Until I literally cried my heart out, sobbing and gasping and screaming in pain… which is the reaction he wanted because then he could swoop in and “rescue” me from the badness that was my feelings…

Here we go again.

 

This weekend was wonderful. I like that now I can write and write and write over the course of the week and not worry too much about taking a pause on the weekends. I can’t believe that I didn’t realize I could schedule my posts… this is a “well, duh” moment, here.

 

Of course, up until this week I didn’t realize that I could do that… I mean conceptually I did know… I just never realized that I could do it on MY blog as well. And, a few months ago I didn’t NEED to know this stuff because, well… I didn’t WRITE a few months ago.

 

And now I have my “words” back… something that had been missing from my life for 8 years. Even if Serin teases me because I write so prolificly, even if no one reads my blog (although someone is, they just aren’t noting me at all), I am still writing, and I still have a good sense of who I am when I am writing, and it doesn’t matter to me at all if no one else cares (anymore)…

 

 

I place the “blame” squarely on the Rapport Leadership Breakthrough training I recieved… although Serin doesn’t feel that I can say it is more than a catalyst for me to change myself. And that’s true… but without having gone through it would I have done the things necessary to make the changes in my life? Not likely. I needed a serious kick in the ass to see that I WAS a wonderful and worthy person, and that I didn’t NEED to be stuck in the patterns that I was stuck in, and that I COULD break out.

 

Looking back to before the training session, I can’t BELIEVE the person I was and how I had gotten trapped in that pattern of low self-worth behavior. And, because I love lists, here is a list of things that have changed (how I was, how I have changed) since the LB1 session I took:

 

 

The two biggest changes for me have been the breaking free of Stalker (and the guilt associated with that) and beign able to open myself up to new people. I hadn’t realized how bad the relationship with Stalker had gotten — by the time I went to the training I had been pretty much worn down (by him) that he was the best I was going to have in my life and that no matter how horrible being in the “relationship” with him had been feeling I had led him to believe there was a future and now I had to own up to that. I can look back now and see that I had started to question my feelings for him November 2007, and I had pulled away and pulled away and tried to end things with him several times SINCE then. I can see, looking back, the way that guilt was used against me to control me. I can see, now, how he would badger me to communicate with him because he wanted so much for me to see that we were “perfect” together. And I can see quite clearly how trapped I felt with him, as if I was in just another sick marriage where I had to just go along with what he wanted because any questioning of the “plan” would be openning myself up to literally HOURS of verbal assault about how horrible I was and how he was so great to me.

 

And I am free now. I had to be rude, I had to be a bitch. I had to walk away and make sure that he could no longer communicate with me. And I did these things because I had to, for my own sanity, in order to feel good about myself, in order to move on with my life, in order to clear myself out of the feelings of clinging guilt.

 

And once I got free of his entanglements I was free to seek out new friends and new situations and open myself up to new things. I went out on dates (despite his tears that I didn’t wait LONG ENOUGH after I “dumped him” (dude, I told you I didn’t want to be “exclusive” with you 6-8 months BEFORE I finally told you I didn’t want ANY romantic relationship with you now or EVER… it wasn’t that soon), I had fun, I learned my own lessons, I learned my own strength.

 

 

The biggest thing for me this year has been releasing myself from the guilt that I have felt. I have felt guilt for EVERYTHING, because I have felt that I was responsible for the errors I made and that they were grievous errors. But I have also learned that mistakes are often the biggest catalysts for change that we can have.

 

Sure, I can sit here and feel bad that I walked away from my marriage. But I won’t. Because I can see that I needed to do that, for my own good. I can see that I had not been happy for years and years with STBX, that his choice to live away from his family and not be emotionally supportive of me pushed me away, that he pushed me away. And although I can feel badly for reaching out to other people as a replacement of the emotional connection that I should have had with my husband, the fact that no matter how hard I had tried to foster that emotional connection with STBX he rejected me made it impossible. It was like living with a brick wall, nothing ever got in or out… and after years of that I just needed to find a connection with other human beings. It might have been wrong for my marriage, but it was not wrong for ME. And he can accuse me of affairs all he wants (and so can anyone else) but I know that truth.

 

I can sit here and feel horrible about leaning on Stalker when I needed a friend. But I won’t. Not anymore. I couldn’t be sure what I felt after coming out of my relationship with STBX, and I warned Stalker that I didn’t know what I really felt. I think it was very unfair of him to push for a serious relationship with me when I had been so unsure right from day one. Yes, I should not have gotten involved with him at all — I can see clearly now how sick and needy Stalker is, I can see how he emotionally drained me — but I can also see that even though I did get involved after my marriage I learned a great deal of who I was and where I was going. I could have lived without hurting Stalker, but in the end I can’t be responsible for his feelings for me and I can’t force myself to feel what I don’t feel. It didn’t work with STBX it won’t work with Stalker.

 

I can sit here and feel sorry for myself about living alone without the luxuries that I had when I lived with STBX, but that won’t change the fact that I would rather have my SELF than THINGS.

 

I can sit here and worry that by choosing to become a healthier person I might have caused issues for my children. And I might have caused their lives to be harder, that is true. But I think that in the end it is infinately better for them to have a mother that is more present and healthy, who is happy with herself, and who can show them what it is like to be happy and emotionally healthy. All I can do is work to the best of my ability to be the best mother I can, and when I fall short of my mark, I just try to improve… continuous improvement is what it is about.

 

I can sit around all day feeling sorry for myself for not living up to what other people want me to be, but in the end I will NEVER live up to what every single person wants from me. All I can do is live up to who I am, and find the “Right People” for me and my life. And I can adapt to things as they come up, without guilt for needing to change, because that is what life is about, growth and change and moving towards being a better person. I can feel sorry or guilty for changing my mind or my life patterns, or I can be happy that I am becoming more aware of who I am and what I want.

 

So…

 

 Wow… the drama…

 

Despite trying my best to avoid the Stalker, communication from him seems to leak through, at least a little each week. It is to the point, right now, that I have started to seriously look at what ELSE I can change or lock down in order to feel more secure…

 

 

I just don’t want the drama anymore… it seems to me that he wants my attention, and I am feeling the need to get the hell away from him more and more strongly. There is something not right about the situation, and I am at the point where I am no longer willing to try and EXPLAIN it, I am moved to the “this is my intuition” phase and I am GOOD with that.

 

 

I have spent too much of the past year listening to why the feelings that I had, the fact that every fiber of my being was screaming “there is something wrong here” at me about Stalker… I thought it was my guilt over my separation or the fact that I jumped into something before I was ready. I thought that it was my trust issues or self esteem issues. Basically, I thought that all this was something WRONG with me.

 

But its NOT.

 

It might have taken me 34 years to “get it” but I do now. I know that when I feel this terrible sense of un-ease I need to pay attention to it. I do not NEED to understand why I feel what I feel, that I can do from a safe distance… but I do need to realize that my feelings are that way for a reason, and that I am a pretty good judge of the situation if I let myself be. This is intuition, it is a gut feeling, and INSTINCT (in as much as that might be a mis-nomer here, its as close as I can compare) and that really, it does NOT require deep analysis.

 

It just is.

 

 

The emails last night bothered me in that it seemed that I was being accused of wrong doing (yet again) by someone wrongly. And, yes, I let things get me more worked up than I needed to… because in the end it was more than likely Stalker trying to prod me into communicating with him and not anything I needed to really KNOW. This is what I know of the situation:

 

 

Which leads me to think that there are no comments of this nature coming to him… and that would, naturally lead me to believe that this is yet ANOTHER ruse to try and prod me into communicating with him, when it is becoming exceedingly (I would freaking HOPE) clear that I do NOT want anything to do with him.

 

It is completely in-line with the blog commentor, coming from HIS IP address. It is a comment designed to press MY particular buttons around privacy, friendship, and relationships. It is an accusation, thinly veiled, directed at me from Stalker (first that I lost my values, now that I am sleeping around with someone’s husband and interfering in a family with children), and yet it also pretends the concern that he tried to press upon me for the last 2 years. But his concern was more designed to keep me feeling that I needed him, that the world was threatening in some way, that I needed to be protected.

 

And, you know what?

 

I can take care of myself. I am an adult.

 

And this type of thing is NOT acceptable.

 

And so I have tightened up my security surrounding any way he could contact me. And he can continue to whine about people contacting him or try to make stupid remarks to get me off balance, and I am not going to deal with it anymore.

 

UNACCEPTABLE I cry!