Moving On

Normal to EatPB, it's normal. It's normal to eat peanut butter, it's normal to experience love, it's normal to live through tragedy, it's normal to look for others like you. People who you can bond with through the mundane, illuminating, and horrifying. Speaking with my husband yesterday, I wondered if exposing my life stories were helping anyone but me. I pray they do, but I wish I could know for sure. My intention is not only to heal my own wounds through cauterization via this blog, but I also want to reach out a hand to those who feel as though they're drowning in an ocean of their own emotions. I want to scream, "Look at me! I don't know how to swim, but I was able to float to shore, you can too." I want to be a catalyst for introspection; I want to be a warrior for the scared, a joy to the sad, a companion for the lonely. I know lonely well, it's how I felt when I left my second home.

Anyone who has read Leaving Home knows the circumstances of my departure from my mother's house. I moved in with a man 16 years older than me, someone I knew little about, to escape the pressure I felt at home. The first four months of my union to this man consisted of three states of existence for me. I was the home-maker, the sex-toy, and the crying child. Mostly I was the latter. I cried and cried for weeks on end, I had only been separated from my mother once before under extremely traumatic circumstances. I cried so bad at night that he couldn't even sleep with me for the first 2 weeks after I moved in, he slept on the couch with his dogs. I didn't speak to my mother for the first four months of this union either.

Things were idyllic our first year together, at least in my head. I didn't know what it was supposed to be like and my young impressionable mind was open to any kind of treatment. The only thing I wouldn't tolerate was being beat. Fists And Blood was an in-my-face lesson against such treatment. Don't get me wrong, I had standards, I had morals, I had ideas in my head of specific things I would never do. But as the saying goes, never say never.

Looking back through the lens of experience and the filter of wisdom, I know that the behaviors he exhibited were not behaviors conducive to a healthy relationship. The things he asked me to do would never be asked by someone who truly loved me. I was an object to be maneuvered and placed and worked. Some examples of this are: although I received mail there, I was never given a mailbox key, I was not allowed to answer the phone, I wasn't allowed to answer the door, I wasn't allowed to go through any of his personal things. I felt like a figure in a glass menagerie. Not allowed to touch, and only allowed to be moved by the owner.

He would get me drunk and then ask me to do things with him sexually that I didn't have the mental or emotional capacity to refuse, I don't know, perhaps it isn't rape if you're passed out. Perhaps it's less degrading to be violated in every possible place imaginable if you're feeling like you're floating on a light wine cloud. As with most vignettes of life that swim into the foreground as I travel down the road of time, I had a sense of whether it was right or wrong, that innate internal switch with no gray area. Just 'Right' and 'Wrong'. Immediately, as I was walking out of my mother's door, I felt queasy, but I didn't know why. Every day after I woke up questioning, and finally I came to the conclusion that he was morally corrupt, and corrupting my morals.

All of his spare time was spent on the internet watching porn until the wee hours of the morning, and then he would come to me with all sorts of debauchery in mind. At the height of his sexual frenzy, he asked me to find a woman for us to share. I loved him so much; I trolled the internet for weeks trying to find the exact right person. While he was away on a business trip I found the one I was looking for. I had her come over for an interview of sorts. She seemed nice, she was married with a daughter, she didn't live too far away, and she was gorgeous. When he came home, I called her over to introduce the two of them. He was impressed and wanted to hook up that night. When she came back, she and I went to get started while he went online to get primed. When he came in she had no interest in him, she was focused on me and didn't want to change focus. When she left, he was pissed. He blamed me for her dis-interest and he wanted to try again with someone else. Although I told him yes, in my heart I knew I wouldn't do it again. Meanwhile, my new 'friend' wouldn't stop calling for me or unexpectedly dropping by, she became a stalker.

Things continued this way, he would ask me to something humiliating, and I would tell him yes, but never do them. The encounter with my now stalker ended the sexual trust between us. After two years, things had deteriorated greatly. On one of his business trips a woman called and left a message I could hear about how she couldn't wait to see him. When he got home, I confronted him. He said she was trying to break us up and that he would never cheat on me. I accepted what he said, but I had adventures on my own to be discussed in another blog. After some months of me letting off a little steam, I took some time for introspection; I decided to go back to church. I felt my heart filling with an untarnished love, I felt my soul being repaired, I felt my mind being renewed.

I invited my boyfriend to church with me, but he never came. I wanted to be cleansed, I wanted us to start fresh, but it couldn't happen if I were doing it alone. I decided to move. When I told him, he had a similar reaction as my mother when I told her I was leaving home. He had no reaction; either he didn’t believe me or he didn't hear, so when my friends came to help pack my things he was shocked. My 3 year hiatus from my own moral base had come to an end.

In my new apartment I had felt lonelier than I had ever been. There was no mother, no brothers, no lover. And I cried. . .

Tomorrow, Taken. . .

The Big Bad Wolf

I've been reading blogs; sixtyfivewhatnow, non linear thinking, land of shimp. . . I've peeked into other people's lives in an intimate way. In a way I haven't peeked into some of my own friends lives. I've read stories that convince me that although each of our journeys is different we are all the same inside. What does that mean? Are we all normal, or are none of us normal - and more importantly, does it matter? Once upon a time it mattered, it mattered enough for me to want to cause my own end.

How do you sum up heartache, karma, your own self destruction? How do you tell a story in a few paragraphs that weaves throughout your entire life? How do you tame the big bad wolf enough to get him down on paper?

There was a pinnacle, a time when I felt at my physical peek and my mental low, it was the perfect storm. The perfect time for me to fall. I was working for a large firm in the financial industry, one particularly filled with people who embodied bravado and self-importance. I had a sense of pride working there, then that pride turned into conceit. I was a wall flower who had blossomed and then over-bloomed. I went from staying home and painting - never drinking, to attending company get-togethers and having drinks after work, and finally going out dancing and dating almost every night of the week. But I had this weight inside me, a voice, it kept telling me that no matter how much others thought of me, no matter what I did, no matter where I was, I would never be good enough. I would never be truly loved - the best I could hope for is that people might want me. I'd play this dialogue in my head day in and out, the soundtrack to my thoughts was "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction. The movie of my life was "Eye of The Beholder". I had a whole world in my head of excruciating emotional pain. Pain I wanted to "share" - inflict on the source of my pain, men.

Sometimes this meant dating men for months and months and withholding sex, only to break up with them - they would never hear a peep from me again. Sometimes it meant creating a lie of love, where I would do all I knew would allow them to fall in love with me, but not me, really a character I created in my head. One who had all the qualities they wanted - and usually that character was nothing like the real me. She was someone I created through getting into the psyches of my victims and wearing their desires like a second skin. It didn't matter what they wanted, I would be that for them. And when I felt like they were engrossed with this false love, I would crush them like little bugs, and leave them. Some would get on their knees declaring their love for me, some stalked me, some cried. It's what I wanted. I wanted someone to cry as much as I cried, I wanted them to feel as worthless as I did. I wanted to devastate.

None of them ever really knew me. Most never even knew my true name, or where I lived - they never met my family. I was a piece of fiction, and although the men didn't care in the beginning, I tried to make sure that they did by the end - that was the only way I could get my satisfaction. It was an addiction. Crushing the souls of gorgeous successful men was delectable. It gave me temporary reprieve from my own pain.

One night I was with a man I had been dating for a few months. Sitting on his couch sipping wine and staring out of his window. He asked me what I was thinking, and I told him that I wasn't one of his patients - he was a published psychologist - oh, the irony! Then he told me how beautiful I was, how I had the shapeliest legs he had ever seen, how much he wanted me. It fed my ego and the wretchedness in me. It was what I lived for. He had a tendency to take it to the edge when we had sexual contact. We did out of the ordinary things - partially because I didn't want him penetrating me. He often got S&M-lite on me. That particular night my spidey senses were tingling. I felt strange, extra drunk, it just felt like something wasn't right. Then he kissed me, and began choking me. After a few minutes he stopped and I went to the restroom to compose myself. On my way, I saw handcuffs and a big sheet of plastic crumpled up in a corner. I felt queasy inside. I had been tied up before, but I had no idea what he planned to do with that plastic - it was creepy. That was enough for me. When I came out of the bathroom I excused myself, stumbled down the stairs and out into the street frantically trying to hail a cab. My mind was racing, I thought about all the times languishing in his bed at his home and beach house, listening to other women leave him messages about how much they wished he was there, and how I laughed at them. I thought about how superior I felt. Now I was in a cab fleeing from him. I knew I had to change.

I searched my contacts and actually gave some of the men I dated face-to-face apologies for breaking their hearts. I stopped dated for a year, and I did a lot of soul searching. When I decided to get back into the dating scene, I changed the type of person I dated. I focused on what was on the inside. That's when I met the man I thought I would marry. I liked his spirituality, his work ethic, and I loved the way he treated me. We created new experiences together that were joyous and wholesome. I was happy, for once in my life I was happy. I was normal. On one of our dates, I told him how happy I was. I told him I loved him, and he told me how beautiful I was. Uh-oh, I made a mistake. A few days later he called me and ended it.

I was devastated; I had literally dreamed of marrying this man. I loved him, I wanted him to love me. I fell into some vast gorge of hurt. I didn't want to live, I didn't deserve to live, and this was exactly what I deserved for what I had done all those years. For all of the hearts I crushed. For how cruel I was to so many. I grabbed every bottle I could find in my medicine cabinet and swallowed. Sleeping pills, cold medicine, anything and everything, and I laid down on my couch. It was midnight.

As I began drifting off, I heard the doorbell ring. I staggered to the door - it was my mother. How did she know? What was this? I let her in and I told her that I had broken up with my love. She made my some soup and watched me slowly eat without saying a word. I kept thinking, "I don't want my mother to wake up to a dead body". I was fighting to stay awake. I went to the bathroom and tried to throw up. Nothing came out. All I had was shear will power, I didn't want to tell her what I had done and be rushed to the hospital. That was one of the longest nights I’ve had, but here I am today - my mother saved my life.

Tomorrow, The Accident. . .

Normal to EatPB

"What's normal anyway?", I hate those people. Those people who ARE normal that question what normal IS. We all know what normal is. We learn what normal is, and I don't mean from tv, or movies, but from life. We know for instance, that it's normal to eat pb (peanut butter), which are my initials by the way, eatpb, and they are decidedly not normal.

 

Normal people have MAYBE 3 big crises a lifetime, I have one every year just about, and I am in my 30's. So if you are not normal, like I am not normal, we can talk. I'll work my way backwards through the sands of time and we can dissect my abnormality together. Would you like that? One a day for my 30 plus years of existence :) (and yes, I know it's abnormal to like the stupid smilie face at my age)

 

Today, today we will talk about me resigning from my job forcibly.

 

Pain was all I knew for almost 4 months. Sharp pain, dull pain, surprising pain, tearful pain, the pain one feels when your intestines are fused to your uterus from an infection you contracted after a miscarriage. I wonder how common that is? The pain one feels when her fibroids are degenerating due to a pregnancy that didn't "take". Finally, corrective surgery has put me make on the path to recovery hopefully, and my return to work was greeted with a "You will need to resign by the 31st of January."

 

Why, because of the short-term disability company who is missing paperwork. I said, "But I had surgery, clearly there was a problem.", but no one cares. There is a bottom line to be met. Meanwhile, my fragile recently established career is over.

I was a secretary when I began, an NYU premed dropout working at a small non-for profit. Then I went to swim with sharks at a large financial company. I was with the biggest and the best, and although I felt a sense of pride, I knew I wanted to be more than a secretary. I wanted that prestige that came along with being a "big shot", and the money would have been nice too :)

I went back to school and got my business degree working 50 hour work weeks and going to school nights and weekends. . . I graduated with a gpa of 3.98 from a private college. I felt like I could do anything! But I struggled to break out of the pigeon hole of being a secretary. it took me years to start consulting as a project manager, and then years later to finally have a home as an AVP in Finance.

 

I worked hard, paying my dues included tolerating being smacked on the bottom, watching silently as clients were taken to strip clubs and indulged in illegal drug use with co-workers and superiors, and allowing others to take credit for my work. I didn't care about those things, I just wanted to get to where I was going. I needed this for me, for my family. . .

 

I make more than any of my family members, and have always been the financial backbone. I have given and loaned about as much as I've kept for myself. I don't own a home, I no longer own a car, and soon I will once again be on the prowl for a job - my career stalled, my body healing, my marriage failing, my baby dead. . .

 

There is so much more to this, but we are just getting to know eachother ;)

 

In this economy, losing one's job is quite common, I'll admit, but may I remind you - A tragedy for every year. It will be worth the mundane to stick around for some of the more juicer tidbits, I promise.

 

Tomorrow, a planned miscarriage. . .