One year, 28 days After Break-up

The internal movie channel is in full swing, and won’t shut off.  I believe I have seen in my head every single moment Tina said she loved me, or acted in a way that conveyed love.  It’s like death by a thousands cuts.  And I wonder, where the hell did it all go?  Or was I just a stupid rube?

Rainfall

I’m up at 4am reading.  It is my refuge from pain and memories.  But I can never escape them completely.  It begins raining outside; hard and steady.  The type that is my favorite.  It makes for the best sleeping ever.  I never loved sleeping next to Tina more than when awakened by the  patter of rainfall in the middle of the night.  I would always more over to her, wrap her in my arms, and cuddle back into sleep.  I could always feel her smile when I did so.

I sign, and jump back into my book, and again escape this world.  There is no deep and restful sleep for me tonight.

Mirage

Today I saw a young black couple with the husband and wife wearing dreadlocks.  Sitting between them was an adorable and pretty little girl; also in dreadlocks.  They looked like a beautiful family.  The sight threw me into a tailspin emotionally.  It was so easy to see what was supposed to happen with Tina, what could have happen, what should have happened.  They looked as I have always imagined our family would have been like; and is not.  Even if I was to find another it would be different, it would be something else.  It would be no guarantee that it would be even close or last.

And that is the rub when it comes to the cliche’ advice that there is another.  There are more fish in the sea.  She was just not the one.  You’ll find someone who deserves you.  I hear this, and even though I know in my mind it is not true, I feel nonetheless like no one understands.  I’ve felt this sense of loss before, not as bad certainly, but I’ve felt it.  All the emptiness, the sudden flashes of anger, the annoyance when I see Valentines Day cards, the inability to listen to a single love song, the continual playing of rock music–the angrier and louder the better–the physical symptoms of stress and depression; headaches, pain in the back, pain in my neck, all it is with me again but intensified to a whole another level.  I never want to feel this again.  It’s been a year, and still I feel hurt.  Even with the info on who she is today, it does not erase the loss of the person I was with, or the things I miss about her and us.  Those memories will not fade, will not stop haunting me.  I wish they would just fucking go away.  Just leave me alone goddamn it.  Jesus, why the hell did God bring her to me, if I was just gonna go through this bullshit.

Wishing it away will not help though.  And then it hits me.  I see it clear as day.  It’s a decision based on the knowledge of oneself–maybe a curse of knowing yourself well–and knowing your limitations.  It’s a line and sentiment I have expressed in jokes throughout my life, but has now come true.

A man has to know his limits.

People say, ”don’t let her win.”  People tell me, don’t deprive  some woman of what I have to offer.  I’m told that I can love again.  But I realize that things have to be about me now.  Not her, not some unknown woman I may meet, not anything or anyone in the world, it’s about me.  And for me it’s about survival; survival for today and tomorrow.  A man has to know his limits.  And my limits are clear to me.  See I can find someone else I guess, and guess what?  There is no damn guarantee she won’t leave me.  There is no way to make her stay married, or with me.  She can leave at any time for as many stupid ass reasons as Tina did.  And that’s not good enough.  If it happened again, it would destroy me.  I know this the way a fish knows it needs water.  It is crystal clear in my mind and heart.  Is love worth it?

The answer is no.  It truly is better to not have love, than to have it and to lose it.  Especially if it is lost to no fault of your own.  I think back to one of Tina’s text’s telling me I would find love again one day, and I want to just smack something.  I want to just curse her ass out.  I don’t want to find love, I want it to stay the fuck around.  I want what I deserve and that was US.  I can’t have it, and I won’t risk another person doing this to me.  If there was a guarantee, then I maybe I would look or hope or pray.  I did that before, and for 7yrs my prayers were answered, and then it was just dust in the wind.  What would I do if I opened my heart again, if I could love again, Jesus the very thought as I write this just turns my stomach.  If I did, and this happened again,what would I do?  It’s a question I don’t want to answer.  It’s not a good one I imagine.

No this has to be about what’s best for me now and in the future, regardless of what she is doing, or what people think.  And for me that means getting past this, and then learning to live a life that does not include marriage, kids, or any serious relationship.  Some things broken cannot be fixed.  Somethings that are put back together are never the same as before.  This I fear is me.  People can call it wallowing, self-loathing or anything else they damn want too.  All I know is this is what is best.  I cannot take this again, not when I have my brother that depends on me.  He needs me healthy mentally and physically.  Right now I am neither.  Another blow like this, and..and I’m gone.

So there won’t be one.  A man has to know his limits, and I know mine.

1 year, and 1 day after Break-up

I’m drowning in a sea of uncertainty.  Everything I thought I knew is gone.

This Time Last Year, Part II

It took me all day, but I finally went back and erased the files from the computer.  Most of them anyway.  In many ways it was harder than getting rid of the pictures.  I’m not sure if its because of the day and that I had not thought about the files.  I thought I had done everything on another computer.  Or maybe it’s because it was the most heartfelt gift I ever gave Tina, and represented all that I thought was special about me and her.  That we are nothing more than just two people that once dated is something I still cannot process.  It may be how it is, but I still find it unfathomable.  I probably always will,  even as I move on with my life.

This Time Last Year

This time last year, Tina and I had just left the counselor’s office.  It had went ok, but there was work to do.  But I felt good that she had driven all the way down in the morning for it.  9 hours later, my world would begin to crumble.  And the words I uttered, “We can’t separate.  Once that type of break is allowed, people never get back together.  They just dont’t.  We need to work through whatever’s got you forgetting the core of me and you, but we cannot separate.”  She insisted that  she did not agree that people can and do, and to have faith.  I’m getting angry just thinking about it.

As usual, I was correct.  I tried of course like every cliché guy in the world, but all for naught, and probably all for my own good it did not work out.  Still it bugs me today.  I guess it’s because of the day.  But it’s also because I’m a stupid fool.  Why do you?  Or maybe you’re asking what other reasons, cause we already know you’re a stupid fool.  Because I turned on one of my old computers that I do not use that much, and on it were the pages of the scrap-book I made her.  I’ve mentioned it before, a memory lane book complete with interviews, and quotes from family and friends of ours.  I saw the file, and like an ass I opened it and looked at the pages.

To look at them, I felt like I was looking at an ancient history book, and the last words she told me, “I just changed my mind about you.  Let it go.  I don’t believe in an “us.”" reverberate through my head.  And I’m left once again with this feeling of not believing she’ll never be in my life, that she does not love me any more, that the person in those pages is the same one strolling around the planet with a man or men she does not belong with.  And then the truthful cynicism kicks in.

Pictures, gifts, memories of any kind don’t mean jack-shit.  It’s all bullshit in the end.  I thought these were the things that help bind you together in tough times, and fill you with loving reminiscing during the good.  But they don’t.  Tina, has probably threw that stuff out, and if she looked at it, the times and memories expressed there mean nothing.  You show them to the person leaving, and they look at you confused and bewildered and are like, “I don’t know what to say?”  Well, how about say the same bullshit you said when we took the goddamn picture, or trip, or when I bought you the jewelry. Say, do something other than act like its high school picture.  Is that so much to ask.

And the answer is yes.  Because when most people, certainly Tina, says they love you; what they are really saying is that love you right now.  But tomorrow, who knows.  I’m bewildered that a person could be wrong for you, and yet you have years of love and enjoyment with them.  That seems like an oxymoron too me.  If they are so wrong, so bad, wouldn’t that be evident from the damn beginning?  How does anyone have 7 yrs, 10yrs, 20 yrs, together that is mostly good, and then be the person you should not have been with.  I find it hard to believe, and the I find the cliché of, “if they were meant to be they would be with you,” a little  too easy a way out, and a bit of a rationalization.  It’s just something people say to make themselves feel better, or to absolve them of actually doing something to save or repair the relationship.  I fear that in the end, someone knows what to do, and then decided to just give it to someone else, probably someone that does not deserve it nearly as much as you do.  I know that would be the case in my situation.  And that just pisses me off.

I think, I feel to today that a lyric from Linkin Park says it best.  ”In the end it doesn’t really matter.”

It Is Better

It is better to never have known love,
than it is to have known love, and had it taken away from you.

The Missing Things

There are times when I feel like writing here, and do not because I’m embarrassed.  Embarrassed because the thoughts that I think at times seem sappy, Shakespearian, or just plain sprung.  I hate reading comments about how I should be not thinking about this anymore.  That it should be gone in my mind like my 1st grade crush.  I guess that is the risk you take when you place what is supposed to be your journal online for others too read.  You begin to care what they say and how you are viewed.

Still, I made this decision to share, and so I shall.  There has been something on my mind for a quite a long time.  It runs through me most of the times I get into my car, but I could never really place what the feeling was all about.  See I have an IPOD, and it is one thing I would literally run back into a fire to retrieve.  But I have in my car all the time, and very often it comes automatically, and begins playing songs alphabetically.  The second song is one that reminds me of Tina always.  It’s not a love song.  It’s not “our ” song.  It’s not even one of her favorite songs.  So what is the deal?  The deal is that is a song that I like, love even, and will never tell anyone what it is.  That I like it is one of those funny things that you like to keep hidden from anyone else. For me, it was anyone else but Tina.  She knows what it is.  I’ve told her my dirty little secret.  And so when it plays, I’m reminded of that shared confidence, that thing she knows that she not to reveal to anyone on pain of death.  And it immediately rabbit punches me in the gut.  Even now as I write I feel the emotions lurking within swirling around.  It took me awhile to figure it out. To discover what it was about hearing it that made me feel this way.  It’s not as if the song talks about love at all–it doesn’t.  But then, after connecting the dots with other times I have felt this way with other things I figured it out.

See it’s not the sex I miss.  It’s not her gorgeous face, or fine body.  it’s not even the kissing or time spent on the couch holding each other.  No what was missed, what was felt absent was intimacy.  I miss the being with someone who knows your most embarrassing stuff, or the stuff that are your special pet peeves.  Those deep things, those things you tell only a few or one person.  Those things are gone.  That level if sharing is gone, just gone, and saying you can get it from someone else ain’t really true.  Opening up like that is not something that happens on a regular basis, even in relationships that lead to marriage.  Maybe it should, but it does not.  I miss being able to have someone to tell those things to, and to share with.  Whether is a song, or how I can be a mess in my house, but certain things I’m completely anal about.  It fills me with sadness…no, no that is not the word or concept.  It’s more.  it’s a feeling of absence.  An emptiness that fills me when these things come to mind.

I cannot imagine sharing like that with someone else.  I cannot imagine being that open, that comfortable again.  And that too makes me weep.

Idleness is the Enemy

In the last couple of weeks, I have been busy on the weekends.  I’ve hung out with one young woman, and doing other things.  It’s kept me busy, it’s kept my mind occupied.  But life likes to challenge you–always.  And so as my time with the girl I was hanging out with has come to a close, and the things that were occupying my mind have lessened, I find myself idle.  This idleness leaves time for reflection, or in my case rumination.  And so I think, I remember, and some of the pain comes back.  Flashes of anger burst forth.  Sharp reminders of the absence in my life jab me.

It’s a situation made worse due to me coming into contact with a few people who are going through divorce or break-ups.  Their plight, their confusion, their angst, is a grim reminder that I’m not really out the woods yet.  Sure I still do not respect her, and therefore cannot go back in my mind, but that does not erase the feeling of wishing it had turned out the way we planned it.  It doesn’t negate the remorse felt when I see, hear, or think of something that would make her laugh.  It doesn’t stop me from thinking of her when I run across something that would be perfect for one of her goals.  None of that has gone away.  I wonder if it really ever will.

I don’t know.  I do know that sitting around makes me think this way more.  I feel it more if I’m not doing something, hanging out with someone.  I hate it.  I find it would be all too easy to wallow for real, or just let the tears that are just below the surface break forth.  I’ve been told that I need to feel this pain.  It’s part of the healing process, and shouldn’t be  avoided.  But how do you do that and not be accused of wallowing, or inflicting pain on myself?  I don’t know how to handle this, so I sit and do nothing; except come here to write.  Or try to help these new people in my life that have the same issue feel better.  Except I’m not very good at it, because I know it won’t get better any time soon.  Not for them, and at times not for me.  At least it feels that way sometimes.

Freedom???

There is little doubt that one motivating factor for Tina was the desire to do what she wanted without consequence.  She wanted ultimate freedom, and now she has it.  There is a flip side to that though; now I have it as well.  I can date who I want, as many people as I want.  I can spend money without worrying about the future, or I don’t have to worry about being dragged to a state I dont want to live in.  I can dress how I want and go where I want.  I have freedom to do whatever.

So why don’t I really care about any of that?