Flying By The Seat Of My Pants

An awful lot has occurred in my life since my last post. I broke up with C., moved into my parents basement and have continued to see Mr. Wonderful. I haven’t been writing much, for the first time in a long time I am trying not to think as much… Flying by the seat of my pants, if you will.

I haven’t examined my feelings very closely, especially in relation to leaving C. and starting over again. Or about moving home after ten years of living on my own. Or about beginning a fairly serious relationship with a man that I fell head over heels in love with. In fact, I have been listening to my gut, not to my neurotic thoughts, and as a result I am happier than I have been in recent memory.

Over the last three months I have also worked off all pain meds. I was on Fentanyl 100mcg patches for two years and within a couple of months of deciding to get off, I have completely kicked the habit. I do take Percocet at night, to deal with the pain and the withdrawal symptoms, but one Percocet is still a million times better than being cotton headed and slow moving all. the. time. when I am on fentanyl. I suppose this also means my pain level is diminishing. Unfortunately, without pain meds, I am in a ton of pain but it should dissipate as my nervous system readjusts to being free of opioids. I don’t see the surgeon until the 28th of this month, and my fingers are crossed that there is some discernable bone growth.

I have a return to work tentatively scheduled for the middle of June, depending on what the surgeon says of course. I am apprehensive about pushing myself too hard, but I am also excited to be looking at this recovery in the review mirror. I just want it to be over and to be able to make plans and follow through on them. I am ready to go jogging again, strap on my rollerblades and play Frisbee. I want to jump rope and skip, do a handstand and a cartwheel. All small things, but things I miss and that feel impossible right now.

While knocking on wood really hard, I think I might be able to say I am heading in a direction that I am comfortable with. There are issues, there are problems, but overall I have found contentment out of my darkest night.

As always, thanks for reading.
Best,
    – S.

The Return of The Repressed

Reblogged from storyofalice:

I was on a night bus with Deena when the conversation meandered towards one of my exes. I was telling Dee about this girl I kind of think is cool, but, every time we try to get together, things are a bit awkward. It's as if we're determined to make an effort to be friends, but, deep down, we don't like each other that much.

Read more… 727 more words

Huh, it's not just me.

Coming Alive

I have been working on this post for days. First while I was in my hometown again, then on the train back here and over the last couple days of being back in the city with C. too. Forgive me if it reads a bit bipolar-esque. I have been on a rollercoaster of emotions the last little bit, and I don’t see it ending any time soon.

So I left you, my dear readers, with some rather depressed thoughts… At the beginning of March, when I went back to where I live with C. after my time with Mr. Wonderful, I mourned. It was more than just letting go of his wonderfulness though, I crashed. Not just coming-down-off-of-the-high-of-someone-wanting-me crash either, I mean I crashed and burned. Within a week of returning to the city, I had come back to my home town with no thought as to why I was doing it or what I would do once here, I just couldn’t stay there anymore. I was dying everyday. That was about two three weeks ago. I had made it about six days with C. and I left again to come home to my parents. In the last month I have spent a total of six days in the apartment with C. That is until I came back on Monday.

I’ll admit it, I was a coward when I left. I didn’t have plans or even a solid thought about what it means for me that I can’t stand living in this city, or, if I am honest, with him. While I was in my home town at my parents, I showered everyday, put a bit of makeup on, did something more with my hair than throwing it back and generally took better care of myself. In the six days I was back with C. I showered once, slept through four days and generally let everything go. I crashed and burned with C. and now I am heading back there here again.

I am on the train speeding away from Mr. Wonderful and back to the city I abhor. About a week ago I broke up with C. over the phone. The next day he convinced me to try once more, although ‘convince to try’ might be a bit of a stretch…  To be honest I really just don’t want him to lose his credits or GPA this semester because I broke up with him at the most in opportune time. So I am going to stay for one more month. Or that’s the plan.

Right now I am feeling pretty raw. I feel like I am making the wrong decision. My intuition is screaming at me to not wait. I feel incomplete, like I am only half myself here, and I am sure about a decision that kills me to make but I still have to wait to make it. But do I have to wait? Really?

I titled this post ‘coming alive’ because that is what I have done in the last month with Mr. Wonderful. He is complicated, challenging and loving. He makes me try, yet gives unconditionally; makes me want to strive to be better, but fell in love with imperfect, messed up and neurotic me. I didn’t try to impress him and he was impressed, I didn’t try to love him or make him love me, but he does and I do. It’s one of the most messed up but simple relationships I have ever had. Being with him is easy, making him smile comes innately to me and I practically glow with happiness when I think about him. But now he is four hundred kilometers away.

I sound like I am a naive teenager in love for the first time. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have challenged this idea, Mr. Wonderful and I, from every angle I can think of. I have asked myself the hard questions necessary to clarify what I want from him and what I want him to want from me. And I am rather cognizant of the fact we are still honeymooning and can’t get enough of each other physically, that there are neuro-chemicals flooding my brain and synapses firing that haven’t been stimulated in years. I have asked myself if I have fallen so hard and fast because he said nice things to me – that is do I feel this way now because he treated me well or is it love? Every rational fiber of my being wants to ignore what the emotional side already knows. I love him, irrevocably and without reservation or conditions. I love him.

And I’m starting to believe he really loves me. I know he finds me attractive, he tells  me several times a day, and I know he likes spending time with me. Hell, I even know he cares about me but I have come to mistrust the stirrings of love. Love has failed me over and over. I have given so much of myself and ended up being someone I despise to make another person happy… No, it didn’t work. It’s different with Mr. Wonderful. He is bringing me back to myself rather than wanting me to be different.

Anyway, now that I am back in the city with C. and made the decision to stay I feel like I am starting to wilt again. I don’t know if I can stay for as long as I should. I don’t know if I can ignore myself and my needs for much longer. I’m miserable here and now I know that I don’t have to be. Not because of Mr. Wonderful, regardless of what happens with us I know that happiness is something I can experience and it is awfully hard to let it go once you find it. It’s hard to be numb when you have happy memories.

 

Hope

In Which S. Returns to Reality

I have now spent eleven days with Mr. Wonderful, M. It has been wonderful in every way except that it can’t withstand the onslaught of reality. Whatever feelings are there, whatever chemistry we have found, the timing isn’t right.

Yesterday, or maybe this morning, while we were lying in his bed I said that it may be possible that we could work out at some point, but not now. His eyes told me how sad the idea of it not being an immediate thing pained him in the same way it makes me ache. But there are no promises between us, now or ever. There is a possibility of just about anything happening, so why not have everything go our way. Why can’t the baby be her husbands, and the second girl not work out, and I break up with C. and I find a place in…. Where?? Will I move back to my home town in this ideal situation? There are no answers because right now, there is no future. We were supposed to spend tonight together as our last night, but his son asked a bunch of questions about who the girl was from last night and he decided that we had pushed our luck too far. So I didn’t spend the last night possible with him.

And with that my affair with Mr. Wonderful is at an end.

When we were saying goodbye I could barely contain myself. I won’t lie, some tears leaked their way through. I stopped by to give him the tea I got him when we were planning on meeting up and he spent a few minutes with me before going back in to comfort J. He made  me smile through my tears by kissing me and then I went on my way, all the while leaving a piece of my heart and myself behind with him.

Coming down is hard. Smashing back into reality is soul crushing. The real world that I had put on hold this past week has come roaring back. With reality comes questions, real questions with no real answers. Internal strife and psychological unease permeate my being.

But I still don’t regret our time together. I can’t. What we shared was too beautiful and too fulfilling to make me cheapen it by regretting my actions, or wishing it was something other than it was. Someday I might say that I am disappointed in myself for not pushing to see where all this goes, for walking away, but I don’t think I will ever truly regret the last week.

I guess I just feel empty. For the first time in so long I was feeling something again. I was feeling happy and hopeful, cautious and optimistic. He made me see the world in Technicolor after years of seeing everything in varying shades of gray. He made me feel beautiful and important. He made me think that I could make someone happy just by being the woman I am, that I shouldn’t have to strive for love. Love is accepting of flaws and I shouldn’t have to change a part of me, or hide one, in order for someone to love me.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for love making both of you better people and changing because you want to. It is the changes that are forced upon you by someone else that are hard to swallow. M. doesn’t want to change me. Or at least I think he doesn’t.

Actually a few days ago I gave him the address to this blog. He is the first person in my ‘real life’ that I have given access to my blog and it terrifies me in equal parts as it thrills me. You see, I want M. to know all about me and my issues. I want him to know what I can’t seem to talk about in person and I want him to have a look into the inner workings of my mind. I also want him to see my sincerity and I want him to know that he is loved unconditionally. Further, I want him to know that even in my most private moments I have nothing but respect for him and that he hasn’t done anything wrong by me.

I think he thought I wanted him to ask me to stay, that I wanted him to put up a fight for me to stay with him. But it’s just not true. Part of the pull between us was that we had no expectations of each other. Neither of us had anything to offer the other one except admiration, love and comfort. Neither of us are free to pursue anything beyond that. I guess I made him think I was expecting him to say ‘wait for me’ or ‘I’ll wait for you’ but I’m not. He deserves happiness now, not in six months. Further, he has so much to deal with throwing a girlfriend into the mix, even one as open and unassuming as myself, is probably one ingredient too many. Plus, I get the feeling he didn’t want to pursue something serious with me, like ever, and was surprised by the feelings he felt. I think he fell fast and hard and is questioning the sincerity of his feelings now.

Or maybe he does really love me and maybe in five years we will look back on this as the painfully dramatic time with lots of laughter and love in our hearts.

This has to be connected to my issues somehow…. He mentioned that I tend to ask the same questions over and over again with slight differences in the wording or word choice and that I am constantly looking for reassurance and he is totally right. Part of it comes from never having the ability to depend on another person. I crave reassurance and from my experience reassurance rarely happens.

Bah! All this is going no where. Just like Mr. Wonderful and I. We are going no where from here. We are going to be friends, and hopefully great friends, but there is no future for us.

In Which S. is Honest

I haven’t written here in a while, but I have been writing so I am trying not to be too hard on myself. I have been busy making a new friend and splitting up my relationship. Well, that’s not true, I haven’t dropped the relationship bomb yet. But I have been thinking a lot about what I should do when it comes to C. and I and I have now made everything even more complicated by involving another man. I am struggling with my morality and ethics. I have always known I have my own set of rules or ethics, and at times – many times – I have to re-evaluate whether what I am doing fits into who I want to be. I can tell you straight up, infidelity is not something I am cool with, I am not okay betraying someone. But I have, and now I need to figure out what I am going to do.

The Age of Love – NaBloPoMo Day 3

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

• How old were you the first time you fell in love?

 

The first time I fell in love was a heady, intoxicating and head – or heart – first experience when I was fourteen – well I was really close to fifteen. I’d gotten my first job at McDonald’s in April of the year I turned fifteen in July.