It's been a while since I've given myself to writing here. So much has happened. Some of it was just too painful and ugly to even write about. Just getting through it was a major effort.
This journey is longer than I could have imagined and I guess the only way one can truly understand it is to go through it. I always imagined myself a stronger woman than what I have proven to show up as. I certainly never thought I'd try to hang onto a man who cheated on me, lied to me, exposed me to STD's from his poor choices with women who have slept with half the men I know and who is clearly requesting space and distance from me. I certainly never thought I'd be up half the nite or all of the nite in anxiety, sorrow, grief and despair trying to figure out how I could win him back. I never thought I could push myself to the brink of questioning my will to live over a man, but alas... I have proven to be a woman, through and through with all of the heart wrenching aspects of the darker side of the feminine: jealousy, revengeful thoughts, anger, spite, depression, need, possessiveness... you name it, I've felt it all in these bones in these past 6 months.
Finally, a few weeks ago I started therapy, EMDR to be specific. I've learned that he is more like my father, mother and brother than I could have really seen clearly when we were together. I've learned that I have some pretty good reasons to feel all the crap that I have and that I'm actually doing OK, and pretty normal, regardless of how much HE tells me that I've been over reactive and over emotional. I've learned that I had pretty good reasons to feel the way I have between my old family crap, and the reality of his disrespect towards our love that I invested 8 years of my life in nurturing. I've learned that he has some pretty deep seated crap too and that I don't need to be constantly apologizing for what he helped to create in me, and mostly I am finally at last learning to find peace with the space.
One of the biggest pieces was that I learned that home was one of the main things he provided for me, a place of rest, a place I could feel safe and soft, and so I created one for myself. I spent months looking for a one bedroom apartment but hating the idea of living in a complex or in a basement or in a cramped space. I'm not an apartment dweller, maybe it's because my parents were landlords and I was in apartments cleaning and sweating my fingers to the bone too often to ever want to live in one. In the last month of my homelessness, I was sleeping in the back of his truck pretty often. I'd take it and drive up just on the edge of town and crawl in back and curl up and sink into the lonlieness, wishing his warm body was next to mine, feeling how sad this all seemed that he wouldn't even invite me to stay with him, when so many nights I allowed him to come curl up with me if he needed or wanted to. Somehow though, there was a sweetness to sleeping in the truck, I could hear the wind, feel it move the truck, I could hear the elements and it reminded me of my 20's when I was travelling in my Toyota pick up around Alaska and the western states of the US. Somehow, the back of that truck was more home than the stinky little room I was staying in in town and I loved it and actually looked forward to curling up in that thing. Some nights he would stay with me, and we would cuddle all night in a deep state of love. Home was with him. Wherever he was, I was home.
So finally, I found home on my own terms. I chose not a one bedroom apartment, but a big house, 4 bedrooms, perched up on a hill with a magnificient view of the mountains and a lake. And in the weeks of settling in here, I've found some peace and been able to sleep again which has made a huge difference in the degree of my emotional stability. I am feeling like I can start to make choices rather than just be led around by my rage and disappointment who just seem to taunt me and make a mess out of me. In finding home, I am feeling able to offer my self again to the world, and to my work and service. And I'm finding that I'm able to accept that the man I love truly does love me too, he just needs to find himself and explore life which really never needed to be as much of a big deal as my rage and disappointment have made it out to be.
The truth is, it's more like now we're boyfriend/girlfriend rather than partners and not much else has really changed in spite of all the drama. We eat dinner together often, soak at the gym, share movie and cuddle nights and eat ice cream, just the way we used to. I just can't dare say we're in a "relationship" or he gets fired up and frieked out. He's stayed with me an average of 3 nights a week in the past 3 months, and had another fling with a little stripper woman child with big boobs and absolutely no concept of personal responsibility for herself, and still came back to me again wanting to move past it. The passion of the love making has been unparalleled and the recognition and honoring of the truth of our relationship has been surfacing through all the challenges. I can feel how much he loves me and I him beyond all the human drama.
The first night I slept at my house, we slept in the truck because the smell from the wood floors was too intense to be inside, and he was holding me and we were talking about how afraid I am to lose him completely, and he said to me, "I'm not going anywhere, look 5 months and I'm still here aren't I? I care about you a lot, and I'm not going to disappear." I needed to hear that, and now I can see that it is true. He makes comments often about, "Someday when I build my house, I want you to live in it," and alludes to a future life with us pretty often and so what I am learning now is to accept that as a possibility as much as the possibility that I may indeed lose him forever to another woman, or me to another man. In my heart of hearts, he is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with, and I am learning to accept that maybe I just don't know what else is possible yet, and that this is the time to open up to other possibilities in my life.
I see him most days lately and against all advice from friends, I have chosen to continue to work with him and to work through things. It has born some sweet fruit for sure, we are on some levels, closer than ever, still awesome friends and I think it has helped him to recogonize how much he truly does care for me even though his actions don't always feel so considerate to me. I am also learning that he just is that way with everyone, and I don't need to take it so personally anymore.
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