching. And sometimes when he doesn't realize he's let me into the fortress of solitude.

"I'm not in love with you", my ass...

I call him on it. Love doesn't happen in a vacuum. I'm not alone in this bullshit.

I hope he's as miserable as I am right now. Would serve him right...

Expect too much from love.

Taken from my personal Facebook Page, posted on May 27, 2016 

 

 

 

"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul, and makes us reach for more. That plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds."

Aside from the over-dramatized portrayal by Rachel McAdams as Allie, I always cry when I watch The Notebook. Not why you'd think, though.

Don't get me wrong...it's a beautiful story. Spurred on by the hormones, yeah...the waterworks were on full force.

I love The Notebook because it makes me think of my grandparents and great grandparents and the love, loyalty and devotion they had for one another. I miss seeing that.

My Granny and Poppa...never showing affection in public...thinking they weren't watched when Poppa took Granny's hand and they walked slowly on the deck of a ferry during their first vacation together in the history of their marriage. Their fingers gnarled with age and bodies bent and worn thin from decades of hard work, finally at their leisure together. Brought tears to my eyes. Granny found out she had cancer not too long after and died the following spring.

When my Maya was getting ready to go, she frequently was visited by my Yaya...who passed about six months before she did. She'd light up at empty space and exclaim "Oh honey!" And have a conversation with him. He waited for her and brought her home when it was her time to go. They had been married something like 70 years...

My Grandpa Henry singing to Grandma was what I thought of most frequently during this movie. Grandpa sang with a lot of love despite not always gaining the right notes. He sang anyway.

One Christmas, he wrote her this absolutely touching poem about his love for my Grandma before presenting her with a lovely strand of Mikimoto pearls she'd admired since the 50's but he'd never been able to afford. They were beautiful, but paled in comparison to the love shining in my grandparents eyes when they looked at one another after a lifetime together.

The hardest part of the movie for me is always the part where Gena Rowlands doesn't remember James Garner's character and they had to restrain her.

My Grandpa had brain cancer. He didn't remember and wasn't himself at the end...I can only imagine how scared he and my grandma were. A whole lifetime of memories...

I was blessed when I said goodbye to him that he briefly remembered who I was and I was able to tell him I loved him before he slipped away into the fog again.

This movie makes me think of my grandparents in a good way. All my grandparents. I'm humbled when I think of their lifetimes and their love. My parents too...

I may never have what they have. I have to be okay with that.

A friend says I expect too much out of love and relationships. I say I'd give it all. Just like my grandparents. Just like my parents. They are my role models. I want what they have. Not past tense.

I still want that.

I'm just realistic.

In the Gloaming

Taken from my personal Facebook Page, posted August 16, 2016 

Had to stop and take a photo tonight. Made me think of The Gloaming by Meta Orred

In the gloaming, oh, my darling,
When the lights are dim and low,
And the quiet shadows falling,
Softly come, and softly go;
When the winds are sobbing faintly,
With a gentle, unknown woe;
Will you think of me and love me?
As you did once long ago?

In the gloaming, oh, my darling,
Think not bitterly of me.
Tho’ I passed away in silence,
Left you lonely, set you free;
For my heart was crushed with longing,
What has been could never be;
It was best to leave you thus, dear,
Best for you and best for me.
It was best to leave you thus,
Best for you and best for me.

 

Interesting. Strange how a picture can make you remember details about a day. The feel. The sound. This was a night of restlessness for me. I was visiting my friend, The Viking and had to stop and take a photo. The night was filled with goodbye.

 

The gloaming refers to the dusk. The color and feel of the time of day when light is falling and is melancholy. Yeats described it as "the blue and the dim and the dark cloths. Of night and light and the half-light." You can just see him in front of a slow burning peat fire with a whiskey and pipe, reciting his poem with a tilt of his head.

 

The poem I have loved for years and years. In typical prose of the time, it laments a loss...Meta was a poet in England in the 1870s and 1880s. It was an adaptation. There's tragic history about it...

""In the Gloaming," it comes from Orred's book, entitled simply Poems. The words were set to a tune "in the Irish style" by Annie Fortescue Harrison, later Lady Hill. The words were first published in 1874, and the song was tremendously popular in the United States in 1877.Whether Miss Orred knew the story of the composer's life or not, the facts are (purportedly), that Annie Fortescue Harrison, daughter of a Scottish MP, had been in love with Lord Arthur Hill (County Down, Ireland), but the marriage was frowned upon by his family. Miss Harrison went to England and became a composer, writing the music to this song (as well as instrumentals and musicals). Lord Hill married another woman named Anne, who died the following year. A few years later, at a concert in England, he heard this song performed and the lyrics and tune strongly reminded him of his lost love, so he tracked her down and reader, he married her."

This poem always gets me. Fleeting love. Sadness at having to say goodbye knowing it is inevitable. But, necessary. Scottish and Irish are rather dramatic that way. I think that's why I love Yeats. William Butler Yeats...*sigh*

 

I am always thinking about music in relation to photos I take. It's one of those things that's kind of weird about me. Perhaps one of these days, I'll set music to my photos so you can see the soundtrack to my life...

Taken from my personal Facebook Page, posted on September 21, 2016 · 

"Sometimes there's not a better way. Sometimes there's only the hard way."

~Mary E. Pearson~

Anything worth doing takes three things. Time. Passion. Dedication.

I should say there is a fourth thing. Follow through...

Passion can only take you so far. We are constantly battling time. And people seem to have subjective views on what dedication is. But follow through is everything. That can be the hardest.

Lucky for me, I am surrounded with people who hold me accountable to what I say I will do and what i will be doing. I really love that I agree to do things because I have things to hold me accountable to. For that, I'm grateful.

It can be draining...

BUT.

We have a limited time on this rock that hurtles through space and we should make the most of it. Whether we have had the best day imaginable, or a really discouraging one...we have been here. Doing. Being. And there's a good likelihood that we will be doing and being tomorrow. :)

And eventually, everything comes back around.

I was thinking of my work and sometimes...when I have a challenging day, or a challenging month, or several months, I get to thinking "Am I really making that much of a difference? Do I really have it in me to keep on doing this?" We all have those days. All of us.

I came to a conclusion.

We may not always feel what we do is enough. We may not always feel good about what we're doing. Some nights, we may be like..."WTF, Universe?!? Give me a break!"

BUT...what we do? It DOES make a difference. Maybe to one person. Maybe to a few. Maybe OUR passion ignites passion or inspiration in others. And THEN what we toil at begins to show that we are holding ground. That it's beginning to take shape into this thing we only dream of.

So keep doing. Keep being. Keep working. Find things that reignite your passion if it fizzles along the way. The way may seem hard and filled with obstacles sometimes. But, it is worth every second. Every backbreaking, heart wrenching, gut twisting second. Because someone's life may change because of your work. Someone's life may change because of you. Because you didn't stop doing. Being. Believing. Or working your ass off. Even though it was hard. Even though it's impossible. Even though you may feel alone.

Because succeeding the hard way gives us a satisfaction we'd never have otherwise.