This post will probably run around the world a few times in a mostly haphazard way. Which means it will probably make very little sense to anyone.
I’ve been awake for almost 48 hours now and I fear if I do not start writing, and continue writing until either my fingers bleed or my head explodes, I will not be sleeping anytime soon.
My most recent thought has to do with my oldest brother, Jimmy. The year 2009 will mark what would have been his 48th birthday, as well as the 30th anniversary of his death. I’m not sure why this popped into my head because neither date on the calendar has any significance to me any longer. Well, that’s not entirely true I suppose.
The substance seems to be the disbelief I feel that so much time has passed already. These two dates are also crisp reminders of the enormous upheaval in my family around the same time.
The past few days my mind has wandered over the many events of 2008. What a year. What a convoluted freaking year.
Not everything that happened in the previous 12 months was dreadful though. For instance my magnificent grand-niece, Haleigha Kelis was born in January. I was present at the hospital when my niece, Dayna, gave birth to her. Although only Haleigha’s daddy was in the delivery room, my sister, who is Dayna’s mom, and I were able to hear her first screams through the operating room door.
Because Dayna had to have a c-section, she was not able to hold Haleigha right away – which sucked for both her and the baby. But it was such an amazing blessing for me to be standing near my niece when the nurse placed her tiny daughter in her arms for the very first time.
The look on Dayna’s face is beyond words. As Dayna began absorbing the enormity of this event in her life, my sister, sitting on the other side of the bed from me, whispered to Dayna “You’re in love, aren’t you?” Dayna was so bowled over by her daughter that without taking her eyes off the beautiful creature cradled in her arms, the only answer she could manage was a slow nod of her head.
Also in January, on a very snowy/icy night, a very preoccupied woman driver crossed four lanes of traffic (in a four-door Ford Escort if I remember correctly) to turn left in a lane on the other side of me. Although I was in four-wheel drive and traveling at a slow speed, I still locked up the brakes on my four-door Jeep Wrangler Sahara trying my best to avoid hitting her – but wound up hitting her anyway.
We finally had our day in court last summer and the judge all but flat-out called her a liar. The judge had both our police reports in front of him and asked the woman to tell him her version of the events of that night. He listened to her for about ten seconds before telling her, in an annoyed tone of voice, that everything she just related to him was in direct opposition of what her (and my) police reports said. He let her have another go at it so she picked up where she left off a minute before and he stopped her again. I no longer remember his exact words but I remember secretly hoping he would blatantly call her a liar.
The courthouse we were at had every person that had business with the court to wait outside the courtroom. From there we were called in one case at a time so we had a considerable wait.
I pulled into the courthouse parking lot right behind the defendant. The reason I knew it was her was because she had not had her car repaired yet and I remembered her telling me, the night of the accident in the back of the police car, that she did not carry full-coverage automobile insurance. I let her exit her vehicle first and gave her a head start to the courthouse before stepping out of mine and slowly walking toward the door.
I didn’t notice at first where she and her young daughter were sitting but it wasn’t long before I heard a woman’s voice complaining about how she was the victim and could not believe she received a ticket for something I did wrong. It was quite apparent that she was speaking loud enough so I could hear her and I couldn’t help but shake my head and giggle a little at all the untruthfulness spewing from her tobacco stained mouth.
Apparently I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was and a young man sitting next to me and another young man sitting across from me wanted to know what had me so amused. Being that I am a polite person, I kept my voice low and gave them highlights of what really happened that night. The young men, who were in their early teens, found it quite entertaining to stare and make comments about her.
Let’s see – February…ahhhh…yes…February. For the past several months (since February) I have been a consistent shoulder for a very dear girlfriend of mine to cry upon and an ear for her to vent to. In February Connie met a man and, very quickly, they were swept up in a relationship hurricane. Apparently, the two of them hit it off instantly and they spent hours upon hours on the phone talking or text messaging.
Connie would tell me about the interests they had in common and how each of them had experienced so many similar life events and tribulations that it was spooky. It had been a long time since I had seen Connie, someone I have known forever, so deliriously happy so I encouraged her to enjoy her new friend. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I should also have been cautioning her about giving so much of herself to him so fast.
For as long as I’ve known her, she has almost always protected her vulnerabilities with a wall. Like most of us, she has been devastated in the past by relationships she thought were “the one” and every time one of those relationships failed, the wall around her rose a little higher. For Connie, there was just something about Tom, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it that made her trust him implicitly – almost from minute one.
Not long after Connie and Tom met, the powers-that-be decided a relationship between the two of them really wasn’t such a good idea after all. Connie was inconsolable and prayed many times a day that the planets would realign and allow the two of them to be together again and, for a brief time, they were.
Boy did that piss off the gods!
I tried my best to continue being a good friend to Connie during all of this but I was preparing to return to school full-time and my free time became limited so we weren’t communicating as frequently as before.
Connie and Tom circled around each other for awhile, sending sporadic emails to each other during July and August. She said the deeply intense feelings they had for each other were stronger than ever and she felt they were still very close. I remember her also being distraught over the fact that they were not able to see each other because each of their schedules was out of control.
One day I received a phone call from Connie – I think it was right around Labor Day. She was in utter agony about an email she received from Tom. The gist of the email was that he was severing all ties to her and their relationship, closing his email account and walking away. I think he wished her well and wished her love, too. Yeah, like that’s going to soften the blow. She replied to his email and knew within seconds that he really did close his email account because her message bounced back to her.
In case you’re wondering, there is a reason why I shared this story about my very best girlfriend Connie and Tom. I was in a (sadly) unique position and able to empathize with her about feeling abandoned because I’ve been there. Done that. More than once. My family started it.
Deserted. Discarded. Forsaken. Dumped. Cast off. These are all words and feelings that have been not only flying through my brain, but regurgitating emotions I thought I had actually worked through. Clearly I only choked them down and buried them.
For me, the most difficult aspect of being abandoned is trying to determine the reason, or reasons, why. It all boiled down to the simple question of “what’s wrong with ME?”
I was hoping I could impart the wisdom of my experiences to my girlfriend to ease her pain a little. Once I admitted to myself that I really didn’t have any words of wisdom to convey to her because I never dealt with my own to become the “wise” one, I realized I had some work to do on myself.
Once upon a time I had a very comparable relationship to the one Connie had had with Tom – except I was infinitely more naïve. Mr. B and I were in turbo mode from the nanosecond we laid eyes on each other. Anyway, one day I received a “Dear Jane” email from Mr. B and, like Tom, “poof” he, too, was gone.
I wandered around in a fog for many days after I read that email, replaying every second of every minute we spent together. I dissected our emails trying to find a sign or hint of what was to come but nothing leaped off the screen at me.
I was stumbling and fumbling in a major way. I couldn’t sleep, I was barely eating. I kept the world at arm’s length. I had poured out my heart and soul to this man. All my secrets, fears, dreams, desires and aspirations were handed to him because I trusted him. Each of us had found out in previous relationships that we totally sucked at being vulnerable to anybody. Up to and including ourselves. Somehow we managed to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to each other.
His “Dear Jane” email dragged up the excruciating childhood emotions of feeling totally and utterly alone. Of being that 10 year-old girl who got herself up and off to school every morning. After school I became the housekeeper, laundress and cook for my dad and two brothers because my mom didn’t live there anymore.
Not only was I alone, but I was lonely, too. Nobody understood me because nobody knew me.
I learned at a very young age that I couldn’t trust anyone around me to take care of me.
I learned to distrust my instincts between good and evil; right and wrong.
I realized, at the age of six, that in order to survive the environment I was being raised in, I had to put the fragile core of my being on lock-down.
Mr. B’s rejection of me had an overpowering impact because not only did he make it a point to assure, and reassure, me that he would always be in my life, but he had abandonment issues of his own. So there we were assuring and reassuring each other.
Although a good deal of time has passed since he walked out of my life, I still feel that same flash of pain in my chest that I felt that day he said goodbye. I tried grieving him, as if he had passed away. I even tried stopping thoughts of him from entering my mind in the first place. Connie and I would put our heads together and work furiously on finding closure and peace for relationships that ended without our input.
Ever since Connie’s Tsunami of a relationship ended I have found myself closed off from the people around me – especially from the Love of My Life, Henry. The eerie similarities of Connie’s relationship with Tom and my relationship with Mr. B really plowed me under. What I can’t understand is why? Why now?
Could it be that for the past couple of months I have not been feeling right in my own skin? I don’t believe it has anything to do with my meds because whatever mood swings I have are controllable. I’m not arcing drastically from one side to the other. In actuality, I mostly just feel numb.
I am not able to define the “mode” I am currently in. Is it purely instinctive? Mindless? Habitual? Routine? Whatever it is, I manage (mostly) to get from Point A to Point B – and sometimes even to Point V.
With the exception of not sleeping (I have now been up for a little more than 48-hours) I’m not manic in the careless-bring-on-the-danger kind of way like I have been in the past. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? When I’m in the clutches of that type of mania I actually want some jerk to cut me off in traffic so I can drag him out of his car and pummel him. I would, of course, be wearing a dimpled-smile during the entire process.
Right now I am kind of hell-bent on finding closure for my relationship with Mr. B. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how I will do that, but it’s something I feel very strongly about. My hope is that in doing so I just might be able to resolve all the other issues that bubbled up with my memories of my relationship with him.
It’s been such a long time since our split that I’m not even certain if I will be able to ask him the questions I have. He was such a powerful force in my life once upon a time that there was nothing or almost nothing, that I would not do for him. I feel confident in saying that, at one time, he felt the same way toward me.
In reality, there are several relationships I wish to either reconcile and move forward with or resolve and finally bring to a close.
I’ve been awake for almost 48 hours now and I fear if I do not start writing, and continue writing until either my fingers bleed or my head explodes, I will not be sleeping anytime soon.
My most recent thought has to do with my oldest brother, Jimmy. The year 2009 will mark what would have been his 48th birthday, as well as the 30th anniversary of his death. I’m not sure why this popped into my head because neither date on the calendar has any significance to me any longer. Well, that’s not entirely true I suppose.
The substance seems to be the disbelief I feel that so much time has passed already. These two dates are also crisp reminders of the enormous upheaval in my family around the same time.
The past few days my mind has wandered over the many events of 2008. What a year. What a convoluted freaking year.
Not everything that happened in the previous 12 months was dreadful though. For instance my magnificent grand-niece, Haleigha Kelis was born in January. I was present at the hospital when my niece, Dayna, gave birth to her. Although only Haleigha’s daddy was in the delivery room, my sister, who is Dayna’s mom, and I were able to hear her first screams through the operating room door.
Because Dayna had to have a c-section, she was not able to hold Haleigha right away – which sucked for both her and the baby. But it was such an amazing blessing for me to be standing near my niece when the nurse placed her tiny daughter in her arms for the very first time.
The look on Dayna’s face is beyond words. As Dayna began absorbing the enormity of this event in her life, my sister, sitting on the other side of the bed from me, whispered to Dayna “You’re in love, aren’t you?” Dayna was so bowled over by her daughter that without taking her eyes off the beautiful creature cradled in her arms, the only answer she could manage was a slow nod of her head.
Also in January, on a very snowy/icy night, a very preoccupied woman driver crossed four lanes of traffic (in a four-door Ford Escort if I remember correctly) to turn left in a lane on the other side of me. Although I was in four-wheel drive and traveling at a slow speed, I still locked up the brakes on my four-door Jeep Wrangler Sahara trying my best to avoid hitting her – but wound up hitting her anyway.
We finally had our day in court last summer and the judge all but flat-out called her a liar. The judge had both our police reports in front of him and asked the woman to tell him her version of the events of that night. He listened to her for about ten seconds before telling her, in an annoyed tone of voice, that everything she just related to him was in direct opposition of what her (and my) police reports said. He let her have another go at it so she picked up where she left off a minute before and he stopped her again. I no longer remember his exact words but I remember secretly hoping he would blatantly call her a liar.
The courthouse we were at had every person that had business with the court to wait outside the courtroom. From there we were called in one case at a time so we had a considerable wait.
I pulled into the courthouse parking lot right behind the defendant. The reason I knew it was her was because she had not had her car repaired yet and I remembered her telling me, the night of the accident in the back of the police car, that she did not carry full-coverage automobile insurance. I let her exit her vehicle first and gave her a head start to the courthouse before stepping out of mine and slowly walking toward the door.
I didn’t notice at first where she and her young daughter were sitting but it wasn’t long before I heard a woman’s voice complaining about how she was the victim and could not believe she received a ticket for something I did wrong. It was quite apparent that she was speaking loud enough so I could hear her and I couldn’t help but shake my head and giggle a little at all the untruthfulness spewing from her tobacco stained mouth.
Apparently I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was and a young man sitting next to me and another young man sitting across from me wanted to know what had me so amused. Being that I am a polite person, I kept my voice low and gave them highlights of what really happened that night. The young men, who were in their early teens, found it quite entertaining to stare and make comments about her.
Let’s see – February…ahhhh…yes…February. For the past several months (since February) I have been a consistent shoulder for a very dear girlfriend of mine to cry upon and an ear for her to vent to. In February Connie met a man and, very quickly, they were swept up in a relationship hurricane. Apparently, the two of them hit it off instantly and they spent hours upon hours on the phone talking or text messaging.
Connie would tell me about the interests they had in common and how each of them had experienced so many similar life events and tribulations that it was spooky. It had been a long time since I had seen Connie, someone I have known forever, so deliriously happy so I encouraged her to enjoy her new friend. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I should also have been cautioning her about giving so much of herself to him so fast.
For as long as I’ve known her, she has almost always protected her vulnerabilities with a wall. Like most of us, she has been devastated in the past by relationships she thought were “the one” and every time one of those relationships failed, the wall around her rose a little higher. For Connie, there was just something about Tom, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it that made her trust him implicitly – almost from minute one.
Not long after Connie and Tom met, the powers-that-be decided a relationship between the two of them really wasn’t such a good idea after all. Connie was inconsolable and prayed many times a day that the planets would realign and allow the two of them to be together again and, for a brief time, they were.
Boy did that piss off the gods!
I tried my best to continue being a good friend to Connie during all of this but I was preparing to return to school full-time and my free time became limited so we weren’t communicating as frequently as before.
Connie and Tom circled around each other for awhile, sending sporadic emails to each other during July and August. She said the deeply intense feelings they had for each other were stronger than ever and she felt they were still very close. I remember her also being distraught over the fact that they were not able to see each other because each of their schedules was out of control.
One day I received a phone call from Connie – I think it was right around Labor Day. She was in utter agony about an email she received from Tom. The gist of the email was that he was severing all ties to her and their relationship, closing his email account and walking away. I think he wished her well and wished her love, too. Yeah, like that’s going to soften the blow. She replied to his email and knew within seconds that he really did close his email account because her message bounced back to her.
In case you’re wondering, there is a reason why I shared this story about my very best girlfriend Connie and Tom. I was in a (sadly) unique position and able to empathize with her about feeling abandoned because I’ve been there. Done that. More than once. My family started it.
Deserted. Discarded. Forsaken. Dumped. Cast off. These are all words and feelings that have been not only flying through my brain, but regurgitating emotions I thought I had actually worked through. Clearly I only choked them down and buried them.
For me, the most difficult aspect of being abandoned is trying to determine the reason, or reasons, why. It all boiled down to the simple question of “what’s wrong with ME?”
I was hoping I could impart the wisdom of my experiences to my girlfriend to ease her pain a little. Once I admitted to myself that I really didn’t have any words of wisdom to convey to her because I never dealt with my own to become the “wise” one, I realized I had some work to do on myself.
Once upon a time I had a very comparable relationship to the one Connie had had with Tom – except I was infinitely more naïve. Mr. B and I were in turbo mode from the nanosecond we laid eyes on each other. Anyway, one day I received a “Dear Jane” email from Mr. B and, like Tom, “poof” he, too, was gone.
I wandered around in a fog for many days after I read that email, replaying every second of every minute we spent together. I dissected our emails trying to find a sign or hint of what was to come but nothing leaped off the screen at me.
I was stumbling and fumbling in a major way. I couldn’t sleep, I was barely eating. I kept the world at arm’s length. I had poured out my heart and soul to this man. All my secrets, fears, dreams, desires and aspirations were handed to him because I trusted him. Each of us had found out in previous relationships that we totally sucked at being vulnerable to anybody. Up to and including ourselves. Somehow we managed to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to each other.
His “Dear Jane” email dragged up the excruciating childhood emotions of feeling totally and utterly alone. Of being that 10 year-old girl who got herself up and off to school every morning. After school I became the housekeeper, laundress and cook for my dad and two brothers because my mom didn’t live there anymore.
Not only was I alone, but I was lonely, too. Nobody understood me because nobody knew me.
I learned at a very young age that I couldn’t trust anyone around me to take care of me.
I learned to distrust my instincts between good and evil; right and wrong.
I realized, at the age of six, that in order to survive the environment I was being raised in, I had to put the fragile core of my being on lock-down.
Mr. B’s rejection of me had an overpowering impact because not only did he make it a point to assure, and reassure, me that he would always be in my life, but he had abandonment issues of his own. So there we were assuring and reassuring each other.
Although a good deal of time has passed since he walked out of my life, I still feel that same flash of pain in my chest that I felt that day he said goodbye. I tried grieving him, as if he had passed away. I even tried stopping thoughts of him from entering my mind in the first place. Connie and I would put our heads together and work furiously on finding closure and peace for relationships that ended without our input.
Ever since Connie’s Tsunami of a relationship ended I have found myself closed off from the people around me – especially from the Love of My Life, Henry. The eerie similarities of Connie’s relationship with Tom and my relationship with Mr. B really plowed me under. What I can’t understand is why? Why now?
Could it be that for the past couple of months I have not been feeling right in my own skin? I don’t believe it has anything to do with my meds because whatever mood swings I have are controllable. I’m not arcing drastically from one side to the other. In actuality, I mostly just feel numb.
I am not able to define the “mode” I am currently in. Is it purely instinctive? Mindless? Habitual? Routine? Whatever it is, I manage (mostly) to get from Point A to Point B – and sometimes even to Point V.
With the exception of not sleeping (I have now been up for a little more than 48-hours) I’m not manic in the careless-bring-on-the-danger kind of way like I have been in the past. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? When I’m in the clutches of that type of mania I actually want some jerk to cut me off in traffic so I can drag him out of his car and pummel him. I would, of course, be wearing a dimpled-smile during the entire process.
Right now I am kind of hell-bent on finding closure for my relationship with Mr. B. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how I will do that, but it’s something I feel very strongly about. My hope is that in doing so I just might be able to resolve all the other issues that bubbled up with my memories of my relationship with him.
It’s been such a long time since our split that I’m not even certain if I will be able to ask him the questions I have. He was such a powerful force in my life once upon a time that there was nothing or almost nothing, that I would not do for him. I feel confident in saying that, at one time, he felt the same way toward me.
In reality, there are several relationships I wish to either reconcile and move forward with or resolve and finally bring to a close.
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