Forever Alone??

I don’t remember what the dream was about.  But I know it was a bad one, cause I’m wake with a start and I’m covered in a cold sweat.  Could’ve been about her, could be about bunny rabbits for all I know, but the feeling I have is not good.  I wake with the knowledge that I’ll always be alone.  I feel this with certainty. Alone and without love.  It feels like a hard pit in my stomach.  I lay there and just know.  My mind goes into defensive mode, I think about friends, about my morals, about how I’m a good person, how I can treat others.  But it doesn’t help.  It all feels like empty shouts, after a verdict has already been read.

Love that never leaves I will not have. By myself is all I’m gonna have.  The notion that could happen is not what bothers me, or compels me to get out of bed to record these thoughts.  it’s the certainty. The absoluteness to the feeling.  The sureness that it’s not a bout of self-pity, but just a plain truth. A hard, cold fact.  It scares me, it saddens me. I want to fight it, but I can’t. All I get is an answer through the ether,  “It wont matter what you do.This is how it will be no matter what.”

What do I do with that??

I’m up now and I try to make sense of it all.  I feel it’s not about Tina, though she is just the most recent example–the last example.  No, it feels like something else, but I don’t know what.  Why me? I’ve seen and met men with worse morals, worse prospects, and ones further away from perfection than the distance I am from it.  And yet, they are not alone. They have people fighting to stay, fighting over them, they have someone.  Often, they have the one they want.  Why not me?

I have asked that a thousands times, and still I have no answer.

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My Most favorite hated holiday

It’s that time of year again.  Valentines Day.  lol  It’s amazing how things in life can take an opposite turn.  Valentines Day, fake holiday or not, had for many years been my favorite.  I don’t know why.  Perhaps its the little cute cards we gave out in class when I was in elementary school, or how I would buy the carnations for girls in middle and high school, and they always were so happy all day, and gave me little kisses.  I was always one of those guys that “got it” when it came to the holiday that is all for women.

But no more.

Now, the site of hearts, and red and pink colors makes me grimace.  Its not even conscious.  It happens without a thought.  I see it, or one of those inane Jared commercials, and I get a look in my eye.  Friends have commented on it.  They say they can tell now when I have seen something, anything that has anything to do with romance and love.  It’s like when people all of a sudden smell something unpleasant.  I shrug my shoulders, as this is the new normal for me.  I may not hurt as much as I did in the past, but I cannot exactly call the last three years happy.

Yeah three years…three years of being what I had never thought I would be, or wanted to be.  I’m nothing.  No different than a guy she dated for two months in college or high school.  Its a long time, and at times it still seems like yesterday.  It is insulting to me to be honest, that this is what we turned into.  Why couldn’t she have done away with me in the 1st year if this was what it was going to be.  Why keep me around for seven years?

In any case, holiday time from Nov-thru Feb 14th, are not the same, and now my once beloved holiday is a thorn in my side.  I have friends that are in new relationships, and excited about their “1st V-day” together.  I’ve tried to be, well a friend and listen to their plans, and hopes, and getting their dresses and shoes, and blah, blah, blah.  After all, I should not bring them down.  But I had to tell them, tell them all, don’t call me, don’t talk to me, don’t tell me about that day.  I’m turning my phone off, and I really don’t want to hear about it.  Not on that day.  I felt like an ass, but I just can’t.  I just can’t.  It means nothing to me anymore.  Not a damn thing.

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Bittersweet

Next week is my best friends birthday.  last year for the first time…like ever I forgot it.  In fact I forgot several peoples birthday.  So tonight in an effort to not forget because my own…issues, I went a little get together she had for her birthday.  I was there 4 hours, and spent 3 of it playing with the kids(my goddaughter and her two friends who followed her lead and latched on to me) it was great and also sad. I needed a kid fix so to speak, since I never get to see my little buddies anymore and miss them more than I can ever express here.  I just dont know how divorced parents do it.  In any case, it made me sad because I wont be a father.

yeah yeah, I know what you’re going to say, but dont bother. I will NOT have kids without being married…and marriage just is not in the cards for me any longer.  It more than just fear or pain, I dont believe I can have what I want, and I cant have what I want.    Playing with them made me ache though, and sad.  Especially when they insisted I give them hugs before going to bed.  its made me feel all warm inside for a moment.  But only for a moment.

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Called Out

So I went to a new therapist this week.  I wanted to get the perspective from a man’s point of view.  After a few mins, he stopped me and said, “you can’t have what you want.  None of it.  At this point and even in the beginning, she was not going to tell the truth about what happened.  Either she did something she will not own up too–possible, but not probable(a surprise to me)–or worst she doesn’t know why.  Meaning, you’re right she had no objective reason to leave and run away, but emotionally felt she needed too…and women are emotional sooo.”  He continued, “AND you cannot have her back, or rather what you thought you two had.”

“I know that I told him.”

“But you don’t accept it.  I know you’re not pursuing her, but still you don’t accept that this is how it would turn out.  Your mind rejects it. Like an Atheist denying God, as they look upon an angel.”

I shrugged.  They were words I had used at times myself, so hardly a revelation.  And then of course, he hit for real.

“Are you the man you want to be right now.”  Easy answer, “No.”

“Is that her fault?”  My answer was simple. “No. Of course not.  I mean, yeah she is the reason for my depression in the sense of the cause of it, but I can’t say everything I don’t have now is her fault.”

“If she called you right now, are you in the position to get her.  You resent her for leaving, dating a white guy which you see as hypocritical–you’re right by the way but it doesn’t matter, and you resent the gold digging aspect.  BUT, are you the guy that was going to be the best husband she ever had?  If she opened the door, what would you to do attract her to you? How would you woo her?”

I had to think a bit. I knew what he was driving at, it had in some ways been mentioned to me before by one therapist and friends.  I have always felt if I became this HUGE success like, Mark Zuckerberg, people would say, “oh she fucked up,” but they would be saying that because of the huge financial success, but my viewpoint would be like, money or not it was a huge mistake anyway because of who I am, and what I did for her, and my love for her.

“I don’t know how.  I don’t think I could.  I’d have to let go of a lot that I feel justified in not letting go. I can’t even picture it.”

“What I want you to focus on Joe is this.  IF she opened the door, she is not going to pull you in. that only happens in movies and when a former lover gets hurt really bad by a new person, and you don’t want them then.  It may feel good to say I told you so, but once the hurt wears off, they usually leave again.  No you would have to fight for her, show her she is missing out, and could you do that right now?  Let’s look at it

You’re bitter and angry. Even if justified, not conducive to your goal.
You’re at a job way below your skill level and reflect the financial pay as a result.  How often can you travel to see her? How much can you spend just on basic movie or even cheap, but creative dates?

Where’s your direction in life? Are you stuck or are you moving forward?

My point is if you met her brand new, right now, how would you go about it?  Cause right now, I don’t think you could. There’s stuff in your life you would have to hide, conceal right?

I didn’t know what he meant really? I was not really getting what he was saying, and I know that because his next words, made me think about a different direction.

“If she knocked on your door right now, what would she see?”  ….I paused, cause my house is a mess right now.

“I would not let her in, or rather my house is not ready for guests right now.”

“How often is it? Don’t answer I already know.  Its not and  it seldom is because depressed people don’t really care about the little stuff like that.  You let little things slide.  The house, the made and quality of your clothes, eating too much or drinking too much, and it all has a cumulative effect.  You could not get her now. For lots of reasons.  You need to think about how you would get her, and begin doing those things, BUT without the goal of getting her back.”

Easier said, then done of course.  I don’t feel like doing a lot of things.  Or I get a rush of inspiration and the follow through fizzles out.  Truth be told, I knew what I wanted, I had it, and lost it somehow.  And for me it was never about being married, or being a father.  It was being with her, having kids with her, and I think that makes all the difference in the world for me.

I feel like I’m starting from scratch, and in many ways that is true.  My future is nebulous, and unformed.  My present is cluttered, and mostly ignored. Existing rather than living. Perhaps, this new therapist will help me alter that.

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Unscalable Wall

Often I find myself looking up search terms on Google about how to change yourself, or re-inventing your life, becoming a brand new person, or other such notions.  I feel like I need to change, not just one thing, but a shit load of stuff.  Sometimes as a reaction to Tina, other times in response to what I feel lead me inexortably to this turn–the nice guy curse.  And I feel I dont want to be that guy any longer.  There has been no pay-off.  And other times its to create such a incredible life, so bright, it blinds Tina in her mistake.

I never find anything quite good on the subject.  But I found something that in a flash of personal insight, left me shaking my head.  This one site said in order to change, you have to first list everything you like and don’t like, all you want to change, and all that you dont want to change, and think about the things you really cannot.  And it struck me.  My biggest problem is I can’t let go how I felt about her, or us, or the members of her family.  I truly loved her, and wanted the life she told me she wanted.  And even though she does not think about me, and that it was obviously not strong to her (based on how she walked away), even though after all this time, and the pain she’s given me, we could never be together again, even though she has moved on with guys that make it impossible I feel to even be phyiscal with her if she did come back, EVEN with all that, I will never be able to change how I felt about us.  I cannot make myself turn from those feelings, and thoughts. Life goes on, but I always feel like a part of me is missing.  Everyday.

My best friend, Renee, she knows it.  She has told me there’s something off and its not just depression, or sadness, or anger, I’m different.  So I geuss the question is not how do I re-invent my life, or myself, but how do I deal with feelings that will not change.  That even though we are not going to be together, and it angers me, and pisses me off, and hurts me, NONE of that changes how I felt about her for those seven years.  And I wonder…did she know.  I mean did she really know.

I dont think she did.  I dont think she allowed herself too.  As for me…how do you change, how do you move forward, when the thing that is causing the pain, simply will not go away.  How do you move on with a smile on your face when you cannot denounce the past?

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Giving Up

So, I’ve spent the week fighting off annoying dreams, finally getting desperate and getting sleeping pills from a friend.  Aaannd, for the 1st time ever they dont work.  I wake remembering another dream, and with the same sickening feeling in my gut I had for weeks after the break-up.  I try to shake off and go to work.  In the middle of my shift, I’m not thinking about her, but my stomach never settles until, I can feel the tears threating to come out. I get pissed, and it only makes it worse.

I quickly leave the floor and rush to my car. And it dawns on me, or rather I just deflate and accept I will never really be over the pain.  It will not go away.  It’s just there like a thorn in the middle of my back I cannot reach.  Why?  She is just freakin fine, why cant I be?  Is it because I could not/can’t get my brain to think there was something wrong with the relationship from the start?  Is it that I cannot rationalize and trick myself into thinking she could not be the one, or that I was just used to her and we’re both better off?  Why??????????????

So I’m done.  If my heart and head are gonna feel this way no matter what, I say fuck em I tired of trying to hope for better times and days.  I cannot fight it any more I dont have the energy I dont have the will. My heart and head made a decision regarding Tina long ago, and its steadfast in the belief. So I’m gonna have to put up with the aftermath of that belief being rejected by life, tina, God, or whatever spirits I pissed off some fucking how. I am resigned to how its gonna be–how it is. LOL I dont get what I wanted, or deserved, and I dont even get to be like others and pitch off a cliff like many do, because I have a brother to take care of. Nope.  Anyway I cut it, I’m stuck with this shit, with no escape.

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Second Act

‘See what happens after the break up”  That was the tagline that began this blog.  The answer for me at least has been a descent into anger, bitterness, and despair. Now I have reached…giving up.

Considering the history or my past relationship and the way it ended, it’s easy for people to just view my words and actions today thru the prism, “Of you’re just mad at one person.  She is not all women.”  That is both true and untrue.  See, unspoken in many ways is that part of my anger at her, moves beyond her and extents to women in general because she basically did what I have always hated about so many women.  Namely, they leave good men.  And bitch later about there not being good men.

See, long before Tina, there were all these female friends I have had over the years and they came to me for advice, and they all had bad relationships, and they all chose bad men, or broke up with good men to date bad men.  I thought I had broken away from that idiocy when I found Tina.  Cleary I was wrong, as she did not truly love or appreciate the blessing she had in her life.  She made her choice, it will bite her in the ass one day.  And whatever form it takes, she deserves it, and more.

For me, I have to build a second life.  I’ve reached that point in life where statistically I’m probably going to end up alone–even if I don’t want too.  But what would not being alone get me?  I’ve always thought that men and women need each other.  And in a perfect world they do, the yin and the yang and all that.  But so many things I have observed in my own relationships, and hundreds of others I have seen from the outside as an advice giver has shown me that women are great to be friends with, sleep with, or work with, but are just too emotional and flighty to trust with your heart. And so, I will no longer do so.

I have spent 30 plus years on this planet, and all I have gotten from the other half is pain, rejection, and lack of appreciation of a guy that actually walks the walk of that “good man” they are all looking for and have gotten nothing back for it.  I should have been gobbled up years ago..before I even met Tina to blunt about it. 

The second half of my life has already started. I lost 7 yrs in a relationship that turned into a waste of my time, with a woman who was a waste of my time. I have lost another 2 over depression.  For my second act I think I will pursue what I see woman pursuing.  They don’t need a man, except to take them places, buy them things, or except to generally provide them with a good time, and then shake hands and leave them alone.  Okay, fine.  Men invented that game long ago and are better at it really, so I will go that route.

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Want Money, So What

This past weekend I, on a whim, went to a party that was held at the private residence of a multi-millionaire in town.  The night had a couple of revelations.  The first was that as I walked around this house located in the same community as Tiger Woods house, it struck me that if I had this house.  If I had a house like it, and the money that went with it, Tina would still be with me.  I commented on that fact to the friend I had come with, and thier response was predictable and accurate:

“Well, then she would have been with you for the money only.”

I know she was right, but the following thought came into my mind.  “I don’t care.”  In that moment I knew it would not have mattered to me.  And, when I thought about it more, it was not because of desperation, or at least not just desperation.  The feeling I had was, that house, that success, is what I’m supposed to have anyway.  So what if it was a factor in keeping her around.  It felt like knowing a woman stayed around because I brushed my teeth.  I’m supposed to do that.  I mean I hate gold diggers.  I think they are the worse women on the planet, and I have little sympathy for whatever happens to them as a result of chasing the money.  I mean I REALLY have no sympathy for thier trials: cheating, abuse, etc., I dont care.  You want the guy to pay, I say you play whatever game he wants to play.  BUT in this situation, I just felt, at least in the moment, hey this is what I should have anyway, and if I had been with her and had it I would not have thought twice about why she was there.  Could that have blown up later, yeah I geuss, but I geuss I feel like that was what I should have provided anyway. 

I don’t have it, not yet.  Maybe not ever now.  For various reasons.

What this says about me, I don’t know.  Maybe if I’m willing to think that way about Tina, I ought to be less judgemental of other golddiggers.  I don’t know.

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Icy Past

Today, really today and yesterday, I’ve spent nearly 18 hours at the hospital.  I have a friend that has gone in for emergency surgery.  I’ve know her about the same time as I’ve been apart from Tina.  She’s a good friend, great girl, perhaps even wanted more from me at one point, but after watching the level at which I had loved Tina, wanted and INDEED deserves, that love toward herself.  She knew I could not give it to her, but we have remained friends.

She may have to have a hysterectomy, no thats not true.  She will have to have one, and it will now happen sooner than later.  We had hoped the pain in her stomach was just from her appendix, but it is worse than that.  It’s bad news, and is draining emotionally.

What’s worse, at least for me, is she is at the same hospital that my mother was in before she died.  I have not been back there since that time, and so memories flood over into my mind.  Memories of her, memories of her and Tina.

I’ve been up since 6:30AM, after only two hours sleep.  I’m not that strong emotionally to begin with, and my walls are lower than usual.  I try to hide it, and do a decent job, since concern for my friend is the foremost thing in my mind, but other stuff is crowding my pysch, and wearing me down.  Her other friends and family get to the hospital, all are very kind about how I’ve been there, its nice to hear, but sends jabs thru the heart, since I feel like Tina should have known this about me, should have figured into her decision making process.  I hear echos from my best friend who reminds me all the time that she did not make the decision rationally.  In the sense, of sitting down and thinking through all the angles the way a person buys a house or plans a vacation.  The stuff that should have been important, were not the factors she was thinking about.  At least according to him.

Either way, I’m fighting two battles in myself until I finally leave for the day.  Her best friend is here now, so can stay with her at the hospital.  I reach home, and I’m wiped.  I look into the mirror in my bathroom.  I don’t know the person staring back.  I look beaten, tired, drawn,..old.

It’s a new day in my life.  Has been for awhile, and it feels like the end.

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Waking Nightmare

When I look over the last, almost two years, one thing is clearer than most.  My mind has been unable and unwilling to accept my reality.  The reality of life without Tina is a nightmare I live through everyday.  Whenever I think about it, my mind stills feels the same level of disbelief I had in the beginning.  It’s a nightmare I cannot wake from, but still hope to wake from.

There are still too many questions and unresolved feelings I have inside about it, and about how she seems to be happy with someone who at best is giving her the same things I did.  So if she’s happy there, she should have been happy with me.  How do people do that? Convince themselves they are soo happy with a new guy or gal, and the person they are sooooo happy with, aint doing anything different or better.  It’s like saying you don’t like McDonald’s, and then walking across the street to McDonald’s and declaring it the best food ever.  I mean really?  I had very little sympathy for women that got done wrong by men, BEFORE TINA, now I find myself having zero sympathy and no tolerance for the “boo-whoos” of women and the bad men they choose to date, or date after leaving a perfectly good man. Its why I HATE that movie and book, “Eat, Pray, Love.”  Bottom line is Tina chose to be unhappy.  And chose to be happy with perhaps the same type of person, assuming he treats her right to begin with.  The ease and fun of money takes awhile to wear off, so she is still in the new phase.  But that does not mollify me.

Let go. That’s what I’m told.  What the hell does that mean?  I mean does anyone think I want to wake up every fecken morning for two years with her on my mind.  Do you have any idea how debilitating that is?  I now know why people kill themselves. I didn’t use to.  But now I can understand how the pain and the agony will not go away, and you just need…release from it.  It just has to end.  Why doesn’t it?  Especially if there are no “soul-mates”

I think it’s this one question that stalks me. What if, what if there is such a thing as the person you’re supposed to be with?  How pathetic to find them, and then not be with them. My fear is that there is such a thing, and I know it, despite all the cynically people out there that say, dont believe that.  I know the real secret, and it did me no good, because I met her, got her, and then she left.  I cant say I lost her, because I cannot think of a single thing I did worthy of the way she walked away. Without looking back, without telling me why, without a struggle or a fight.  She just walked, like a girl leaving a bad date.  Did I deserve that? Did I do something sinister that I’m afraid to admit to my readers or anyone silly enough to listen to my tale of woe.

I wish I had. Because then I would have a clue. But I’m afraid to report, I did not. I was not perfect. No one is.  But if failure is a 1 and perfect a 100, I was in the 90’s, that I promise on my mother’s grave. It it didn’t matter in the end.  It didn’t matter at all.  And so now I live everyday without love. Without my mate, and inside I die all over again, every morning and every night.

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