Dear Dazed and Confused,
You try to be clear, to communicate, to work through the ins and outs and ups and downs of every problem. You never give up, having been walked out on by your Mom you find it impossible to walk out on anyone. Even when you should. So it makes sense that you keep trying to get him to tell you clearly and concisely what happened to the love he supposedly felt for you, because you are so confused. You would rather be hit hard over the head with it, and in a concussed and headachy delirium accept the truth. Only he won't. Or he can't. Today he went from I do love you even now, to I don't know if I ever loved you. He said you were pretty, you dressed nicely and he used to get excited to see you. That is not love. That cannot even be compared to love, that unique connection that two people share and the commitment to unconditionally accepting each other. That is a fourth grade crush, a superficial attraction to how someone looks. Love is looking into another persons' soul and accepting everything you see in there, the good the bad and the ugly. Love is being steadfast in your ability to work through problems, to trust that the other person will honor your feelings. Love is being a good partner, someone who accepts the strength you have when they are weak and vice versa. Love is not caring what a person looks like, because being with them is happiness personified and happiness doesn't have a face or a body type. Love is wanting to walk away and having the courage to stay. Love is gracious forgiveness.
It's confusing, this sudden withdrawal, this angry abandonment. No one wins, you are dating to have something to do, traveling alone, sometimes going to events alone. He is alone as well. You spent the last six weeks in a daze, barely functioning at work, your scattered brain furiously trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. Today you realized that you will never know, you will never have the answer because he doesn't even know. He doesn't know if he loved you then or if he loves you now or if he ever could. And you realize that as disoriented as you are, he is truly lost and bewildered, dazed and confused.
D
ear Gambler Girl,
The only game you ever played at all of the smokey casinos he dragged you to was the penny slot machine Wizard of Oz. You would search it out, knowing that Glynda the good witch would reward you with at least $30, feeling comfortable because you knew the rules of this particular game, and how to play. Sometimes he tried to make you play cards with him, but you were usually fuzzy from wine by then and the arbitrary strict rules and disapproving looks of the real gamblers made you feel stupid and inept. So back to Oz where there was at least a modicum of safety. The huge casinos were so intimidating, and he left you to yourself much of the time, so you wandered around a lot people watching and trying not to inhale the insane amounts of cigarette smoke. You never thought that a girl like you would be in a place like that, but you wanted to spend time with him and that was the only way to do it.
The biggest gamble you took was to leave your last relationship because you were so attracted to him. Or maybe it was simply time to get out and he was just an excuse. Still, you put all your cards on the table and tried to play his game for two years, even when the rules changed constantly and you basically felt like you were lost in the streets of the Emerald City much of the time, confused by the mood swings and his Great and Powerful facade.
Maybe it was Glynda who gently pulled you out of there and sent you back Home, where you finally feel normal again. No more smoke filled casinos, obsessing over wins and losses, no more six hour drives just to be left alone in a hotel room watching Law and Order SVU. Like Dorothy meandering through an odd and terrifying landscape, you did what you had to do to get back to where you belong. And now the only games you are going to play are Scrabble and Monopoly with friends on game night. The next time you play someone's game, it might be better to learn the rules first.
Dear Evil Woman,
You woke up with the same dull stomach ache, waiting to get up until your brain could scrabble around enough to realign the new life you have after two years with someone you loved with all your heart. Down the stairs to turn the coffee pot on, feed the animals, sweep up the insane amount of dog hair that appeared overnight, check email, all the while trying to make sense of being abandoned out of the blue. Did you not try hard enough? Change enough? Love enough? It's a process, this morning routine of trying not to remember, trying not to miss him, trying to move on.
The ipad is plugged into the speaker, and you turn it on to your Singer/Songwriter itunes radio station just to have some static to break up the thoughts that continuously swirl around in your head. It's Evil Woman that comes on, and you have to laugh. Still, it's a great song, and you know all the words! So you start dancing around the kitchen, singing as loud as you can, and suddenly the day looks brighter, the future looks brighter.
The Nike+ bracelet your sweet friend bought you last week that tracks your daily steps picked up on this crazy three minutes of movement, your heart rate went up and you felt almost happy for once in the past month. It's about movement, about moving on with your life. There will come a morning when you wake up and you won't even think of him. Until then, you should dance a crazy dance every morning and remember to keep going forward. Happiness is what lies ahead, only hurt and disappointment behind. Dance on Evil Woman!
Dear Caretaker,
It's OK to care about others, but it's not in your best interest to continue to caretake. People can and will take care of themselves, and it's really not your job to step in an "Mommy" everyone to death. Even your kids want their independence and have worked hard to achieve it. The dogs, your new kitten, they need actual caretaking in the form of regular exercise, visits to the vet, food and water. Your clients need a different kind of caretaking, a hands on, I've got it approach that enables them to trust you with their homes and their money. But in relationships, in your family and your love life and your friendships, people have already got what they need to take care of themselves.
It's time to take care of yourself...it's been forty plus years in the making and now is as good a time as any. So today, when you handled the adjuster for the car that was in a wreck a week ago, got your hair done despite desperate texts from clients, went to the store and bought your meal plan groceries, paid your bills... you were taking care of yourself. Tonight when you meet your lawyer date for a nice dinner, you are taking care of yourself. Tomorrow, when you meet friends for lunch, get your house cleaned up, pick up your drycleaning, you are taking care of yourself.
So all that energy that went into fixing unfixable relationships, taking care of all your kids friends, your ex boyfriends family, the interpersonal problems your clients deluge you with...all that energy is now going to go into you taking the best care of you. Because it is important, it's no one else's job, and it's the only way to finally be healthy and happy. That's the only caretaking you are allowed for now, to care about yourself.
Dear Dumped,
Still gives you a stomach ache, doesn't it? That someone would just dump you without making any effort to work through the issues that led to the final horrible confrontation at a nice restaurant. That isn't a relationship, how could you relate to someone like that? You make every, and I mean every, effort to work things out, even when there is crying and door slamming involved. Counseling, talking to friends, reading books, you work and work and still, you were dumped.
You can write about it, talk about it, try to work it through but in the end it is what his ex did to him, and what you did to your ex. People get dumped. There is at least a sense of empathy now for what your ex boyfriend experienced when you said enough and moved out. It's like the foundation you built your life on crumbles into a pit of despair, and all the good gets dumped in that deep hole.
It's not right, it doesn't make sense, but it happens all the time. Just because he didn't want you doesn't mean you are "unwantable"...it just means that you weren't right for each other, and no amount of loving kindness can change that.
So today when you go to the job site look in that dumpster at all of the cabinets, hardware, appliances, bits of wood and countertop, and see twenty years of memories from that kitchen that are being sent to the dump because it's time for change. It doesn't mean the family is going to dump their good memories, the family meals, the kids doing homework at the counter, the games of scrabble. It just means it's time to create something new, that something better is coming.
Dear Sweet Heart,
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is set someone free, even when you feel like their departure leaves a gaping hole where hope, security and love used to rest. Even when losing such a huge part of your life leaves you feeling like your heart is breaking.
What is worse? To not love fully, openly? To not trust him? To not feel your heart pound when he comes close to you? To not want to rub his arm, kiss him, smile at him? To not feel? To tie yourself to what lies behind instead of what lies ahead?
You gave everything to him, and in the end he didn't want any of it. He was mired firmly in his failed marriage and his pain, and there was nothing you could do to heal that. Your love story had a beginning, a middle and a tragic end, and your heart felt so much joy, love, confusion, fear, pain...but you felt it. Wide open and invested, you felt it all. Hearts heal, lives move on, loss becomes a memory. Don't stop having a loving heart, that is the gift you give the world, it makes you sweet and it makes you who you are.
Dear Messy Girl,
You've spent the last two weeks trying to get organized, trying to make your home perfect. In your post-break up panic you have frantically categorized every drawer, every file is up to date and neatly labeled, the walls in three of the rooms in your home have been freshly painted, heavy drapery removed. You cleaned the grout in the kitchen with bleach and a toothbrush, you threw away two huge garbage cans of old papers and magazines, you color coordinated your walk in closet. The problem with doing all of that is that it doesn't change anything. It makes you feel temporarily more in control, more "together" but really you are sad and lost, still wondering how someone who told you he loved you every day could just walk out. There is no controlling that.
You had so much confidence, you believed you were loved, pretty, valued, that he was proud of you. Even when the laundry piled up during the weeks you had craziness at work, and sometimes you lacked the energy after a hard day to go grocery shopping and ate cheese and crackers instead, you believed, you knew, he loved you. The real you, the girl who had spent the last eleven years as a single parent struggling to put her kids through college, putting all of her energy into a thankless job so that she could take care of her family. You believed, you knew, he enjoyed spending time with you, traveling with you. You believed, you knew, that somewhere in his heart he wanted to be with you.
Then it was over. Suddenly, completely, and irrevocably over. Of the spiteful things he had hurled at you over the past year the ones that stuck out the most had to do with being disorganized and messy. Was this why he left? Because in your frantic 60 hour work week you didn't make tidiness your number one priority? Sure, your house was clean, but it was lived in and messy too; books, magazines, dog toys. The stuff real life is made of.
Well, life is messy. Emotions are messy, relationships are messy, construction work is messy. Nothing is or should ever be so tightly controlled, so obsessively organized that it takes precedence over living a full, authentic and yes, messy life. You accept your mess gladly, it comes from being more worried about friends and kids than doing laundry. It comes from being flexible, busy and happy with hobbies and work. It stems from joy, from relationships, from animals. So you can stop organizing now, and relax. Live your messy, wonderful, complicated, exuberant life...without him.
Dear Optimist,
That saying that everyone kept throwing at you three weeks ago, that seed you refused to let germinate in your anxiety and sadness, is now finally taking root. " Time heals all wounds". Already the sting of the mean and angry words that were hurled at you is fading, as is the memory of his face and his voice. Though last night your friends called you "Sally Sunshine" you occasionally let the thoughts of abandonment and insecurity blow through your psyche, but the tears no longer fall from these thunderous cloudy memories. Slowly as you move forward you see that there is always a rainbow after the storm, and that what waits for you is better in every way.
Your friends and family love you, support you, heal you with their hugs and cards and emails and texts. Your animals continue to love you unconditionally, especially the new kitten your son urged you to name Grief. He is the antithesis of grief, he is joy, love, sweetness, light. He makes you laugh.
You date, and as you date you see what was missing and what was unhealthy. The IBM Systems Analyst who is a dog lover, well educated, thoughtful, kind. The Architect with the funky shoes who loves how quirky you are and how beautiful your home is. The Doctor you are seeing next week who you have only talked with, but find you are drawn to by his sense of humor, confidence and intelligence. The Dentist you met yesterday, centered and calm. Somewhere there is someone who is a perfect storm of all of these qualities, and that is the person you will wait patiently for.
There is fog and rain outside this morning, but the weather report calls for sunny skies later. Sally Sunshine will take the dogs to the dog park, paint a little, read a book, breathe in and breath out and know that the new calm is perfect in every way. Optimistically you will live your life, knowing that the life and relationships you already have and the joy you are open to receive is the rainbow after the ugly storm of a bad relationship.
Dear Artist Girl,
The painting exists in your head, it is a mixed media piece, three dimensional of a circus performer balancing on a tightrope. The bottom third of the canvas is a poem written six weeks before the relationship ended, and it is written out with resist and magazine words on a piece of handmade paper. The canvas is inserted backward into a frame and the hanging wire is the tightrope.
Tonight may be the time to buy the canvas and begin making the paper, begin creating a brightly colored reminder of what an abusive relationship feels like. You can hang it in your office for all to see. That is what real art is, a manifestation of the inside of someone's soul. It is not benign landscapes or cafe scenes, flowers, paintings of vases or gondolas in Venice.
Writing, painting, trying to get your life back together to the way it was before you allowed yourself to be manipulated and controlled and criticized. At least you have a process through which to process. For that be grateful little artist girl.
That sick feeling
when you realize
he no longer
loves you...
if he ever did
So
you move past it
by tiptoeing
with your head down
and your eyes averted
Hoping the magic
will come back...
or at least
some sense
that he loves you again
Walking a tightrope
of insecurity.
Dear Someone Like You,
Of all the things he said and didn't say, the worst was the sentence "I would never marry Someone Like You."
Now you know you are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but you are a loving, kind, thoughtful, talented, funny person who is deeply committed and willing to put up with a lot. You love and rescue animals, you take care of all of your millions of friends and your family, you work harder than most people do and it's not for you to have more, it is for the people in your life to have more.
So you sit and ponder that statement, and the only things that come to mind are that you don't cook elaborate meals and you have a messy garage. I mean, you are well educated, you have money in an annuity and money in a 401K, you own your own beautiful home, you put two kids through college alone. You are pretty, well loved, flexible, giving...the only parts of you that are not authentic are the parts he created with his expectations. You were to be a party girl, always be available, willing to listen to him talk about his ex wife every day, show up when and where you were told to, never disagree with him or have an opinion. You were to take what was given and never ask for more, allow him to brood and give you the silent treatment without comment, never have an emotion other than happiness. You were the Someone who spent the last month of this relationship crying every day and at odd times because you knew in your heart he was through with you and you didn't have any power left to leave. You did what was expected of you, you were the Someone who waited tensely for him to end it. Which he did.
Maybe he meant to say, "I will never marry Someone Who Is Not Exactly Like My Ex Wife"...because he has never processed the fact that she left him abruptly for greener pastures in the hills of North Carolina. And to that point the Someone Like Him and the Someone Like You could never be happy together because the ex-wife is an unattractive, greedy, manipulative, sneaky, self-centered witch. And you don't want to ever be Someone Like That.
Dear Hopeful,
In the space of two short weeks your world shifted on its axis in much the same way a tornado ravaged community or tsunami engulfed shore line does when the unthinkable simply happens. You have used the phrase "Hope is not a Strategy" many times, but in your naivete you believed that hope and love could stop the tidal wave of anger, criticism, withdrawal and abuse that led to this upheaval. In the aftermath, shaken and in denial, you viewed the devastation with disbelief and mourned what could have been.
Relationships, good ones, are full of respect, trust, truth, intimacy and unconditional love, and the effort required to maintain this balance is enormous. You thought, you hoped, that if you did 99% of the respecting, trusting, and loving that the result would be a perfect marriage. You thought, you hoped, that he would get over his anger and his sadness at being left by his ex-wife, at losing his family, and in time he would see what a wonderful family you two could build together. The only problem with hoping for this is you knew deep in your soul that he didn't love you. He loved the idea of you, the sparkle of you, the brightness and shininess of you, but not the real you. For someone to love you they have to love your story, feel your story on a deep level, accept that you are the you you are because of your story, and love you more for it. He didn't even want to open the book much less accept the tumultuous childhood that brought you to this place in your life. His method of coping, to shut down completely, is in his mind what you do about past hurts, past loss. If you drink enough, gamble enough, travel enough you don't feel the very thing you know will dessimate you with the mighty strength of a formidable hurricane. You hoped that your love could heal him, bring him to the surface, bond with him. There isn't enough hope in the world to accomplish that, with someone who refuses to face their life, their shortcomings, their emotions. A mutual friend said bluntly through your tears, "He hasn't loved you for along time, he decided a year ago he didn't love you." You thought love was a feeling not a choice. You hoped he could have at least this one feeling.
So you let go. Because you had to. Because he will never be healed, and you will never be skinny enough, organized enough, emotionless enough to make him love you. Maybe you will someday write his story, the story you fell so madly in love with, the story of a builder who built a life in spite of hardship. Or maybe not, maybe you can just do what your father has asked you to do and close the book, and hope for the real thing next time.
She Let Go
"She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of fear. She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely,
without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a
book on how to let go…
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her day-timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyse whether she should let go.
She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore."
Dear Ms. Exhausted,
You have fought for so long, tried so hard, battled windmills and invisible foes, accepted the unacceptable, and done for others your whole life. It must be exhausting. Throw in dysfunctional relationship after bad relationship, where giving it all and twisting yourself into someone else's expectations, followed by periods of intense revenge scheming and passive aggressive bad behavior, and you have the recipe for a complete breakdown.
Except you can't allow yourself that luxury. You can't sit at home and wail about your last failure, or continue to toss and turn night after night, because you have responsibilities. You have to get up six days a week and work to care for yourself, your kids, your animals, your employees. You have to keep going, even if the only way to do that is with excessive amounts of coffee in the morning and borrowed downers at night.
Your strength comes from the knowledge that to give up is to fail. And you cannot fail. Even this last breakup was not a failure, it was a blip in your story. Of all the things that you learned, and there are too many to even sum up, you learned that trying to make something work that simply cannot work will never work. There is a lot of regret, for accepting talking to a therapist instead of your boyfriend, for being fake and dishonest with him, for knowing you weren't right for each other and lacking the courage to face that, for allowing him to put you in your Barbie box and agreeing to be available when he wanted to play with you. Your biggest regret is that you wanted him to need you, this man who needs no one and nothing, and then the one time he did truly need you you failed him miserably. Dramatically, unnecessarily and permanently. You can argue that you were exhausted, but in reality you wanted to hurt him, to make something that was not about you about you. That isn't love, that isn't even close.
You can argue that your life is exhausting, you can argue that you were put in a bad situation with no support, you can argue that you were making a point. But go back to the beginning and stop arguing...stop trying so hard, battling windmills and invisible foes, accepting the unacceptable, and doing for others your whole life. Make your life less exhausting by not trying so hard ever again, and in time you will sleep knowing that you learned what love is and isn't, and maybe even someday you will forgive yourself.
