Well.

I’d like to write something here about romantic love, but it’s hard for me to dive in. It makes me think of earthquakes and lightning and the fires of the very bowels of Hell.

I don’t truly get romantic love, how it should be, how it works, why it’s such a clusterfuck? What I do know is that Every Single Time in my adult life (yes, Every Single Time in caps) that I’ve thought things were deliciously good and we had similar goals and wanted the same things…haha, guess what? I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Here’s something I’ve observed. I’m very driven in my life to improve myself, to learn new things, to grow constantly…so almost by default, my significant other begins to work on improvements, and I encourage it. I encourage applying for jobs that seem out of reach. I encourage reaching for the goals that seems intimidating. I applaud it! And then…they grow on outta here with zip zero zilch loyalty to me…and I’m like, well, fuck.

I don’t require a man to live a delightful life: this I know for sure. But I enjoy having a partner, a significant other, a love. I would like a consistent partner, y’know, as advertised in the brochure, someone as fiercely loyal to me and in it for the long-term haul as I am for them. Someone who is not a ginormous wuss, because I just can’t deal with men who are intimidated by me. Someone who will show up for me again and again. Is that crazy? Is it non-existent? It’s beginning to feel non-existent, and that’s disappointing, because I’ve believed in this possibility for so long.

I don’t believe in Prince Charming. I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in love, loyalty, friendship, and a mutual commitment…and apparently, that’s right up there with believing in Santa Claus, Tooth Fairies, and chupacabra.

I sort of imagined by this point in life, I’d know who’d be by my side at my kiddo’s graduation, who’d see me through empty nesting in a few years. I know sometimes the Universe makes us wait, because something better is coming? I am frustrated by the wait sometimes. I want that totally bullshit silly “Every Kiss Begins With Kay Jewelry” kind of woo. I want to be adored by the one I adore. Flowers. Romance.

I won’t bore you with the specifics of how things keep playing out, but I just want to say that I want the woo. I want a smart and funny man who wants to live life to its breadth and depth, who’ll kiss me like it’s his job, who is as proud of me as I am of him. I want a loyalty as true as mine. I hope this man exists outside the confines of these words and my mind.

i just realized…

I realized that several songs I’ve been hitting repeat on actually tell a little story when I string them all together.

Scars—I tear myself open, I sew myself shut, my weakness is that I care too much…I can’t help you fix yourself, but at least I can say I tried.

Burn—I trusted you, broke me down and you screwed me over…You’re gonna get what you deserve, I wanna watch you burn.

To Be Loved–I’ll never give up, I’ll never give in, I just wanna be loved…Take your past, burn it up and let it go…Carry on, I’m stronger than you’ll ever know.

Screw You

It’s a good thing for the world and for me that my blog was down for a long enough window of time that I mentally edited myself before spewing bile via the keyboard.  What I have to say isn’t nice, but this is sure as hell an edited and subdued version of what I originally had in mind to type up.

Despite handling most of this total bullshit from last fall to the last month with grace, dignity, kindness, compassion and even love, deep down I am angry.  The anger manifests itself in the nightmares I have; it pops up when I catch myself grinding my teeth so hard my head hurts…so I think I have to share some of it to begin to let the anger go.  There’s that saying that hanging onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  I don’t want to drink the poison anymore.

So, a lot of this anger is for one person, one man whose secrets and sins I still hold close to the vest, and yep, I could have spilled them all right here, all on Facebook, all via mass text and email to those that think you’re Mr. Wholesome SuperDuper.  I hold them all, though, because  despite being put through hell, I am still a kind and respectful person.  I won’t tell your secrets, and I won’t point out all the lies you told that you think I believed because my fingers would fall off typing them all…but I will set myself free from some of my rage, and I don’t have to detail the specifics to let go of some of it.

Screw you.  Screw you for being a liar.  Screw you for being disrespectful to our relationship.  Screw you for wasting my time when you knew from before we ever dated that I wanted a committed partner for life, a family and a stable life together, not some half-assed bullshit roller coaster ride from hell.  Screw you for letting me take care of you when you couldn’t do it for yourself but then hightailing it outta sight when I so desperately needed compassion and care for the first time in all those years.  Screw you for taking advantage of my kindness and generosity–both my emotional generosity and my financial generosity. Screw you for being so self-absorbed that you were the only one who deserved rest, downtime and fun while leaving your dirty laundry for me, literally, like I was a fucking maid service.  Screw you for lying about anything and everything relentlessly.  Screw you for thinking I was dumb enough that I didn’t know better.  Most of all, screw you for absolutely pissing all over nearly 15 years of friendship; while the parting of ways may have been inevitable, we didn’t have to part ways on shitty terms, but you chose to act maliciously, selfishly and without regard for my feelings, you self-absorbed fuck.  I didn’t deserve any of that shit.  I have never been perfect, but my come-from place all these years has been one of love, forgiveness and compassion, and I didn’t deserve any of the torment and heartbreak you doled out.  I deserved honor and respect and love and loyalty.

I am not a victim, though; it’s not that kind of situation.  I am 100% guilty of forgiving you when I should’ve shown you both middle fingers before I turned around and walked away years ago.  I should have walked away at the first lie or even the second, but I gave you compassion, and with compassion and time, the love grew deeper until it became harder and harder for me to walk away despite the repetition of your dishonest choices.  I made these mistakes, thinking you were human and you’d learn and you’d do better, that you’d realize I wasn’t your ex-wife and this was an all new playing field, a new shot at life…but you never tried to do better and the time passed and I let you stay in my life.  I wanted to believe you’d stop doing the dumb things, so I let you stay around, and that was my mistake.  I should have walked away the first time you disrespected our relationship, the first time you made me feel less than loved or less than important.  Hindsight makes the patterns all so clear and so obvious, and there’s so much I deliberately chose not to see or not to believe in the fog of love.  I am at fault for accepting less than I deserved.  Sure, I’m also at fault for being a bitch when I’m tired as hell, snappy when I’m miserably lonely and hateful when I just want to be taken care of instead of being the caregiver for the universe 24/7, but those moments weren’t the constant of our life together and you know it.  I don’t care what story you spin.  I don’t care what bullshit tale you tell: the truth is that you fucked it all up, you dicked me over and you didn’t even have the balls to apologize.  Screw you.

There are also a few other people out there that deserve a salute.  To those that back-stabbed, screw you.  To those that took credit for my hard work, screw you.  To those that thought nothing of lying to me while calling themselves friends, screw you, too.  To those that let me down deliberately and left me twisting in the wind, screw every last one of you.  These are people who made willful, knowing decisions to step on me and my feelings, to use me for their own benefit; there’s a difference in accidentally hurting someone and in making it your life’s work.  Particularly in the office environment, it’s hard to escape some of these people who behave this way.  My silence day to day doesn’t mean I’m okay with how you’ve conducted yourself, it just means you’re a waste of my time and energy.  Screw you.

I deserve good things.  I deserve kindness, love and loyalty.  I deserve fidelity.  I deserve to laugh and smile and enjoy the ride we’re on.  I deserve a steadfast commitment and honesty.  I deserve friendship and trust.  I deserve romance and to have a good life with a good person at my side who values the same things I do.  I won’t settle for less.  Life’s too short.

Next Step

Today I took a step in the right direction, the forward direction, but it still didn’t feel good.  It actually felt pretty sickening and I’ve been more than a little bummed about it all day.  I worry too much about others; I care too damn much.  I probably care more about others than they even care about themselves, and I know in this case, I’m caring far more about someone else’s welfare than they are about mine…but it didn’t make the step any easier.

But that’s what I must do, what we all must do, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.  I wanted all this to be different.  This is not the planned path, because I sure as hell wouldn’t plan to drag my bleeding soul across gravel, salt and fire for weeks on end, and that’s what I’ve been living.  Good things are coming, they have to be.