Hi

It's hard to believe it's been 5 months since I last verbal spewed here...

I think of posting...  think of writing...  think of unburdening...  then I don't.

It's been a hard year but a good year, too.

I've been distanced from people I just couldn't have in my world for my own protection, I've made new friends, I've changed jobs (not as easy as it was in my 20's - far more scary as you get older and more aware of your "responsibilities")...  I've seen old relationships renewed and spent a year and some by myself just learning how to be alone again. 

It's been a hard year because growing and maturing is never easy...  being lonely isn't easy...  feeling isolated is never easy...  but then, it's been a good year because I've grown, I've matured, I've realized some more of my failings, I've learned that there's a difference between being alone and being lonely, and I'm more comfortable with me than I've probably ever been.

I still see some of those folks I distanced myself from in social media and I laugh at just how batshit crazy one is, think how very much I miss others, and feel content inside for the others who I know it was a good thing to get away from.

What's all this to say?  It's to say that I still have a lot to write here; I've missed it, but for now I'm content to just check in and say hi.

Universe Found

So I wrote a whole blog entry, not too terribly long, and the whole damned thing bollocks'd up and didn't save.

Damn.

Let's try it again and hopefully I can recreate it to some extent...

A couple of things kind of took me off guard today...

I'm 48 years old as of 2 weeks ago.  48!!  Wow.

I haven't blogged since May.  MAY!!  Boo.

And that's about it.

Oh.

And today the bailiffs, upon taking a woman into custody after her trial today and searching her, found a snake in her pocket.  A snake.  In her pocket.  In court.

That's about it.  Nothing huge.  Just random things that made me go "huh!".

Where I am today kind of caught up with me and made me go "huh!", too.

I'm alone.  For a long time.  And kind of digging it.

From April to roughly October, I was depressed.  Borderline suicidally.  Tried to deny it at first, telling myself I'd get better like I always do.  I'd work through it.  After all, I know what to do.  But by the first of June I realized I wasn't pulling out of it.  Drinking hard.  Crying hard.  Cutting off from everyone.

"I'm alone.  I have no one who loves me.  No one will ever be in love with me.  I've never actually had anyone truly in love with me.  I'll never find real love..."

The day I realized I was at the point that I could understand people who committ suicide, I realized it was time.  I'd been at that point many years ago and not long after I'd felt like that, I'd crossed the line from borderline to full-fledged.  So when I realized I understood, I also realized I wasn't coping like I usually can.  I wasn't getting better.  I was slipping further down.

"I'm alone!  SO alone!  I have NO one who loves me!  NO one will ever be in love with me!  I've never had anyone TRULY in love with me!  I'll NEVER find REAL love...!!"

There's a reason my mother called me Sarah Burnhardt as a child.

So I got help.

And here I am again.

Alone.  For a long time.  And kind of digging it.

And much like when I was totally open with Sparky when we talked of seeing other people and me saying I was ok with it for the time being but would eventually not be (that was a HYOOGE thing for me who bottles everything up and rarely tells how I'm feeling about something that personal), I have been very comfortably honest with boys who ask me out - not something I would ordinarily be - and feel totally at ease saying "I'm spending time alone with me right now, I'm not ready to step out at the moment, but thank you for wanting to.", something I would not have been able to do in the past.

And good on me.  'Cause I am a good woman.

So I stand back now and say "huh!" on this dreary, icy, icky day, that my universe is looking pretty good for the first time in a very long time.

Peace.

Fear and loathing in Las Madre

I visited one of my oldest friends and her husband the weekend before Christmas...  it was such a good weekend; over far too quickly, naturally, and during the course of the weekend, we discussed some family issues of mine.

Pertaining to my mother.  Who I love.  But who I simply don't like sometimes.

And to all my loved ones near and far I say now, stop reading because this is supposed to be a place I can divest myself of every manner of thought and emotion, good or bad, and there may be content here that will not sit well.  If you keep reading and there is an issue with anything I say, then I only ask that it isn't buried and not talked about as has been the way all too often.

To everyone else, this will ramble and may never be cohesive.  The end.

So to begin...  my grandparents, as I've blogged about, were my world...  world... when I was young.  Summers spent with them are pretty much the sole source of the majority of my happy childhood memories.

My gramma died of kidney failure in 1992.  I was crushed.  I stayed by her bed for the last three days of her life, giving her ice chips, wiping her brow, cleaning her whenever she soiled...  I had a friend who said "Why did you do that?  Why didn't you let the nurses care for her?"

Um.  What?  Why would I let a total stranger do that...?  I did it because...  well...  because.  Because what else WOULD I do. 

It's what you do when you love another soul; I held her hand when she left this world, whispering words of love and devotion in her ear as I lay my head next to hers on her pillow...

And then I went into a clinical depression.

I was there when my best friend, Mama Lois, died of breast cancer at the age of 34 a few months later, too.  Held her hand and her brother's hand hands as the last breath left her, and hugged him while sobbed.  Broke my heart in a million pieces and pushed me deeper into the black hole.

But it's what you do.

And I digress... 

My granddad died twenty plus years after my gramma.  He remarried about a year after she died, a very nice lady he and my gramma had known, but he pined for my gramma and missed and mourned her until the day he died.  They'd been married for over four decades.

My dad was - and this will sound all melodramatic but, in reality, it's just the facts...  Jack - an absent father at best.

Consciously, it didn't bother me - he always sent THE greatest birthday gifts and he worked for the ATF and as a secret service agent under President Ford...  what wasn't to love and wallow around in as a teen with not one shred of "cool" going for her when she moved to live with her dad in 1980 - but unconsciously I know I've based a lifetime of "please-love-me" choices on that fact and they've all been poor ones.

So.  To see devoted love like my grandparents was a lesson.  Did it set the bar too high?  Perhaps.  But to have them shower that same love on me my whole life? 

Another lesson in how it's done. 

To have one man in my life who was ALWAYS my supporter and loved me wholly until the day he died? 

Again.  A lesson.

And both reasons I absolutely believe in the power of forgiveness and all it encompasses. 

It's beyond hard to forgive someone when they hurt you.  Somehow I was blessed enough in my early 20's to learn I didn't want to go through my life discarding friends or family, cutting them from my life forever, unless they were truly and irrevocably unredeemable. 

So far, my daughter's dad - despite plenty of people who have done plenty of TRULY awful things to me and mine, and even despite the fact that my own father was not someone I EVER recall seeing before the age of 15 when my mother shipped me off to live with him, is the only one I've never been able to truly forgive.  And frankly, if he fell down on his knees and begged our daughter's forgiveness for being such a money-grubbing, tight ass, emotionless, unthinking, uncaring asshole to her her whole life (and then backed it up), I'd probably forgive him, too.

Because to me it's about awareness.  Self-awareness of yourself, and your affect on the world around you...  and if you are aware you have behaved badly and you are genuinely remorseful...

Well then, we have something to build on.

If you are unaware, or aware and stubborn or insincere about your mea culpa, piss off.

About a year after my younger brother was killed in a wreck a month after graduation and a month before his 18th birthday, my dad and I met for lunch and talked.  He was remorseful.  And, more than that, apologetic that he hadn't tried harder as I was growing up, acknowleging that as the adult it was his "job".

LOTTA bridge repair happened there, I assure you.

Navy apologized while saying he was sorry for him and how he couldn't say he was a good person or tried.  Insincere.  Self-centered.  Self-involved.  Nice words, but piss off.

So.

Now the question is...  am I capable of letting go of a fluctuating dislike with my own mother and forgive her?

There are a lot of reasons I don't like her as a person sometimes.  Most notably that she's controlling and derisive of her children, all of us well into our adulthoods, when things don't go precisely how she thinks they should or she wants them to.  To the point that she will get pissed and then gives us the stiff-spine, silent treatment.  When we were children, we pandered and ingratiated ourselves to try to curry a return of favor.  As teens we rebelled.  As adults, we see it for what it is and for what it's done to us in terms of our need to please others to our own detriment - at least I and one of my siblings has...  the other I'm not sure about.  Anyway, combine all that in her with what we now think could be manic depression or bi-polarism? 

You've got one helluva scary childhood.  Of course WE didn't know it wasn't normal.  Scary was normal.  I even found out as an adult that my step-dad was shocked and uncomfortable with her treatment of me when they were married (I was between the ages of roughly 7 and 15), hinting it was inappropriate and even abusive.

Anyway, the story we talked about when I visited my Richmond friends pertains to Mother and goes something like this...  9 years ago my mother accused my grandfather of molesting her when she was young.  At the time of the accusation, he was 81, she was 59.

He was her step father.  She never liked him.  A fact that I didn't know until I was in my 20's with my first child.  But she wouldn't tell me why.  And it wasn't until over a decade later that I finally "figured it out".

And here's the caveat.

She is the sole person responsible for fostering the genuinely close, loving, devoted bonds I had with my grandparents.  Both of them.  Including during the 13 years after my grandmother's death and prior to her accusation of my granddad.

Now here's the thing.  I know about all the science and research, but when it happens to you, you still can't wrap your head around it...

Why wasn't I molested?

Why would she let me be with him/them?

Why wouldn't she have protected me by keeping me away?

And after each of those questions is the echo "...  if it's true?"

There's another layer to this story that adds to why she says she chose to finally "let the cat out of the bag"...

There was another Loved One in our world who made the same allegation after mother did.  But when it was made, mother flatly said to me, "Oooh, you know Loved One, if you cut your finger, they cut off their arm."

Sound like someone telling a true story?  Didn't to me.  Took me aback.

But there it was - and shortly after that, my mother used Loved One's accusation as a spring-board of sorts to write a letter to my grandfather, and letters to his wife and HER children, saying that while she had kept her own molestation private all those years, Loved One's accusation was intolerable and therefore she had to bring it all out in the open and my granddad's wife and her family best be aware so he didn't molest any children in THAT family.

Now here's the thing.

I want to believe my mother.  But I wanted to believe my grandfather, too.

So.

Over the last 9 years it has been the pink elephant in the room in my family.

Especially when she got angry at me for not "taking her side" as others in my family had.

And I respected that they did and I didn't blame them - I knew why they did and I could never question their stance.  But they - at least as far as I know - never got angry with me for not joining in.

And the thing that pissed me off most and still sits like a giant marble stone on my chest?

She did what she's done my whole fucking life.  She was pissed at me but wouldn't say a word.  Wouldn't talk to me about it.  Wouldn't discuss it.  Wouldn't say "I'm mad and I'm hurt." and let me then respond," I know you are and I'm so very sorry.

And why, you might ask, would I NOT "take my mother's side"?

That's not simple to answer...

It's because she fostered such a close relationship for my granddad and me.  It's because she never kept me from them.  It's because she sent me to them for weeks at a time in summers, unattended.  It's because after she found out he intended to cut her from his will, she started sending him Christmas cards.  It's because when Loved One made the same accusation, she discounted it.  It's because...  I didn't want to take either side.  Believe either person or disbelieve either person.

So what I'm left with is sometimes not liking my own mother.  For putting me in this position, although that I can forgive/forget - it's really just a blip...  more than that, for being angry with me that I didn't take a side after 40 years of my life with one reality.  For being angry with me that I wouldn't turn my back on him.

That, Friends, is unattractive in anyone - but when it's your own mother...

Anyway...  this has all been a process...  as I said in another blog entry fromt his week...  I've had a crushing weight on me and I was going to fine-tune my counseling...  I thought fine-tuning with the shrink was in order but, frankly, 3 blogs in as many days has helped me mentally more than I ever would have imagined it might...  and in my universe, voyages of self-discovery are primo.

Working my way back up...

Don't say "There's still time..."
Or "Maybe next time..."
Because there's also the concept of "It's too late."

Fuckin'fuck.  I'm doomed.

I believe it's out there.  I trust it's out there.  But I am convinced I am the only person in the world who it isn't true for.

I've opened the soft mooshy part with the last two - HYOOOOGE step on my part - to varying degrees...  one I was just beginning to let it show, the other, I was full on invested and even bought a deeply emotional V-day card which I haven't done in easily 20 years...

Torpedo'd.  The bothuvems.

I feel young.  Ish.  I know I'm 47, not 87. 

Head:

"There's still time to find it..."

"Maybe next time will be it..."

Heart:

"Fuckin'fuck.  I'm doomed.  It's too late."

Welcome to my universe.

Righting My Universe

So.  What do you do when your universe is so overwhelming you feel like you have been pinned by something so huge you can't even get an arm under you, much less breath?

Exactly what my mama told me when I was young; grab your bootstraps, Bessie, and keep walking.

Just like I always have.

Until now.  Now I'm having a hard time climbing back up for the first time in a decade and a half.

A handful of life changes over the last 6 months - death, job, relationship, etc...  none big unto themselves but combined, too much.

Seeing a shrink is something I did when I was clinically depressed and a raging fucktard of a bitch for all those years; his diagnosis when we finished?  "You're...", "Normal?", I said.

"No.  What passes for normal these days (and that was 15ish years ago so now "normal's" even less normal) scares the hell out of me.  I prefer the term 'healthy'."

Healthy.  I liked that.  And I've worn it as a badge since; very proud of overcoming who I was.  Until now.  Now I'm not feeling so healthy. 

And I'm thinking a fine tuning at the shrink might be just the thing.

So I called.  He answered.  His voice slapped me back 15 years and I instantly felt something "good" inside.  I smiled and we talked and he remembered me and details about me.  Damn.  I am really feeling some hope just welling up in me like some emotional Pavlovian response.  Is he taking new patients??

"I only work with nursing home patients now, I don't do any out-patient."  It's been 15 years, after all, and he wasn't a spring chicken when I was seeing him.

I burst into tears.  Yep.  Fine tuning, indeed.

So in no particular order, here are the things I'm struggling with in the last 6ish months that have come to a screaming crescendo recently...

My granddad, the only constant male in my whole life, died.  He and my grandmother were like parents to me and when she died in '92, it nearly killed me, driving me into depression that peaked with a suicidal pinnacle roughly 7 years later.  7 years is a long time to be depressed, especially when it steadily worsens that whole time.  Doc Kyle was amazing and I trust him, literally, with my life.  Now he's gone.

My love life in its entirety is a hot mess.  All marriages for the wrong reasons, though two amazing kids to show for it, and two serious relationships fallen to dust because I was committed and they weren't.  And they were damaged.  Which evidently I'm drawn to.  But now, all gone.

And then there's Sparky.  More than 6 months ago but right now in the midst of what I have going down I miss his guidance and support.  Never made it to serious with him but enjoyed a couple of years of a friendship that was more genuine and supportive than any I'd had with a male, so that when it moved to intimate it was as natural and warm and good feeling as anything I'd ever had and I trusted him like no one I ever had...  until it was incinerated.  Suckass part?  He incinerated it and the hurt he felt was so much that he couldn't let me apologize or try to make amends, yet I still miss him - that person he was before the lava flow.

Then my job life...  now also a hot mess because I have a great position with wonderful people and a boss who is extraordinarily flexible in anything I ask of him...  and I hate it.  Hate what I do, hate that I'm bored, hate that the office politics I deal with are such that I feel like I don't belong and never have - a first in my work universe.  Hate.  My boss knows I'm looking and he's been wonderful about it, references, etc., but I am freaking out because I'm not finding anything and I don't feel like it's right to ask him to wait in definitely.  And it'll soon be gone.

Let's see...  what else...  then there's my boot camp business...  I work a full time job and from last summer through the end of the year, I held 1 hour each A.M. and P.M. classes 3 days per week.  This didn't include time spent researching and then working up workouts for fun and maximum results.  It was killing me.  So in January, I scaled back to single evening class, 3 days a week.  It helped immensely but now I've reached burnout after two years of steady boot camp/p.t. learning/certifiying/instructing and I don't want to do it for a while.  I need time to catch my breath personally and professionally, and I need time to crank out some REAL marketing.  And I can't.  I don't have time.  I almost want it gone.

My family...  mother, brother, sister-in-law & nieces in Maryland, father in Lynchburg...  none doing much to stay a part of my life even when I try staying in theirs because they're wrapped in their own - yep, even leaving me to founder when my granddad died...  all effectively gone.

Then, my daughter is losing the relationship she's in which affords her a decent guy - prone to bouts of selfishness and raging assholeyness, but a decent guy overall - who she treats like a lackey and who has had it almost up to *here* with her narcissistic, self-centered, self-involved view and explosive temper being aimed at him and their boys (which personally I feel he should've thought about BEFORE knocking her up...  but there ya go.).  That I don't blame him, is the bad part.

My son.  My son is my bright spot.  He works hard, he thinks of those around him.  He's an all-around good kid and a burgeoning great man.  Shining star.

Then my ex, Navy.  Sending me texts saying I should shut my storm windows because it'll be cold, or asking if I want to see his new big delivery truck, or if I might one day some time want to have lunch, or the best one...  that he was sorry what he'd put me through and then spending the rest of the message saying he was sorry for us and sorry for him and how he didn't feel like he could say he was a good person.  Translation:  I read your blog and in black and white I realize I might've been a blazing asshole but feel sorry for me and tell me it's ok.  I heard Sparky's voice telling me not to respond, but I did, and I was polite - I had love for him still - and I told him it was ok, it was over and I was fine...  s'all good.

Then one Sunday I text him in church (he's A/V for the church so he's listening to the same sermon on broken relationships I am) to tell him as I'm listening and realizing things...  that he wasn't the only one to ruin us...  that I realized I was so busy playing the victim that I never acknowleged that I helped swamp the boat and I was sorry.  I felt like it was the right thing to do.

I know if Sparky were here, he'd just tell me "Yeauh, well, what did you expect to happen?  If you give us (men) a bone, we'll jump.  Don't give us the bone."

I realize I gave the bone, so when Navy texts saying how he'll always love me and how a church member singing the Whitney Houston/Dolly Parton song of the same name got him misty eyed and how he'd thought of me/us all that morning, and how when the music leader's husband straightened her mic he almost "broke down".  Ok, THAT was a little overboard but since I didn't feel that old heart tug or sick feeling when I read it, I thought it was nice.  That we'd reached detente.

SideBar:  Have I ever mentioned how FUCKING gullible I am.

Less than two weeks later, more Naval douchebaggery.

A picture of his baby-mama's hand (the baby-mama who kept his daughter from him for 21 years and then left all her OTHER children for him), wearing his dead mother's engagement ring (the dead mother I adored and baby-mama never knew), crossed with his in a soft focus FB "announcement" to the world of their impending nuptials.

You fucking fuck.  I blasted him via text and told him never reach out again.  Yes, I was furious that he didn't even have the balls - as usual - to give me a heads up.  Furious that after 5 years of 100% support, I wasn't enough, but this woman with no regard for her own children was his soul mate.  Furious that I tried to make him feel better about his shitty treatment.  Furious that he'd reached out and I'd fallen for it. 

But mostly, I was furious with myself and with where I was in my own life.  That was the true sticker.

Which brings us back to me not being able to climb out from under this crusher this time.

After Navy and my brief toe-dip with Sparky, I finally started dating again; a nice, stable, quiet guy.  This is good.  We see each other a few times a month, live in our own spaces, and that suits because after the marriage debacles and then 5 years with Navy, I NEVER wanted to get married again.  But then, time healed some wounds and I realized that even if I never marry again, I'd be ok to be in a relationship with someone who I can move towards common goals with (something I've never had as a prerequisite before in life - I know, I know...  but I was damaged and in need of "love", what can I say?  I do feel like that it's a consideration for me now is a positive sign I'm still evolving...); someone I can plan with and be with and share with and learn with.  Someone I love looking at sleeping, who fixes me breakfast, who I can stay in and cuddle with when the skies are gray, who will put an arm on the back of my chair when we're spectating, who'll let me put an arm through his while walking & will clamp down with his arm because he wants to keep my hand just where it is, someone I have no hesitation saying I'm sorry to and who I know has no hesitation saying it, genuinely, to me and who will have my back with the same level of committment that I bring to them...

And almost two years later, we part company because he can't and won't commit to anyone again he says.  His marriage and horrid divorce ruined him and he realized he didn't want "anyone telling [him] what to do.".  WTF?!  Yeauh, THAT wasn't me anyway so I truly got the shit knocked out of me when he said that.

He most assuredly did not have my back.

And that is the true nail in the coffin of my little black place right now.  It's been months of emotional pounding but I was taking it and bobbing along the ocean of life, recovering after each swell.

But this last swell...  the one that's swamped me?  It's that I'm 47 years old, I have family I love but have no close relationships with, the last of my familial and male stability died with my granddad, I have a string of romantic failures behind me, I'm in a job change in a time in life no one should be, I'm alone again (which is not the problematic part) after thinking I finally got it right (which IS the problematic part since clearly I've gotten it wrong YET again), and I'm feeling like I have no time left to turn any of these setbacks around.

And now, my psyche has reached the point that it has my heart terrified that at this age, not only am I not going to find a suitable job, but that I may not be able to handle my daughter's next huge crisis, that I may never get the closeness of family that I try to give, and that  if I open my soft 8th grade innards one more time and I either don't find anyone willing to give that back to the same level I am, or if I do it and they give enough to hook me and then torch me again...  that I just might die.

So.  I'm feeling around for my bootstraps right now and struggling to come to terms with the things I know I have to... 

I can't make things right with the people I want to make them right with if they don't want to allow me that and I have to accept it.  I can't make things right for my daughter because she has to do it, and I have to accept it.  I can't make my family any closer just because I repeatedly reach out or just because I wish we were, and I have to accept it.  I have another failed relationship behind me and I have to accept it.  I have a job change happening whether I want it or not and I have to accept it.  And I may very well never find that one soul who will bring the level of committment I want to give, who will give me what I give them to the same degree I give it, or who will show me their soft, inner, squishy part so that I feel like I can let down the shield one more time.  And I have to accept it.

So.

In my universe, though letting this all out here has helped a bit, a fine tune is clearly in order.  And I'm dialing now.

Let's Dance

I held my private investigator's license some years ago.  Unfortunately, it was the wrong time in my life to have it because I didn't have the contacts I needed, but it was something I wanted and I did it.

There's a reason I did, too.  I'm nosey.  And patient.  And methodical.  I don't mind sitting for hours, looking up information or watching someone forever, waiting for the slip up. 

Because everyone does.  Eventually.

When my network engineer/I.T. second husband, now ex, was sexting with a woman in another state - back in the mid-90's when home computers were not as plentiful as they are now and AOL was pretty much THE on line gathering place - I suspected and then confirmed the fact when I cracked his email password.  Not once, but twice.

When my third husband, now ex, was stealing my kids' Christmas money and using it to buy meth and then replacing it before I found out - I found out.  Seeing the money gone.  Keeping my silence.  Watching.  Waiting.

When you want to know something that someone doesn't want to tell you...  best way to find out?  Shut up.  Listen.  Let it go.  It will come out.

It always comes out.

It worked that way with my mother.  When my daughter was born, 27 years ago, my mother divulged that she didn't like my grandfather; her step-father since she was 6 or so - something I'd NEVER sensed in my whole life (I'm absolutely naive, but never thought I was obtuse so really don't think there was ever an indication a child would pick up on). Why, I asked.  She never would tell me.  Over the years I learned that at least part of it was because she was devastated when my grandmother divorced my cheating, Navy-sailor-with-a-girl-in-every-port biological grandfather.  She always wished and hoped they would get back together.  That her father would come back.  And thus ensued a life-long abandonment personality problem for her, and a life-long dislike of the man who took her father's place.

But that wasn't all of it.  What then?  Tell me, mom?  Why don't you like Baba?  Why do you hate him? 

She never would tell me; only saying years later that she didn't want to affect the way I felt about him.  Which, of course, just spawned more questions from me.

Then, I didn't know to wait.  But it wasn't long before I did.

And so I waited.

7 years ago it came out.  It took 20 years and some gentle, occasional prods, but it came out.

He'd sexually molested her, she said.

I was 40 years old.  She'd always encouraged, even fostered, a very close relationship between me and BOTH my grandparents.  She'd left me with them for periods of time during summer breaks.  They were like parents to me.  He was the ONLY man who had ever been a constant in my life, including my father and the step-father who was as like a father as any could be and who I called Daddy.

And she wanted me to turn my back and walk away from him.  82 years old, in poor health, and more than that, there for me with love, support and encouragement since as far back as I could remember. My brother and sister did.  Never looked back, either.  They had no other choice, I don't think - but even as I say that I can't comprehend it.  We choose the stands we make and to do it whether it's personally costly or not is the right thing to do.  I stood with my grandfather because I felt like it was right.

There were reasons they did, I'm sure, not the least of which I thought might be tied to the fact that I was sent to live with my father by my mother when I was 15.  I "made it out".  They didn't.  And they couldn't do anything other than back my mother up.  I understood. 

But it hurt terribly.  It drove a wedge into our entire family.  Because they walked away.  Because I wouldn't.  Couldn't. 

My sister-in-law understood to some extent.  She understood that with all the abandonment I'd had in my life, he was the one person who hadn't.  She understood that after a life-time of my granddad loving me, of my mother waiting until I was 40 to "tell the truth", of him being there my whole life, I couldn't walk away.

And finally, after 10 years of mental and physical misery and emotional devastation, the last 7 of which were a slow decline into the horror of Alzheimer's for a man with a masters in electrical engineering and a doctorate in education, he died last September.

And I was sooooo angry.

Angry that he was alone except for me and his wife's family.

Angry that I was alone except for my son and my granddad's wife's family.  Angry not that I had to handle the tanglible things alone...  but that I had to handle the emotional things alone. 

I told them he was gone after he was buried.  His wishes.  Though I'd have done it anyway.  False platitudes or any other emotions beyond sincere sympathy would have sent me completely over the edge.

My sister-in-law sent sympathy for me.  My sister did, too, through text.  My brother was silent.  But that's nothing new.

My mother, though.

My mother called and left a voicemail.  Terse.  Angry sounding.  Saying all the "right" things.  But in a way that made every syllable a lie.  And made me more resentful and angry.  And let me know that I was right not to have told her/them.

I've waited to blog it.  If I haven't learned anything I've learned to wait. 

I am, after all, the Queen of Compartmentalization.  Wall it away and look at it later when it doesn't evoke the same level of emotion.

So I waited.

Now I can say what I haven't except to a couple of very trusted people.

I've never known what to believe...  my mother who, in her younger years before my brother and sister, was an amazing mom...  I always felt protected and loved with her.  After marriages 2 and 3, not so much.  After her third, she lost it.  Depression so deep she couldn't get out of bed.  So I cared for my brother and sister like she should have.  And learned for the first time in my life to truly resent my mother.  The selfish side of her that I was left with in the wake of her third divorce.

Because of all of that, I always felt like a parent to my brother and sister, rather than their sibling.  Which was ok.  Until all of this. 

When they turned their backs on my granddad, it truly felt like they'd turned their backs on me.  I didn't blame them.  I understood why.  But Jesus, Mary and Joseph it fucking crushed me.

Within the year after my mother and siblings turned their backs on my granddad, he mentioned on one of my visits (he lived 3 hours away, irrelevant), that he intended to cut them out of his estate.  Shortly thereafter, on a visit to my mother (5 hours away, also irrelevant), she asked if he had cut her and them out of his will.  I told her I didn't know.  It made me angry that she asked me; put me in a shitty position, put me on the spot.  Then, some months later, my sister and I were talking and she commented asking essentially the same thing...  and I told her.  That he'd mentioned it.  But that I had no idea if he'd followed through.  It made me angry my mother put me in that position asking so I said I didn't know, but my sister was another matter; I trust her and love her so I told her.

A few months later, at my Christmas visit to my granddad, he mentioned he'd gotten a card from my mother.  The first contact in over 2 years.

A message addressing her accusations?  A letter damning him?

Nope.

A Christmas card.  Seriously.  A Christmas card.

::blinkblink::  What the FUCK?!

More followed over the years.  Every one made me angrier and more resentful towards my mother than I already had been.  Because yes, I felt like it was monetarily motivated. 

And then, years of physical, mental and emotional agony for him later, he finally died.

And then my mother's angry sounding message.  Which made me angry.  Jesus, the circle is vicious.

And in the 7 months since he died?

I've pushed it away.  My mother has returned to "normal".  Calling.  Wanting to spend time.  Wanting to be close.

At first I resisted.  I was sooo fucking raw.

Now, not so much.  In my universe, I've had enough time to begin to heal and to let it go.  Mostly.  Enough so I can return her calls and talk with genuine affection to her.  I had to.  If I didn't want to let it all eat me alive inside, I had to.  For my OWN sake and sense of well-being, I had to. 

Because besides learning to wait and watch in this life, I've learned that I have to forgive and move on.  Not forget, I don't forget.  It makes me smarter.  But I can forgive and move on so that I am not eaten with the negative emotion that comes with hurt.

And if 7 months has let me heal this much, then I know I'll heal as totally as is humanly possible in time.

Because you see, in my universe, I've learned to dance.  And wait.  And watch.  Just ask my friend Ericka.

Smoke and Irony, No Mirrors

It took me until I was 46 years old.  And amusingly enough, it really WAS what I'd used as my excuse all those years.

Mind over matter.

I quit smoking.  

August 3, 2011.

I started when I was 15.  SOLELY to fit in.  The cool girl, Louise, crazy beautiful dark read hair, teeny tiny waist, and a pear shaped bottom that all the boys loved to see encased in red tab Levis, smoked - as did other hoodlums I was running around with then - and if cool girl Louise was going to smoke and offer me a Marlboro Red, then by-God, I was gonna take it and smoke it just like the big dogs...  I'd fit right in then, right?

I still distinctly remember thinking "Oh dear God, this shit HURTS!" when the first drag I inhaled made its rough brick way down my throat...  and yet I still kept at it.  George Carlin was right, we should age backwards...  God, what great sense it would make that we should know more as kids and less as adults! 

Anyway...  I'd been participating in Boot Camp Challenge (I'm now proud to say that after months of grueling and overwhelming studying and final testing, I'm a certified personal trainer and certified BCC trainer and run morning and evening boot camps as well as my "day job") since April 2011 and one morning, running the quad, I thought, "Why the hell am I doing this to myself?"

You see, I'd been told a decade earlier while in the throes of a bout of pneumonia that I had the beginnings of emphysema but that since I smoked so little it'd be fine if I quit because while our lungs will never repair the damage done, they will stretch to accommodate.  What does that mean for someone like me?  It means the QUEEN of fooling herself will "quit" and then when she feels "stressed", or is out with friends for drinks, or it's Tuesday...  she will think, "I don't smoke much, it's ok."  

I swear I'm not that stupid, folks.

Anyway, there I was, running the quad, and not really having a horrible time of it but still feeling like I was struggling 4 months after I'd begun BCC and my endurance was higher than it's maybe ever been and I thought, "Why am I doing this to myself...  I could have so much MORE endurance."

And that was it.  I haven't touched another one since.  

I've wanted to a couple of times.  Even dreamed about it once a couple of months ago when my granddad died and I wanted to curl up and never get back up.  But I was done with it.

And that's where the smoke comes in rather than leaving.

Everything's a game.  I don't care HOW enlightened you are, how smart you are, how much you DON'T "play the game".  You still play the game.

She isn't calling and she's spending too much time with her friends out drinking?  I'll post a pic on FB of me with a group hugging a hottie.

He hasn't said he's sorry that he got too drunk and pissed in mom's potted plant?  I'll cut him off until he does.

I said something really shitty to her in a fight and she told me to get out, I won't call for days and let her make the first move since I'm pissed she called me on my shit.

I was really crappy to him at my mother's because my mother was being a bitch and I felt 12 years old again but he should say he's sorry because he got tired of MY shit and went home rather than stay over; I'm going to disappear and he can just come find me.

I've heard ALL of these before, and more, from men and women friends.  No one's immune.  No one DOESN'T play a game of some sort.

Maybe you've been walked on before so you pony up balls to the next guy even though he's been nothing but nice just to prove you can't be walked on again...  maybe your last 3 girlfriend's cheated on you so you cheat on your new one to "beat her to the punch".  You don't have to be conscious of the game to play it.

So.

This all hits me when I get a text from 30.  You remember her - "Aahh, fuck'im, what he doesn't know won't hurt him!" from the I-could-tell-him-a-lie-but-I-don't-want-to-be-that-person blog - saying the guy she's been seeing for a month has totally backed away and what should she do?

Now let me say that she's in a very different place now than she was.  She's still very looks-oriented...  Regular Joe with a paunch?  Hells to the no.  Tyson Beckford?  Even if he were a flaming user-asshole?  With fucking BELLS on.

But before it was the younger the better, the more committment-phobe the better - the goal was no attachments, take me out in $tyle and $pend to make things happen, wanna sleep over?  Time to get out!

Now, she's been single for about 8 years and her priorities have finally changed.  Now she's looking for that relationship.  That bond.  That trust.  That closeness.  That knowledge that someone will catch her when she falls and she'll do anything to catch them when they fall if she can.

Now THAT is a girl I can hang with.

So fine...  she's met a guy, Single Dad, with two boys her boys' age, they've been going out for about a month and she got butt-hurt about something he jokingly said about her being allowed to flirt with one guy at the holiday parade and she just had to bring him a picture so he'd know whether to be jealous.  She totally focuses on the idea that he doesn't like her like she likes him and why not and what did she do and how come and what can she do to make it better and why doesn't he like her like that...

ALL through text.  Now I'll confess I'm a serial texter...  but NOT for serious shit like this.  SOOO much gets lost and we ALL damned well know that!  But she texts him all of this.  Bombards him.

So what's Single Dad do?  Shuts down.  She's coming across desperate and clingy and he's just inked his divorce papers and only a year separated, is NOT ready for that yet.

So yesterday I get the text from 30 that, despite my counseling to give him some breathing room, she wonders if she should text him and tell him she misses him?

ARRRGH!!  What?!  I already saiiiiid...

::sigh::

"No.  Silence.  Put the phone down.  He needs to miss YOU."

"Oh fuck, they never do!"

"I mean it.  Never forget, you are amazing.  If they don't, then they're not the right one."

"But sometimes they need to know they're missed - right?  What if he just needs to hear it?  What if I need to show I'm the right one?"

Shit.  Seriously.  She's pretty and smart and funny, has a good job, nice car, her own home, she's thin, has beautiful clothes...  seriously, she has it ALL...  how in GOD's name can she be THAT insecure about herself.

::sigh::

"You already know that answer.  You've shown him how you feel, and told him."

"True.  Ok.  I won't.  Little Boy and I will be watching the Salem parade at the office Friday night if you're around."  

"Sounds good"

8 hours later she texts again... 

"So I deleted SD's number today so I wouldn't be tempted and he just texted me and said he misses me!!  :)"

"Not as dumb as I look."

Only I AM dumb as I look.  Two years ago I'd've been dangling from the same damned string.  But I had the dumb luck to lean on someone who walked me through unscathed.  Well.  Almost unscathed; Navy left a few scars.  :)  But they gave me superb advice and they repeatedly told me I was a good woman and had more value than I was giving myself credit for.

All I did was turn that towards 30.  

And I gave her the advice I was given, too...

"Ok.  Since he said he missed me...  and I told him I missed him...  can I ask him out???  Or see if I'll see him again??"

"Nope.  Silence.  You told him you miss him.  He needs to make the next move.  He backed away because he felt pressured.  Let him come back to you now."

Same advice I was given two years ago.  And it was spot on.  "Silence.  It will kill them.  They'll show up at your door, I swear."  They need the space but it will kill them and they'll show up at your door.  Maybe not literally, but they will. 

Yep.  spot on.  And I passed the game right along to her.

Now the thing is - though I see that kind of maneuver as a game, it's reality and non-game, too.  She was bombarding him and he was spooked and he needed the space.  Like a startled cat, he came back slowly, checking the room for barking dogs.

Today I get the text that starts me thinking of The Game again... 

"Single Dad asked to see me again.  :)  You rock!!!  xoxoxox"

Yep.  

"Unfortunately, I had a very good teacher.  Maybe I'll tell you about it some time."

She "wins", I helped a friend, she's maybe gotten a little self-confidence boost from it...

Match, set, game.

So how does 16 months of non-smoking combine with that to bring me to Smoke, Irony, No Mirrors...

Well...

All games aside; it's a mindset.  Like quitting ciggies.  Decide there won't be mirrors.  Speak what's in your heart and don't be afraid to. 

If you can't trust the person on the other end to understand then you need to take a look at one of you. 

Either yourself for being too afraid to speak.  Or them if your words would change their perception of you.

I've been too afraid to speak so many times in my life and only a few times have I not regretted it.  More often, I've lived with the knowlege that had I, things would have been better.

So I give.  Uncle.  I don't want to be afraid to speak any more.  I've lost too much in this life because I have been.

Because I've learned in my universe that submission, in many arenas, is a far better thing than pride and much more rewarding.  No smoke.  No mirrors. 

Signs, Signs, Breaking My Mind

Signs.  I don't believe in random, gotta-stretch-and-turn-your-head-sideways-to-see-it signs...  but when life puts something in your path repeatedly, it's a sign.

Mine was Lenny.  Well...  and Sparky, too, in a way.

But first, Lenny.  First time I saw Lenny was in a grocery store.  My reaction when I saw him was so visceral I literally turned on my heel mid-step and walked the other way to keep from saying anything I might regret.  Not regret in terms of saying what needed to be said to him, but regret in myself for letting it out and not just walking away and being a bigger, better person.

Next, a couple of weeks later, a new restaurant.  That one was easy, it was Friday night, I was meeting a group, plenty of other things to concentrate on.

Less than a week later, another restaurant at lunch.  Again, meeting a girlfriend so other things to distract.  NP.

Last.  And fatal.  I walk into a little bar down the road from my apartment the other week to meet another galpal and there he sat.  Alone at a table.  Facing the door.  Looking right at me.  That was the straw.  The other 3 places were in his stomping grounds and so perhaps not unusual - though I hadn't seen him since the atomic blast that was Sparky, so mayBE unusual - but this last place...  well...  it's not in his stomping grounds, it's in mine and so many sightings in just a few weeks...

Oh.  And Sparky?  Well, during the "Time of Lenny Sightings", I got two random emails from Sparky.  And right off the bat, it set my pulse into overdrive.  I was SO hopeful when I saw that special blue colored "sparky mcphee" name in my in-box.  Unfortunately, they were spammy bullshit emails where he'd been trolling something that virused him and sent them.  Fail.

Anyway...

I never finished Ode to Your Face because I finally realized I just didn't want to.  I started it so I could purge the hurt, confusion, anger, rawness I felt after being napalmed by Sparky.  I think I originally probably intended to torch him the way he had me.  But the longer I put it off, the less important it felt.  The longer it went unaddressed, the less I felt like I needed to.  Acceptance?  Kind of.  And, frankly, I kind of came back around to the mantra that's helped me stay out of clinical depression, lo these last 13 years...  I just didn't want to take ME to that negative place...  I didn't want to make ME feel shitty and used and stupid and let all that negative energy take me to a place where I lashed out and let it make me feel bad inside.

So I left it.

Then signs.

So here I am.

And here I go.  Only now, it's from a very different place.

Sparky and Little Man - after a year of Sparky being such a solid, special, good person to me and coming to feel like he was maybe in my top 2 best friend category (because so far, LDD's always held number one since I've never found that partner who could usurp her) for all the support and guidance and friendship he'd given me since Navy's chaotic, destructive departure, the continued fallout from that, etc. - had come to be so very special to me and I started building my weekends around them whenever Sparky came to town.

Despite the crushing beginning to that New Year when I thought I'd die and would never, ever, EVER recover (my mother used to call me Sarah Bernhardt...  I still say I'm not a drama queen.  ::ahem::  LOL), went by quickly and quite contentedly.

And then things began to change...

I had always found Sparky attractive; his less-than-youthful physique never bothered me - it was his mind, his spirit...  his eyes.  LOL!  AH-mazing eyes.  :)  Anyway, I'd always had those "what if" thoughts, even when I was WITH the man I thought was the love of my life.  I guess we all do sometimes.  But working with him over the months planning our high school alumni party...  Facebook chatting...  and finally, dancing with him at the party...  it always flitted through...  what if.

Well...  I guess things took a natural progression...  what do they call that phenomenon where you feel romantically for someone who's your care-giver...?  Whatever the reverse of the Florence Nightingale syndrome is...  that's it...  I really started to feel very differently about Sparky.  I adored spending time with him and Little Man.  Just hanging out, watching movies, eating, talking, drinking, spending time...  I struggled for some time to find the word to describe how I felt and it came to me as I was blogging Ode to Your Face, Part I...  content.

I was, for the very FIRST time in my life, utterly content with where I was and who I was with.  I didn't feel a restless need to "have a talk" because I was unhappy or to walk away because I was miserable.  Both things I've felt in literally EVERY relationship I've ever had.  It was new and amazing and...  and now I'm tearing up because I'm mentally wallowing in that feeling's remembrance...  new, amazing, and I was deep-down happy for the first time in my life with someone who seemed to have "partner potential".  Starting as friends and building?  Like the experts and the party of "they", I highly recommend it.

Anyway, a few months after Navy took his departure, I'd started seeing another fellow I'd/we'd gone to school with.  He and I even went and spent time with Sparky and Little Man July 4th of that summer.  But things with us were progressively getting worse - I found myself feeling unimportant, forgotten, "convenient".  So that January, I broke it off.

To be frank, Sparky was a part of that.  It wasn't that he was overly attentive or there was some torrid affair going on...  it started with a very innocent sleep over.  I'd gone to the boat to hang with Sparky and Little Man, we'd had drinks, watched an old movie I'd never watched because I thought it would be too corny (Goodbye Girl - which I totally loved), and it got late and I was tired.  Sparky took my hand, took me back to the bedroom, and we lay down and he curled up behind me and we spooned all night, fully clothed, and I slept like a baby feeling more protected and safe than I ever had in my whole life.  And though he was a wonderful, good man, it was then I realized then how very dissatisfied and unhappy I was with The Ex.  That was December.

Sooooo, Sparky and I carried on together from winter through spring and I was just damned giddy - happier and lighter of spirit than I ever remember being.  A lot of first-time-ever's with Sparky.  I'll always be grateful for that.

He was seeing people in WV, I was seeing people here, we were seeing each other the couple of times a month he was in.  And I told him...  this is good...  until it isn't.  I knew, KNEW, there would come a time when I was attached enough that I wouldn't want either of us seeing other people...  and I was right.  And being a grown up having been through enough casual relationships, relationships where one is more into it than the other, relationships where the boy was a boy and what was love to me was fucking around to him...  I knew that time would come that I'd feel like that and - again with Sparky and a first - for the first time in my life, I wasn't going to be a pussy about speaking up...  Sparky gave me that freedom solely from being who he was...  with him I was unafraid to speak candidly, and so, for the first time to speak up and say something difficult even when I want to be easy to get along with and not rock the boat was liberating...  I was unafraid to say I knew things would probably change and that for that moment I was fine with how casual we were - until emotion got too intense and I wouldn't be.

In the meantime - a very incidental side-bar, though he said otherwise at the time - Sparky was on the scent of getting a child support reduction for his daughter who was set to graduate high school.  Since I work for a judge and attorneys do "favors" for us all the time, I set him up with a very good, very respected local attorney who, when his secretary quit, I did all the follow up and file/pleadings chasing for that was required, just so this would be fast tracked for Sparky.  Oh.  And he did it for Sparky for free.

Fast forward to June.  Sparky's child support reduction hearing is set to be heard in juvenile court.  We're spending time together while also dating in our respective home areas (even having a conversation one night about how a patient of his had asked for his number to give her daughter and how he'd hesitated but given it to her and "we'll see".  I'm listening to this tidbit, wobbling on the line of trying to be "grown up" and realistic and not be white-hot jealous but figure at 3 hours between us, I had to suck it up.  

And then it all hits at once.

The Ex gets in contact.  Texting at odd times like when I'm on the boat with Sparky.  Facebook "Like"ing things.  And it bothered me.  You see...  it's like this...

I can't stand it when people say things they don't mean.  If you don't mean it, just shut the fuck up and don't SAY it.  Not EVERYthing requires verbal spew.  

When I broke it off, it didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped...

It was my FIRST time ever breaking up with someone...  EVER...  and like telling Sparky I was ok for the moment with how we were hanging, I wanted to be grown up, not be a pussy and soft pedal.  So I was firm and explained what my problems with us were and said I loved him, which I do, and that I didn't want to walk away angry or lose touch - we were friends first.  I thought.  But his response was to say he "couldn't have contact" with me any more...  he had to "cut off any contact" because it was too hard...  

So he gets in ACTUAL contact, texting, we have polite conversation, and he says he'd like to see me, he'd like to talk.  Ok.  Lets.  A direct by-product of having a mother who accused me of anything and everything whether it made sense or not, and punished me accordingly (my step-dad later admitted, long after their divorce, that he abhorred the way she treated me...  hinted that it wasn't entirely rational...), is that I can not STAND it when someone misunderstands me or thinks badly of me.  I try to please to the point of detriment to myself...  a habit I struggle with always.  So yes, let's talk.

We get together on a Friday, we go to an after-5 city held "party" to have a few beers, talk, hang...  and I see Lenny.  Recently back in touch because of the alumni party and Sparky, I race over, give him a big hug and say hi.  The Ex in tow.  No reason not to if Sparky and I are both seeing other people while we see each other, especially if this wasn't really a "date"...

Except perhaps there was.  

You see that's when it officially "all hit at once"...

I had plans to spend the weekend at the boat with Sparky and Little Man the following weekend...  Sparky's child support hearing was set for Monday...  

The Ex and I go on our way that night, I go home, talk to Sparky on the phone the next day, go to work Monday and *WHAM*!!

I get a phone call from Sparky, positively apoplectic...  the attorney had called him at work in WV, at the hospital, in the depths of the nuclear med department, cell reception was shit...  told him the child support wasn't going to be as low as he wanted but the rest of the conversation was lost to cell fuzz... 

Sparky sounds far too angry for that to be all the problem...  attorneys wrangle this stuff outside courtrooms all the time and the attorney I got him was far and away in a higher league than his ex's (NOT the case the FIRST time he went to court with her and was reamed)...  but I know he's frustrated and feeling used and financially nuked so I try to soothe him and tell him it's ok, the attorney will make things happen. 

And then it happens...

Sparky literally goes from restrained anger to absolute spittle flying, vein popping, incoherent RAGE in .02 seconds...

And then the call drops.

I call back.  Voice mail.  

I won't bore any further than I already have but I'll say that I called repeatedly.  Emailed incessantly.  Begged, pleaded, cajoled, reasoned.  All to voice mail.  I email back and forth with the attorney who says Sparky didn't show (which he said he wouldn't in his meltdown) but that if Sparky will get in touch with him, he'll make it happen - the ex-wife didn't seem to give a shit about the money, she was more pissed that he hauled her to court and then didn't show.  

Now the story I'd gotten all along was Sparky said he paid $1K for the two kids and that when he'd switched jobs and his income was reduced he'd never asked for a reduction because he didn't want to take it from the kids.  He never had two nickels to rub together and he told stories of poverty living to get by just so the kids were taken care of.  At that point, he figured it was finally time for some relief since if one graduates then support should be half...  but he REALLY wanted less than that since insurance, he felt, should be figured differently...  so there we were.  

A few hours after his atomic blast, I get a call that my son has been involved in a car wreck that involved the vehicle he was in, and a CINDER BLOCK WALL HEAD ON.

Now I'm a wreck.  I press on.  I'm beside myself.  I know Sparky's upset, but the figures he's provided the attorney don't match his payroll records so all the attorney needs is something that shows the lower amount Sparky reported...  I call repeatedly telling him to get the proof to him so he can fix it.

Guess what?  None existed.

Sparky flatly refused any communication from that time on.  No matter how much I apologized, begged, pleaded, or cajoled.  Ignored it when I finally got pissed because he put up a snarky blog saying it was all because of the attorney and how I'd fucked him over setting him up WITH that attorney.  Ignored it when I spent the anger and returned to apology for hurting him.

And now I'll, far too late, cut to the chase...

These are the things I've figured out in retrospect.  

Initially, I suspected Lenny had burned up the phone to Sparky about seeing The Ex and I but when he went nuclear and blamed it all on the attorney, I doubted myself...  no one ever knows what will make someone that  angry, reasonable or not.  But every time I doubt myself in a relationship, I ALWAYS find out I'm right...

This time is no exception.  This is what I've finally surmised after a lot of facts and information coming to light over the last year and a half...

Sparky was bullshitting me when he said he'd been out on dates since we'd been spending time in flagrante delicto.  He was bullshitting me when he said the woman had asked for his number to give her daughter.  He was bullshitting me when he said he had no money because of support, he was living in a hovel with no cable, no electricity and no water because of support, that he ate pot pies every night because of support.  He was bullshitting me when he said he was NEVER speaking to me again because of the attorney.

Here's how it really went down...

Sparky is EVERY bit the 8th grade romantic he professes to be.  SO much so that, despite saying he's completely honest and open with his feelings and emotions and longing to ride on "the love train", despite declaring contempt for anyone who's too afraid to show their feelings, emotions, to let someone in...  he's not.

He's afraid.  And he kept himself closed to me at the same time he urged me to be open and take chances without thought for being hurt.  He didn't admit to me he was feeling exactly what I was...

And side-bar...  I'm not really pointing a finger here, I didn't admit it to him, either.  I WAS afraid of getting hurt by him even though I truly felt he would never hurt me maliciously.  I'd just never felt about someone the way I did with him except Navy.  And I had been so crushed by Navy that I KNEW that if Sparky fucked me over, I might end up in a place I haven't been since before counseling.  So I kept my belly covered, too.

I was wrong, though.  He did hurt me.  And he did it maliciously.  But I realized in hindsight, of course, that it was like an animal striking out of pain...  I hurt him going to talk to The Ex that night.  He wouldn't admit it when I finally figured it out.  Still hasn't.  Probably never will.  But I hurt him.

And JUST like the hours after his last phone call, I will always apologize.  I truly am sorry I hurt him.  It didn't matter to me then, nor does it now, who was right or wrong, I was wrong for not telling him I hated the idea of him giving his number to someone for a date.  I was wrong for not giving him the whole of my heart and faith.  I was wrong for holding back.  He was too.  If we had BOTH been honest with each other - and the funny thing is, we were both very open and honest about SO many other things that it's ridiculous and ironic we weren't about our feelings - I don't believe we'd be where we are now.  With a year and a half of silence between us.

Well.  Not total silence.  I went to Richmond by way of WV about a month after everything hit the fan.  I waited across from the hospital entrance and attempted to follow him to where ever he was going so I could get down on my knees and apologize.  I had a thousand romcom scripted scenes about it in my head.  I lost him.  I went to both gyms he said he spent time at.  Nothing.  I went to the library where he surfed the net.  Nothing.  I drove aimlessly in the direction he'd gone hoping to see him.  Nothing.  So I went to the restaurant where we'd had the one official date we did and I sent him a text with a picture of a cold beer and the menu and told him I was there and would wait.  Nothing.  So after a horrid night sleeping in a rest stop parking lot (no hotels when the friggin' PGA is at the Greenbrier), no response to any of the texts I'd sent, I went on to Richmond to my friends'.  One of my oldest girlfriends, her husband, another female classmate friend, and a guy friend from the days of my first ex-husband (also a school mate - yes, yes, I knooooow!!)...  they all patted me on the back, dried my tears, assured me it would be ok, he'd cool down eventually.  We had dinner, I drank, too much, and I tried to forget.  

But he never cooled down or broke the silence.

Fast forward to last October, I'm having a Facebook convo with Old Guy Friend from first ex-husband days in the wake of Sparky announcing his engagement on Facebook...  everyone checked in to see if I was ok, much to my chagrin because by then I just wanted it to go away...  and in the course of the convo Old Guy Friend mentions Sparky sent him an email right after my summer visit.  The summer visit when I went to WV to TRY TO SEE HIM and do whatever I could, whatever he'd let me, to make things right, the visit I made despite not having the money to, the visit I made where I spent the night in a rest stop JUST in case he returned my text and said "Ok.  Meet me."...

And frankly, the shit Sparky put in that email is just that...  shit.  It said I was a "SHARK".  Said I was hunting for a husband, I'd had 3 and would do anything to make him my 4th, I'd done it with Sparky, then with The Ex, and that there was something so inherently wrong with me that despite 5 hours of sex, I didn't orgasm...  and it ended with "She has a nice smile but that's where it ends."

Yeauh.  It's all about the attorney.  Not a thing to do with me and The Ex.

And even though I've rambled FAR too long now and really shouldn't defend myself...  it goes back to that mom-accusing-me thing...  I'd told Sparky how I wasn't sure I ever saw myself getting married again, especially after Navy, that it cut too deeply, hurt too much.  Neither Sparky NOR Navy had a pot to piss in OR a window to throw it out of.  And finally, while I've never been Speedy Gonzalez in the orgasm department (hell, I was 27 before I had my first one!), 20 minutes is average for a woman and I average that +/- 5 minutes and when I came with Sparky he was afraid that despite me putting the pillow on my face my screams might wake his son so he shut all the doors on the boat.

Dammit.

Anyway.  It doesn't make me mad any more.  I didn't strike out at him maliciously in order to hurt him; he did, me.  And yes, it still hurts me some that he wouldn't even give me a chance to say "I'm so very sorry.".  I would have honored it if he'd heard me out and still said he didn't want to see me any more.  I'd have thought it as unfair as this silence, but I'd have honored it.  Because the truth is - we both fucked up.  We both protected our underbellies and tried to be "grown up" and "with it", when in fact, we both enjoyed the other's company on many levels and should have damned well each told the other we thought they were great and we'd like to take it deeper.

So anyway, he posted for a while last fall about this new Filipino love, their engagement, his trip to see her, their break up...  then accused HER of being evil...  which he did his ex wife, his ex girlfriends, me, and now her...  and I'm sorry, but we're NOT all evil.  Dumb as hell.  Some are scheming.  But we're not all evil.  I fit the dumb as hell group.  And the regretful as hell.  

If I had it to do again, I'd've talked to him about The Ex wanting to talk.  I'd have told him I hated the idea of him giving his number to someone.  I'd have told him that every time I'd gone to dinner or bike riding with someone, I was thinking the whole time about how much I wish I were with him and Little Man.  But I didn't.  And foolish pride fucked me in the drive through again.  Fucked him, too, really.

And what's there to do?  Pride isn't important.  It's just not.  It doesn't win friends.  It doesn't influence enemies.  All it does is leave you negativity and failure.  And I failed him by listening, essentially, and putting to practice, EVERYthing he told me in my recovery from Navy.  And then not listening to the most important thing he told me.  Be open.  Let love in.  Don't let fear keep you from riding on The Love Train.

That last sign?  Lenny at MY neighborhood bar looking right at me?

I was going to ignore him.  And did.  Until I got up to go to the bathroom and he walked up to me and played stupid.

I can take a LOT of dissemination and bullshit, but DON'T play stupid.

"Don't I know you?  Didn't you go to Botetourt?"

I swear to God.  I was speechless.  A thousand things went through my head.  All those things you want to say but don't.  All those things you think of 30 seconds too late as you're watching them walk away.

But I DIDN'T fail this time.  Like when I told Sparky I was ok with where we were, until I wasn't?  I was brave.  And for once, properly righteous.  I smiled.  A look flitted over his face...  confusion?  I don't know.  But I took him by the arm and said "Come..."...  and I walked him to the front door of the bar.

"Lenny.  While I want to tell you exactly what I think of you, I won't.  I know you know who I am.  And I know you called Sparky that Monday after I saw you when I was with The Ex."  

"Sparky?"

"Yes.  Sparky.  And you know exactly what I'm talking about."  The look changes...  nervousness?  

"You told Sparky something that wasn't true.  Something awful.  I don't know what and I don't know why and it really doesn't matter any more...  but I know this...  whether you thought he was spending too much time with me, or because you were interested and figured you'd torch the two of us for your own benefit...  it was ugly and mean-spirited I am so disappointed because I honestly thought we were friends.  I'm not angry with you any more - I was.  Furious.  I'm not now.  Take care of yourself."

And I walked away.

And that was the final sign it was time to finish "The Ode".

I miss Sparky.  Nearly every day.  I so sorely missed him when my granddad died - the only constant man in my whole entire life, who loved me unconditionally and always to his last breath - that it truly made losing my granddad harder.  I needed Sparky SO much then.

I needed him again when Navy, as Sparky predicted two years ago, showed up at my door a couple of weeks ago.  Wanting to reopen old lines, reach out...  and I had to tell him I couldn't.  It wasn't ok.  I wouldn't.  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done and all I could think was how much I wished I could talk to Sparky.  I like to think he would've been proud that I remembered all the things he told me...  that I didn't lessen myself, cheapen who I was, that I for once - heh - had enough self-value to say no. 

When I walked away from Lenny, for the first time in my universe I was SUPREMELY proud of how I handled myself.

When I told Navy I wouldn't, I alternately ached for Sparky to be there and felt pride and strength that I said no.

So.

This is the true end of The Ode, it's finally going to bed...  and maybe, if I'm very, VERY blessed, one of these days I'll find another Sparky in my universe.  Someone who will stand right beside me, hold my hand, walk me through, support me, be my true friend first...  and, dare I say it?  Love me like I think Sparky may have to some degree.

Because I certainly loved him in a way more pure and deep than anyone since maybe, ironically, I was in grade school. 

And, if Sparky ever surfaced again?  I'd ask him to forgive me.  Not because I did anything malicious or sneaky or dishonest.  But because I didn't open up to him first so he would feel he could open up to me.  Because I didn't understand.  Because I struck back at him out of hurt and anger.  

And I'll apologize.  Again.  For hurting him.  Because it doesn't matter whether I knew talking to The Ex would hurt him or not, what matters is, it did, and I was the cause.  And I never wanted to do that.

Post script:  I was sitting with my 20 month old grandboy last night and in the quiet, holding him on my chest while he slept, I went over this blog in my mind.  I went over finally purging it from me.  I thought of things I forgot to include, things that were too intricate to include (since it was already a stinking novel), and I thought of Sparky and Little Man on the boat.

My mind keeps going back to one particular night.  Little Man was down below and Sparky and I had taken drinks and chairs out onto the dock.  We sat facing each other, feet up on the other's chair, sipping and talking quietly in the dark.  All kinds of things...  music, personal get-to-know history, movies, relationships...  and Sparky talked about Chad.  His best friend.  Gone FAR too soon.  And he exposed his underbelly.  Just a little.  He didn't tell me how it TRULY affected him to lose Chad - a mutual friend of ours told me that some time after the blow up - but he did tell me how close they were, how much he missed him...  he said, without saying, how much he loved Chad.  And later, when our mutual friend told me how devastated Sparky had been when he lost Chad...  how he got rid of all his beloved music, instruments, things he and Chad had shared a love and a passion for...  when he told me how Sparky had kind of cocooned and gone completely off grid...  I realized.  I realized at least part of why Sparky is so fragile and keeps himself protected while urging those around him to be open.

If you don't get close...  if you don't invest too much of yourself...  if you don't let someone into your heart and mind...  if you keep rigid control and then walk away at the least sign of danger...

You don't get hurt.  Not as badly as if you invest your whole self, whole heart, whole mind... not as badly as if you get close and let someone get close back.

And I was reminded of that sitting in the dark with the baby on my chest, sleeping quietly, the house silent around me like the dark dock that night. 

And I know why Sparky walked away even more than ever before. 

THAT is the regret I will live with. 

That right or wrong, justified or unjustified, I was the catalyst for him snapping his armour down and in my universe I'd do anything to right that wrong.