I Hope You're Happy...

I remember once that the thought of not being able to share my day with you was more than I could bare. It's been nearly two months now since we've even had a conversation. I haven't replaced you as my confidant - I keep to myself.

Two months - so many things I've wanted to tell you - so many times I've had to stop myself from sending a text. Two months since I've heard your voice.

Four years, several hundred miles - and this is the longest we've ever one without talking. The impossible has become possible - manageable even.

So strange when I think about it. While a few thins have changed, most have stayed the same, you just don't know. The house is a little more empty without your presence in it. We still laugh, just not with you. We still talk - just about different things. we've kept moving - just in a different direction. I hope you have too.

I hope you remember  to never stay still for too long. I hope you're getting up on time for work and that your feet don't hurt too badly. Remember your worth, even though I'm not there to remind you.

I thought you wouldn't be able to survive without us - I was wrong. I didn't think we'd be ok without you - I was wrong about that too.

We talk about you sometimes - remember the good times. None of our eyes cloud over with sadness anymore. The lack of your presence is still felt, just not to the point that the world stops any longer.

You'll meet someone - I will too. We won't be able to talk about it, though. We aren't friends. Jax will learn so many new things... Just the other day he told me about a planet he learned about in a different galaxy - but he didn't tell you about it. Sadly, he didn't get tot tell his dad either.

Musefi - that's what it was called. Just out of nowhere he told me - it was so cool. I always figured he'd be telling you about these things. Hell, I thought he'd be telling his dad too. I was wrong on that as well.

But we're still doing ok. We laugh, we talk... you're just not here to share it.

I know I talk like you've died - maybe in a way you have - but only to us.

I used to tell you the opposite of love is not hate - it's indifference. It still is, I've just found that I couldn't be indifferent to you. I wanted to hate you, but that didn't feel right either.

I have hope for you instead.  I hope you're happy. I hope you're good. I hope you get what you wish for, that you're well understood. Whatever your progress - I know you'll be fine. I hope you're happy - even if you're not mine.

I'm saying thank you. I'm saying we're ok. I'm asking you to keep moving, find joy in things you normally wouldn't, and think of us when you do.

I'm saying good-bye - because we never got to. You're going to be just fine - and we will too.

Moving on...or Redecorating With Pony Poop

When I first moved into my dated apartment, it felt like home - like magic - so did he. The fact that it was a basement level of an old farmhouse didn't matter, the dirty grout between crumbling tiles felt charming... or maybe that was just the mold talking. At the time, I was wearing 'new relationship glasses', so none of that mattered. It was our home - a home we started together. 

Little by little, things started to shift. He was working out of state, a six week job that would become six months - and I began to unravel due to a pituitary tumor. Imagine being bipolar and multiplying it by 100... that was my level of impulse.

I began to focus manically on improving the house. I spent two entire days cleaning and sealing the time-greyed grout. By the end of that disaster, my fingers and hands were numb for days. Come to think of it, I need to do that again. This time I won't be outsmarted - I'll get a can of paint and a small brush. Fuck you, floor. Not this time! I hung pictures finally, decorated the space - got curtains. It began to feel homier. Due to the lack of sunlight from the basement windows, it gets depressing as fuck down here. Sometimes decorating and cleaning helps.

We broke up during that time. When he finally came home, we still lived together. We were only supposed to overlap a month or so, but neither of us left. 

It stayed that way for a little over a year. Life moved on, sort of. We continued to behave like a couple - I'd make him lunches and do his laundry; he'd take care of my son and fuck me like a beast. It seemed to work, sort of. 

As winter turned to spring, when the house really began to feel like a prison once more - he moved out and we started to call ourselves a couple publicly again. Without him or my oldest to clean up after all the time, I began to beautify my space once more. My youngest was embarrassed to be living 'in a basement', but with the improvements we both began to feel more at ease with it. 

I bought a ten panel room divider and made him his own room. I put up more pictures, some art and more butterflies. I bought a gorgeous grey and white area rug that consumed the entire living room. The place became a home, an actual home, for the first time in 2 years. I actually enjoyed the space. The little guy wasn't embarrassed by it anymore.

We inevitably broke up again, of course. This time, somewhere between his moving out and his moving on, it stopped being 'our place'. It's almost impossible to recall memories or events that took place because it all looks and feels so different. It became a home for myself and my son. I don't think about moving all the time anymore. 

I mean, sure - it's still a shit hole, but it's a shit hole we've become proud of. It's our shit hole. 

I could have stayed all fucked up like I did the first time - when I busted my ass making improvements but keeping the space generally the same - like the shit hole and I were on pause until his return. I didn't do that. I mustered up all he unicorn glitter poop and fairy dandruff I could find and made it different. I made it better. (I also had the help of Amazon Prime, to be honest.) So different in fact it made him uncomfortable the few times he visited. 

In doing that, I moved the fuck on. I just got over it all. I didn't end it and I have no interest in fixing it either. I can sit in my unicorn poop hole and see how much less bullshit there is in my life now. I inflated him so much in my mind (which was not a smart move considering how big his stupid head was naturally - had it exploded, no amount of grout paint could have cleaned up that disaster) I created an ideal he couldn't possibly live up to. I projected all of the things I wanted onto him and was devastated when he wouldn't or couldn't be those things. 

We do normal things now at the unicorn poop hole. We do homework after school, watch movies on the sagging couch (365 days of a big ass man sleeping on a couch can really screw up some springs and framing)  We sing, we cook, we dream. We have established a routine.

I guess what I'm saying is no matter where you are or how hurt you feel, you CAN move on. Once you start, it's hard - if not impossible - to stop. Maybe I'm saying you should glue a waffle cone on a Shetland pony's head and let it shit all over your house. Who the fuck ever knows? I did tell you I'm nuts.

Healing From Your Past

I don't get emotional like I imagine normal people do. My ex used to say I was full of shit when it came to being depressed - I'm always smiling and joking...

I'm not always immediately affected... When it finally hits, it's a crippling surge of emotion that nearly incapacitates me. I either do nothing but sleep or simply not be able to sleep at all.

Right now I'm thinking of a bunch of unrelated moments an tearing up because I don't feel those things anymore. I don't know how to describe that better - literally just moments where I felt elated, felt an overwhelming love, even if the situation the moment sprang from didn't make feeling such a way logical.

I think there have been times that I wanted to feel a certain type of love despite the horrible circumstances. These mini snapshots may have been my means of survival at the time, however, when my mind dredges up these snapshots in the middle of the night, they are hardly helpful; they are manipulating and confusing at best.

In the past, analyzing little things like this would have made me crazy. I will not let them ruin my present.

I think it's important that i recognize these feelings for what they were: I am not remembering moments where I FELT loved, or the joy or elation that comes from someone expressing love, respect or adoration for me. In these moments - which notably took place during the middle of the night as well, while my then partner was sleeping. I dissect the moment in which the feeling took place - it's not hard to force the logical realization that it's very easy to look at someone sleeping and feel a tsunami of emotion for them. When they are asleep, they likely are not degrading, insulting, manipulating or abusing you. Perhaps those moments were how my abused mind justified the reason behind why I didn't leave. It turned these unreciprocated feelings (likely formed for survival) and manipulated the memory into something it simply was not. It was never a moment of true joy or bliss, nor any enviable feeling at all.

Now that I can see it for what it truly is...was - it's not joy I feel. It's sadness. The poor girl in those moments of misguided emotion was so broken and abused by the object of her affection, yet continued to project waves of love onto them.

Seeing it that way now, I am not sad or feeling jaded that I am not feeling those ways at all. Quite the opposite. I am proud that I have healed enough that I do not. I am over the moon that my current decision making has not created an environment in my broken mind that deems it necessary to feel a fabricated, unhealthy emotion onto a sleeping human being who hurts me as a means of survival.

Dysfunction can feel like home. I accept the love that others give me now because I am worthy of it. I accept that boundaries are healthy as well as necessary. I will no longer waste precious moments guessing the quality of my life by comparing it to my abusive past. I take people for face value when they take position in my life and if I find myself unable to do that, I will deny that person the position. I allow myself to receive love as strongly as I give it.

Recognizing these self destructive behaviors, being able to identify toxic patterns and the parallels in thought processes has taught me what they mean:

 They mean I have healed some...

They mean that the cycles and patterns in abuse are breaking....

They mean the people who have abused me no longer have the power to hurt me anymore...

They mean that I am setting a healthier example for my boys...

They mean I am winning. I almost lost my progress, that is, until this realization rocked me to my very core. Fuck that. He doesn't get to win  anymore. I don't allow him to hurt me.