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[rainsonthejust]

Liplines

She lays on my chest with her head on her hands, her large eyes are fixated on mine. In her penetrating gaze I can see the answer-less questions running through her mind that she won't ask, either because she fears my truth or because she knows that I simply don't possess the answers.

She's trying to fall in love me. She's searching for some scrap of evidence that I feel something for her, some sign. It would be so easy, so clean to love her. She would never provoke me to anger, she would be patient with my previous wounds, she would keep away my loneliness, and she would come on my low days just to be with me. She's seen my ugly. My broken. My depressed. My spite. And yet, here she is, running her fingers over my lip lines and through my hair.

She smothers me in compliments. Things I don't see in myself she brings to the forefront until I'm uncomfortable. She isn't blind to my flaws, but she chooses to see the best in me.

It could be so easy to stay in this place. To stay where we tread water, not quite sinking, but not advancing until one day she realizes the signs she's looking for just aren't there. Before she looks into my eyes and sees the void I keep inside. I search for my heart, for something other than the fortified walls and darkness and come up empty.

I look back at her and I wish I could just make myself love her, but I can't do it. Something snaps inside me, and guilt settles in my stomach.

The truth is I do feel something, it isn't what she wants from me and its not enough, but it makes me want to protect her. To save her from myself. She looks tired, but I know she would push herself, giving more than she is receiving from me. And maybe one day I would feel it, but maybe I wouldn't and how could I do this to her? Would I be okay with myself if I did? This woman, my dearest closest friend, could I wait for her to fall for me and hurt her more later or disengage now because it simply isn't fair to her. She deserves better...better than me.

And I when I lay awake at night, sometimes I think about her and how easy it could've been.

[rainsonthejust]

On Being "Brave"

I realize I haven't updated this blog in awhile.

A lot has changed.

I've changed.

Until recently I was doing really well.

Honestly, I feel a bit guilty saying that. I should still be doing well. In turbulent times, I still have a job when many don't. I recently completed a difficult task on my path to getting my teaching certification. Things are good. Really. So, why am I not doing well?

Well, I recently explored a romantic avenue that just didn't pan out. It happened unexpectedly, I developed feelings for my FWB. I didn't plan it, these things never are. He didn't even check all my boxes on the ever-so important idealized list in my brain. So what did I do? I immediately confessed. What? Why? Girl...you have NO chill. We ended up talking late into the night, ultimately deciding to give this thing a shot.

My first warning sign should have been his response. He was like "well, I respect your feelings too much to not give it a chance." Ugh. How romantic. -_-

Here is the cliff notes paraphrased version:

Me: I seem to have feelings for you. Do you maybe want to explore this and see how it goes?

Him: *shrugs* I guess.

Yup. Super romantic.

Nevertheless, we attempted it. And by attempted, I mean, we saw each other more and maybe talked more. I did more. I was more attentive and invested and involved. He....he was himself. The same usual guy he'd always been. He was uncomfortable when I showed him verbal affection and it often felt like I was being kept at arms length.

We made it less than two weeks. And if I'm being honest they weren't even a good two weeks. I was fraught with anxiety and depression because this just didn't feel like how I remembered a relationship to feel. I'm thirty years old with a family. This felt like two seventh graders giving a relationship a try because one of them had a crush but that no one knew what they were doing but at least we could hold hands in the hallway together. *eyeroll*

Then, there's me. Because I wasn't able to get the reassurance I needed, I was just constantly in a state of neediness and insecurity which made me not a very good partner. And quite frankly, I never know how to leave well enough alone. I think of something and once those walls come down, I have to say it. So I kept needling him, and prompting him and the more I did, the more he thought about it and the more he thought about it, the less he liked what he saw. He saw himself being incapable to be the partner I needed and ultimately, it leading to both of our misery and that isn't what he wanted for either of us. Emotionally, he wasn't there with me. I was alone doing all the work in our "relationship". So he called it quits.

It hurt. It fucking hurt.

I spent most of the day crying on and off, but I knew I would pull through, because in my heart, my broken heart, I knew I had already been through worse and survived. I would get through this, it would suck, but I would eventually be okay.

Besides, I had made a promise. At the very beginning of all this, he was worried about losing our friendship in this endeavor and I promised him I would never let it ruin our friendship that it was as equally important to me as it was to him. A promise in my book is binding. So started my new journey: trying to figure out how to expedite the grieving process.

Still haven't really figured that one out. I think at the end of the day, I just need to accept that I still have feelings for him, but that it doesn't mean we can be together. Until my heart has healed, I need to keep it light and make him do the heavy lifting in our friendship. I'm really trying to keep my promise.

Some days are fine, some a little bit harder.

I guess I should just be happy that I was able to discover that I can still feel things, that I was able to accept the possibility of being in a relationship again. I was surprised to realize how much I was willing to sacrifice on the possibility of being happy with someone. A lot to think about. My friend thinks that I was brave for giving this a chance, I want to agree with her some day. Mostly right now, I just feel like I acted brashly and rushed into something where I should have seen the signs and I overlooked them in an attempt to feel like I'm not some reject who will never find love again. To only end up feeling rejected... and unloved. Not that I am a reject and unlovable but that the people I end up with are incapable of meeting the needs that I have.

Anyway, that is why I'm not well. I'm trying to be happy in my place in life again...I'm trying to settle, to be content. But all I feel is dissatisfied.

[rainsonthejust]

632 Days...

Its been 632 Days since the break up...

Why, then, does it still hurt?

Until recently, I thought I was better. Over it, even. And then... I wasn't. As it turns out, healing is more complicated than I thought. I was fine, that was until I got hurt again.

Someone I had been seeing, we had a moment. A wonderful, wonderful, moment, where I was convinced that this man, knew me. That we were kindred spirits. For me, that was something I never experience. That type of connection, I have only experienced it once. That's my best friend. She and I have been friends for sixteen years.

I have social anxiety. Sometimes its hard for me to connect with other people at all, let alone have some kind of "soul tribe" type experience. I thought this was something special. He had told me again and again how he thought we had something special. I took the leap and I told him how much everything had meant to me. How I felt a connection with him... and then he ghosted me..

Two months of unanswered text messages. Then one day on Facebook he is "in a relationship". Suddenly, I'm unfriended. I mean, relationship aside, I thought we were friends.

This stirred up a lot of my insecurities about my last breakup. My ex...I thought he was going to be the one. The one I grew old with, the one I would be facing all the trials of life with. Here I am. All alone. I never thought in a million years, he would've done what he did.

All I do is pick bad men, and when I think I'm doing better... I'm not. What do you do when you can't trust your judgement? You give up. That's what. You give up and wait for the pain to stop again and hope to god, you learn how to get better at loneliness.

[rainsonthejust]

Unapologetically Sad

Today was my first day back on campus, fall semester. On my 30 minute commute from home to college, I typically listen to music, eat, drink my morning coffee, and think. This morning, I thought about my ex... I thought about how he cheated. I thought about the woman he left me for, and I thought about scenarios in which I could hurt her. I wondered to myself if maybe I deserved what happened to me, karmically, I mean. After all, I took him from his ex, is it then only fair that I deserved to lose him the same way? I thought about how I was told I am carrying the weight of sorrow in me. I feel it, it's heavy in my heart. Often, I feel like there's some unspoken thing everyone around me is thinking: its been ten months already, aren't you over it yet? People have some sort of magical made-up timeline in their minds about what is considered an appropriate amount of time to grieve, but those people weren't there, they didn't go through what I went through. What those people don't understand, is it wasn't just any breakup. It was traumatic. There was betrayal and lies for months. He wasn't just a guy. I thought he was my "one", the love of my life, my twin flame. He was my past, my present, and my future, and in one day I lost it all. We were supposed to get married, we were supposed to have kids together, we were a family. I lost my everything and had to rebuild from scratch... What I have realized is I'm not going to keep feeling like I'm not allowed to grieve. No one else needs to understand my pain. I will continue to push on, one day at a time, even on tougher days, but I will allow myself to experience my sorrow and I will be unapologetically sad.

[rainsonthejust]

Re-entering the Dating World, kinda...

The concept of dating again was not one I welcomed. I’m sure those of you who have been through divorce, understand what I mean when I say, I never thought I would have to date again, and I was perfectly happy with that. It’s safe to say, I thrust myself into this horrid thing, kicking and screaming.

So, I’m like an angry dater, I guess. I’m sure that’s attractive… Them: “Hey nice to meet you”. Me: “Oh yeah, I never thought I’d be dong this again but, here we are. Isn’t life fun?” Great first impressions. Who doesn’t like a bitter woman who is clearly not over her ex?

Yeah, I guess I pushed myself out in to the single’s world, a little too soon. I think for me, I just wanted to see what other sad and lonely people were out there, see my options. But also, I think I wanted to prove to myself I was still desirable. That I still had “it”. Proof I could find someone and not be forced to die alone, an old crazy cat lady.

I met a few people. I went on a few dates. Turns out I wasn’t alone. I found a bunch of divorced sad and lonely men. Dating in your thirties is SO much different than when you’re young. Everyone is looking for specific things, or they have already been married and jaded with a few kids from one or two other women and I found out vasectomies are WAY more common than I ever thought.

I think I’m dating regressively. Most young people date for fun, even in high school I was Miss 100 Questions. “Do you want kids?” “Do you want to get married someday?” I always knew what I wanted and if it had no future, I wasn’t interested. Since my breakup, I have been doing the opposite. I want zero commitment. I don’t want anyone who uses the words “serious relationship” or “looking for the one”. I found the idea of an actual relationship, physically repulsive. Disgusting, no thanks. So i got involved in a couple of Friends with Benefits-type situations. I was happy, a girls got needs. It wasn’t even really the sex. The sex was….eh. The intimacy though? That feeling desirable? It was like a drug to me. I needed that affirmation that I was still able to be wanted, that I could satisfy a man. (Losing the one person I thought I would never lose to another woman, really docked my confidence something fierce.) Strangely enough, I felt myself drawn to these broken men. I found their bitterness, their brokenness, and their sadness comforting, like being among friends. I guess maybe Misery does love company and these men got me. I didn’t have to pretend I was ok, and neither did they. We could enjoy each other’s company, touch, and affection, guilt-free. For the first time in my life, I was succeeding at casual relationships. I wasn’t getting attached and I wasn’t worried about getting attached.

Eventually those hookups fizzled out for different reasons, no bad feelings there. I went back to the dating sites… My sister-in-law convinced me that I should sign up for Tinder because she had a friend who met her husband on Tinder. Everyone has that one exception story, right? Against my better judgement, I signed up. A less than fruitful endeavor, I assure you. It’s definitely one of those sights more for finding hookups, but I didn’t want a hook-up per say. I wanted to meet someone I liked, but as a friend, and was attracted to, so we could potentially have sex, maybe. I didn’t want to enter in to some agreement that I would just sleep with someone. I’m not that kind of girl, I have some respect left. I know myself well enough, that I know if I were to do something like that it would only leave me feeling cheap, used, and bad about myself, definitely not something I need in my life.

One of these recent encounters sticks out in my mind. I had started talking to someone, he seemed cool, charismatic, funny, interested in similar things to me, also had a kid, so he understood that portion of my life. He called me on the phone the first time we talked. I thought things were off to a good start. All of a sudden, he sends me a picture of him naked…. Not something I asked for, or wanted. He tells me he’s just very sexually open and unashamed, but apologized for making me uncomfortable. Then he starts trying to get me to “help” him “help” himself, if you know what I mean. I tell him again that we just met and that I’m not interested in doing something like that. I remember feeling a sense of peer pressure, which was completely making me feel worse and worse. When I finally got through to him that I was not that kind of girl and I wasn’t looking for that and if thats what he was looking for, he would need to look elsewhere, he basically said to me “Well, you were on Tinder.” Like that somehow justified his actions. What, because I’m on a dating site, I owe you something? I was disgusted and frustrated. Within a day of talking online to two other men on a different dating site, one asked me what my “bra size was” because “they look so perky” and another asked me essentially how kinky I was in bed… Its amazing how fast you can be turned off when men treat you like you are an object and not a person. Is that the fate of women? Are we only worth what our bodies look like and what we can do with them? That’s just sad.

On the other hand, dating in real life isn’t much better. I met a man a week ago in person, everything was going great. We had a nice interaction, flirting back and forth, he was very charming. We discussed meeting and going out sometime, he gave me his number. (Interactions like this NEVER happen to me) I was psyched. I hadn’t been this excited about anyone since my breakup. Maybe this was it for me, I couldn’t keep my excitement contained. Unfortunately, with that much expectation comes a lot of anxiety and a desperate attempt to remember all the appropriate social decorum… When should I text him? How long do I wait between replies to text back? Questions questions and more questions. Then you text…. No answer….PANIC. A needless emotional rollercoaster, because case and point, I scared him off.

Basically what I’m trying to say is…. Dating sucks.

[rainsonthejust]

Our 4 Year Anniversary

Yesterday would have been our 4 year anniversary... Our of all the questions I have, I will only ask one today. What happened to us? We were in love. We had true love. Despite all the other dysfunction in our relationship, the one thing we could always lean on was the fact that we loved each other, deeply, truly, and we always believed one hundred percent that we were meant to be together, that we were soul mates. I feel deep in my heart, that a part of me will always love you. Even now, after everything you've done and the things you've put me through, I forgive you for almost all of it. I was talking to my therapist the other day about us. I said that one of the reasons it was so hard for me to lose you was because I had been holding us together for so long. I worked tirelessly to make our relationship work; I bent over backwards and heaved up the bulk of the relationship on my shoulders. It's hard for me to determine when it became more my responsibility than yours. I don't know when it became so lopsided. Did you see how much work I was doing just to try and keep you happy? I told myself that I was just being the "Wife" the "Mother" and that many people lived their lives that way. I was so in love with you that I didn't mind the extra weight. But after a while, it started to pull me down and my knees started to buckle under the pressure. I started feeling resentments which I hid from you. You always told me I should just ask you for help when I needed it. When I did ask, there was always dragging of feet, sighing, or complaining that I always had such "terrible timing". It got to the point where I stopped asking because it was easier to just do it myself than deal with you. I would get mad that I was doing all the work and you would ask why I didn't ask for your help, but honestly, why should have to ask? If your face ever left the computer screen and your constant escape from reality, you would have seen me struggling and you would have offered to help me on your own. I gave and gave and gave. I did everything for you and it wasn't enough to keep you. I lost you just the same and when you give everything, it leaves you with nothing. Being with you, I talked myself out of so many things I wanted from life. I made so many exceptions, and it didn't make me angry with you, it made me angry with myself. Although I always pictured spending my life with you, I always had a hard time picturing specific things. For example, it took a lot of work for me to imagine our wedding, because a part of me always doubted that it would ever happen. It didn't feel like you would ever get yourself together enough to ever even afford a ring and propose to me. It felt a bit like waiting on something that would never come. I guess the best part about us falling apart is that maybe you have granted me the ability to not feel like I didn't see "us" through. I saw how it went and how it ended. It never felt finite before, it never felt like our story was over before, but now it does. Our story is played out. It's over and I will never let you back in. It's not a matter of love, but together we proved that love simply isn't enough. You've given me the chance to find my happy ending, to find someone where I won't have to keep making exceptions with myself for what I want out of life. You, I'm afraid, will never learn how to be happy. You keep searching for an external solution to an internal problem and until you fix yourself, nothing will ever work out for you. Honestly, I think that is so sad, but I couldn't save you, and I lost myself for awhile trying. Anyway, Happy would-be anniversary. I hope next year I don't even remember this date or what it used to mean. Xoxo.

[rainsonthejust]

Introduction

I guess I should start off by introducing myself and explaining why I'm here. I am 27 years old and I have a 6, about to be 7, year old son. I have been seeing a therapist since around 2005. I've had both good and bad experiences with therapy over the years. My first therapist was a school social worker who I really liked. My second therapist was terrible, and in my opinion went against everything a therapist should be. My third therapist is by far the best I ever had and unfortunately my school and work schedule don't coincide with her availability. So, I ended up finding a new therapist, but I don't care for her. I've been seeing her for a few months and we just have never really clicked. I don't really feel comfortable opening up to her. Anyway, I basically decided that maybe if I started a blog, it would be a safe place for me to anonymously get some of the many things out of my head. I'm a thinker and I think a lot. So what are some of the big things I think about lately? Right off the bat, I would say, my ex... Nine months ago, one of the saddest things in my life happened. I woke up Oct. 15th for work, like any other day, with no idea the bomb that was about to explode in my life. I can't pretend that things were perfect, they weren't and for the last few months they had been very rough in our house. He would barely speak to me, look at me, touch me, he wouldn't come to bed with me, he would wait for me to go to sleep before he would slide into our bed, back to me and as close to the wall as possible as not to let his skin even graze mine. Everyone could see how much I was suffering, my co-workers, my parents, my friends. Yet, when I found the proof of his indiscretions, I felt blindsided. Once upon a time, he had told me he would never cheat on me. I took him at his word. Even when he started hanging out with his new female friend from work, once a week.... and then twice a week. Borrowing my car to go see her and stay out until 1am... I think everyone knew and could see it but me. I said I wasn't in denial... but I'm sure I was. The mind is tricky like that. Though, I would check his pockets and sniff his clothing when he came home... I was looking for proof the whole time. I went to work that morning, he dropped me off and picked me up. Shortly before picking me up from work, he told me he was going with HER to a wedding as her date, that her date had cancelled.... Of course I was upset, but he knew that and he didn't care. I knew fighting was pointless, it wouldn't stop him from going. So I said OK. A few days prior, the cell towers had gone down by our house so he had downloaded the messenger app... even though i had been asking him to do that for years, he finally did that. Obviously to stay in contact with her because he was literally constantly talking to her via text. He would get a text and wouldn't open it until he knew i couldn't see it. He would turn his phone away from me when he would text. I had noticed he had changed his phone password so I couldn't open it. Anyway, this freak coincidence with the cell towers led to me discovering the truth. After he left, all dressed up, with my car, to go pick up his date, I logged into the computer we kept in the living room. He left his Facebook logged in. I remember my heart racing as the mouse icon hovered over the messages, this felt like a betrayal if I was wrong, but I clicked it anyway and soon my heart sank. There in their conversations was all the proof I needed... I love you's and Babes... he actually used an lol when she asked him about how he was cheating.... and he called her by the pet name we used for each other "love of my life". And there burried in those terrible words that are burned into my brain, he talked about how he had had a threesome... So not only was he cheating on me emotionally he had had a threesome and I knew at least two of the three participants. I honestly can't remember exactly what went through my mind. I remember feeling like there was a huge gaping hole in my chest. I remember texting my friend that he had cheated on me. I remember going to my room and dropping to my knees and crying. I remember feeling like my soul had been ripped out of my body. And you know what else, with both my son and my ex's daughter in the living room, they never once saw me cry. I remember calling my one friend crying hysterically. And I remember the fury in my body as I sent him the text calling him a cheater and that his daughter was welcome to stay but he needed to move out of my house. I put all his shit in garbage bags and I put them on the porch. It took him awhile to text me back, I guess he was still driving (MY CAR mind you). Then he was all "What are you talking about?" Are you kidding me? I demanded that he not bother telling me one more lie to which he replied "ok". He was caught and he knew it. I had his mom come and pick up the kids because I wanted him to come back and talk to me about all this. When he got there, I had been stewing alone with my thoughts for awhile. I was already in damage control mode, people have gotten through worse right? I was already looking online about how to move past an affair. I had already decided to fix it. I loved him, we were a family. Three years and two kids? How could he not want to fix it, right? WRONG. He wasn't coming home to talk things out. He just felt like he should dump me in person I guess. What a nice gesture... So he said it wasn't fixable. He looked in my eyes and told me he didn't love me. Then he walked out the door and I fell to the floor crying and I waited to just die there because it hurt so bad. When I didn't die, I had no choice but to get back up and keep going. That's me.