I Warned You

I have listened to this album all the way through more times that I should confess to but it seems to have been the perfect mellow but cheeky soundtrack I needed.

This whole song has been resonating with me - the whole you need some bitter to know how sweet it is, and that has been crazy evident this month. I love the line but specifically - "if you want to find a honey you can't be scared of the bees." I don't have a good relationship with bees, my mother will tell you that as a very small child I was under the impression every bug was a bee after I had been stung by one. She eventually stopped coming at every cry of bee, Bee, BEEEEEEE when it was normally an ant. The reality is most men are the other benign bugs (and I don't actually mean that as an offence, shocking) but they don't hurt or they never intend to hurt, and yes maybe they scare us, maybe they're just not our cup of tea (spiders are evil and worms make me sad), but the honey is worthy duelling with a bee (*cough* NB/LB *cough*) and I found some heart soothing honey in all this insanity and maybe one day I'll find a honey too. 

A Little Distraction

I have a confession - I had declared that I would not make any purchases after the break-up because the last thing I needed was shopping guilt on top of my "I dated a total NLLL/NLLL/NLLL-bag (whichever term you'd like to pick) guilt."

But I did actually buy something - while I was scouring iTunes for "you're a NLLL-NLLL for ending the relationship but thanks you actually did me a favour" songs I saw that Kasey Musgraves album was on sale.

Today was the first day I listened to it and I think it's awesome

 

Primarily because I found myself in the sea of doubt and pessimism last night, realizing the days are counting down to my *cough* 32nd *cough* birthday and I feel in these moments that I have nothing to show for it. Yes this April could have (in theory) have been my 5th wedding anniversary (April 2009)... I could have kids, I could also be divorced and healing from the domestic abuse that would have been the flavour of that relationship... I find myself sitting on the fence where I was last year when I signed up for eHarmony, saying oh NLLL it, I'm throwing in the dating/marriage towel, after all it is easier if I do not have to consider man's opinion or dissent in the discernment process etc and I can just adopt since it seems impossible to find a man who would even consider co-parenting.... I know this is pessimism I shouldn't feel. After all I know I'm better off without LG/NB. But I guess I find it frustrating to have the years pass by with no rhyme or reason as to why I (and all my friends are single) and at the same time knowing that my uterus quite frankly has 2 to 3 good years tops and then I'm completely out of competition mode. It seems my male peers who are single want a wife who has years to decide about kids and frankly I don't have those years or the patience to put up with the NLLL that seems to still define the dating "game."

UGH.

Was Not Expecting That

I had to pick up the bracelet today and he took it upon himself despite repeated indications that I did not under any terms want the Narnia books he was reading to me. I have no memories of my parents reading to me and so this was a real gift. He did all the voices and it would be curled up against him, sometimes even lulled to sleep. I have no intention of ever opening the books and if I did it wouldn't be these ones. But there they were and I held in the tears for the 20 minute walk to Ms. J's where I am house sitting only to sit here bawling in the new rush of pain. He even ensured the card was included - given "with lots of love." I realized something as I sat staring at Twitter wanting to curse him out - you know what hurts more that believing he never cared, believing that he did love me and he said want he said still and did what he did like he has with no obvious emotion or care. Surprisingly to me that hurts fresh and deep, far deeper than it did last week. It's the kind of mind  NLLL that I cannot shake off with a piece of pie or Beyonce but I guess in time I will.

In the meanwhile these and the bracelet need a home - part time or forever home I don't know. Who wants them?

I Hope You Know You're Playing this Game With Yourself...

And it seems to be called let's see how big a pile of NLLL'ery I can create and then live in.

AE went to drop off the book in question and found despite the scheduling that he was unavailable and she wasn't interested (and nor should she be) in hanging around until he was free so that I could get the bracelet and etc back, which was the main part of his hissy fit.

Oh dude, this whole business of control is:

Seriously:

And even T-Swizzle the Queen of your kind agrees.

Again - I know you think this is all about you, and your life, and your dreams and your heart and your  guilt and on and on and on, but please:

And yes I will say that I did want you bad but you know what's awesome - there is a little Queen B in all of us who just needs friends to show us how much better we are and how fierce we can be on a dance floor.

And again dude, this is a wreck of your own making right from the beginning, check it, seriously because you're going to be the one needlessly suffering.

And on the last note the song that had me almost busting out some kicks and jazz hands at the bus stop this morning:

And on that note there is a name change - NLLL-EB or NB from henceforth

Update: NB claims that AE screwed up and that she should have interrupted his meeting or called before getting there despite my confirmation that 11 today was fine. NLLL-NLLLing-NLLL dude.

Fatigue

I'm exhausted. I am trying to desperately cope with this situation and it has had so many good moments, great moments of friends but my body is not supporting this process. I still cannot sleep - I lay awake praying for peace and wake sick to my stomach about the situation. I am struggling to eat, tonight's dinner was supposed to be pasta but unfortunately that didn't stay down and was replaced with two pieces of toast, later two cookies milk and now some cheese puffs. Yep the dinner of running champions.

I have decided against contacting any of his friends to apologize for getting them involved to whatever degree they are - frankly I'm horrified by his behaviour but again it is his behaviour and I've been told that my reaching out to his friends as I did was not psycho ex-girlfriend behaviour. And beyond that, I don't have anything. Yes I've considered mis-filing his thesis in our library and all sorts of other things, but at the same time it is not fucking worth it.

It all isn't worth it. Life is worth it. Love is worth it. This drama, totally not.

I'm going to peace out for a while unless drama gets even weirder at which time CEF will be unseeded for the most broken, bat shit crazy addicted to being a victim ex I have had and that my beloveds is saying A LOT, but in all this I promise no long breaks again. I found this song as part of a hunt for a good I've been dumped music mix and this is one of the more accurate of the songs.

Oh DUDE, Seriously!

So I thought we had a sane-ish discussion about the state of the relationship - it even ended with a hug and at 8pm I received a text asking if I had stolen anything else from his place. 

WTF was my first reaction. 

My second was, WTF. Turns out this is all about the Jesus Feminist book I gave him to read with the intention I would read it but more to the point, he spent the relationship complaining about the fact I see myself as a feminist. So why the hell would you want it, right? Apparently he did and he thought that I would have taken other belongings, yet if you look around your place dude I left everything I didn't have to take - food, coffee, mug etc all got left. I don't need them, don't want them. The Narnia series he read to me was only awesome because he read them to me. Why would I want them know. And for the record we know I claimed it last Thursday - dude it's been 5 days.

And he's refusing to talk to me on the phone, has now blocked me on FB and you know what I am fine with that. I want peace, and in every relationship that has ended, except with my first ex who also happened to be a lawyer, I have found a way to be civil if not supportive. X and I are amazing in our friendship support but I have no expectations every man can be like that.  I would like us to be civil given that our lives will intersect and if I become a pastor in Vancouver, in any capacity I don't desire having a bitter ex-boyfriend possibly poisoning the waters given that as a woman there is already fertile ground for skepticism. 

I know I cannot make things civil but I can do my best to be gracious, to try and in the process of not stomping on my heart, being vulnerable and peace-making, he's just making it brutally hard in all the back and forth.

Last Day in the Saga Hopefully

I packed up the keys, a letter, the bracelet and some money and put it all in an envelope and ended up dropping it off on his desk (he wasn't there, convenient for him). And while having lunch and a drink with AE, I received this crazy text about taking friends and my issues with his church etc, so insane that I felt the compulsion despite the alcohol in my veins and the rage that was following it to deal with him in person.

AE accompanied me to have a long silent sit while he dealt with his phone with the customer service people and then we started "talking" over the on hold music as he was waiting. The conversation started off very tense, very rough. AE could shed more light on the whole process, but we basically unpacked the relationship and it was truly tragic to hear that we could have worked if the intimacy hadn't been there and it was just as hard to hear that he "cared" but that he couldn't have said he loved me (great to hold that with the previous discussions about if I had gotten pregnant - thankfully I didn't that would have been AWKWARD) and felt that my belief of love was too early to be real. Furthermore on the money issue that I should have said something instead of letting all the nagging about my inability to carry my own weight sink it in the hopes it would change in time when I was working. It was hard to realize that if we had hashed it all out earlier we could have been in a different place. But I know that different place isn't a place we can go.

In the end we did part in relatively decent tone, I noticed my picture still in his office, and yet I returned home to being de-friended and blocked on FB. I guess that's normal, I just find that kind of behaviour is a new level of petty. 

Oh well. 

UGH the process

I watched Ms. J get married yesterday to an awesome man - seriously awesome and it was full of joy and hope and all the other amazing things and in a small way it did hurt my heart and yet thankfully it didn't really - the joy was a blessed covering over it all. However, once the party ended the real work, the real work of getting into the rough part of the break up had to begin. And so I started my steps.

Step 1 - Sweat the bastard out of my pores on a dark dance floor, in the company of safe people. My toes are brutalized but that was absolutely necessary.

Step 2 - Be awkward. I am fully, maybe too much so, okay with making others awkward as I am awkward. I will take a conversation to that point etc and I am happy to be awkward in my love and devotion. I'm also apparently down with making myself terrified for a moment while being that possibly cruel person sitting on the fringes of LG's life (this morning literally in church) and poking every so often is a hey NLLL'er, remember me, I'm not going to fade away, I'm going to make you, when I'm damn ready look at me, know me and know that you didn't break me but that you also were an asshole to me - maybe those words you said will ring in your ears like they do mine. On that note I will likely not continue attending, it took too much work to make him disappear from my line of sight while knowing he could see me. I am happy with being a nagging presence on my own terms, I don't need him getting any stealth cornering moves up and yes if you're wondering I was calculated enough to leave his keys at home. I am handing those back on MY terms

Step 3. Stock up your house-sitting with good soul nurturing food and some bad stuff - help ride the waves AND FLOWERS.

Step 4. Being affirmed in the blessed company of amazing new friends and an old one and have the words of affirmation from a female pastor, reminding me that in my Mennonite and social justice ways I am not a heretic for affirming that we must consider socio-economic (and race) issues in violence/war, birth control/family planning and just shalom. Shit is real peeps, and being a white Canadian middle class educated woman means I don't really know how real the shit is but I'm under so illusion that it smells nice, that's for sure.

Step 5. Go to sleep, knowing that AE (and KAB by proxy) will be present to support and love through the possibly brutal process of handing back the keys.

Musical Moment

Truthfully I've struggled with music this entire relationship - I've just not been able to find the words in song that fit the relationship - but now, now I've totally got the whole gamut - that also though truthfully is because I totally have a preference toward the nature of break-up songs - they're either the I hate you or the why can't you love me and both work. And we'll run through my catalogue of all those songs but right now this whole post will be devoted to my spirit person or whatever you want to call her - Sara Bareilles and the whole range of her catalogue which has been representing the whole cycle of my grieving.

 

This song is the only reason I didn't "go postal" when I had to go through the lame process of claiming my toothbrush and my loaf of bread and resisted the urge to do everything from an extensive cathartic cleaning of his home or cleaning his toilet with his toothbrush or anything incredibly bitchy although I won't say I was entirely sane, I did reclaim the book I gifted him - Jesus Feminist and I noticed all my Valentine's gifts to him disappeared... and well a grand plus worth of new clothing etc but whatever, I took the book and left a half loaf of bread so he can deal with it - so one day he'll realize what I have to realize on a continual basis my life changed. Anyways - after I channel my rage I normally knee jerk to this song:

   

 It is also because her ep has these two songs back to back what the NLLL Sara? Then I go here because well there needs to be balance - after all I have moments where I know I was all in and truthful and then I pause like NLLL NLLL dude what kind of new life are you planning with those very fancy work clothes... FULL STOP,

   

 Vent through the song and move on...

 

 Because on day I will and that day might involve these feelings:

 

 And all this, the song I used to get me through picking up my stuff and the word I will tattoo on my body:

 

I may not always be brave but a brave woman relayed to me last night wisdom she received - I am being sanctified and damn it I will own the NLLL out of that sanctification and yes I'm aware that might have been a heretical sentence.

Step Back - She's Going to Blow - Part 1 of Many on the State of the Non-Union

Which is a helpful warning that I'm going to be venting here rather than sending him NLLL word laced emails about what the NLLL is wrong with him.

Quite frankly as someone very used to one side of the counselling chair and a little on the other, I know he's got issues - hell we all do and I know that those are present right now, like his inability to own his own shit and so it's mine to deal with.

Case in point - and yes this will come as a surprise to some of you. We struggled with maintaining the line of "intimacy" which is polite language for sex. He has in each of his dating relationships and I guess I have too but well that's ones more complicated but whatever, lets just for the sake of owning things call it equal.

So we knew it would be a struggle, we started on the same page verbally but alas that didn't work - so needless to say it happened. We talked about the fact that while he could I couldn't ethically etc. we trying to work every angle of how to structure the relationship back to non-sex land. It did eventually work itself out and then abruptly in January he started asserting the other boundaries.  My stuff was no longer welcome, my drawer started to thin out, my food was no longer welcome and things changed. I figured that the lack of sex was the issue. Well I couldn't change that but figured we would ride through that.

Turns out the issue wasn't the lack, it was that there had been any at all. I am a grade A slutty harlot who stood between him and Jesus. And you know what I'm going to own that - not because I agree or that I am but if you cannot own that you initiated the majority, that you wanted that kind of a relationship than that's your shit but you cannot put it on me. I have mine to deal with and I own it as un-proud as it makes me feel.

I'm not proud - it was hard and having both of us effectively live alone didn't help - boundaries you are a challenging beast. But I will not be shamed or blamed.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.” 

Brene Brown

Blindsided

I will say that I will be posting a lot in the next few weeks or even months as I try and figure out what just happened. I feel entirely blindsided. I just discovered that LG has been keeping an extensive list of all my faults. It seems like everything from my divorced parents, to the abuse, to my supporting of a woman's choice, to some of my hypothetical parenting situations to my preference of texting to my not driving, to how we would raise our kids to well the list goes on and on and on.

And this where I tell KAB to turn away because I might use some NLLL.

I fucking don't care - I know I care because my heart is a bloody mess on the floor and the hole where it was is currently full of all the salt rubbed into it.

My parents are happier divorced, I'm fucking sorry that you think it means that I don't value marriage.

Yes I'm a survivor of abuse. Yes and I have PTSD. You know what I cannot do a fucking thing about it - I cannot stop it and I cannot think that it doesn't effect me or anyone I love - but I came forward with this on the 4th date.

Yes in the hypothetical discussion about our teenage kids having sex, a conversation we had in the first few weeks of the relationship before we were even official,  because LG had an active time in his teen years - I said I would prefer not, but if my daughter was going to make that decision I would like to know and we would be brutally honest and if she was still determined I would prefer it was in a safe environment not in the back seat of a car because she felt like she had to etc. Apparently this means I will be a poor parent for his kids.

I do support choice not because I think that it applies to inconvienent pregnancies but rather because as a woman raped, the idea of carrying a child to term as the product of that action it is a daily reminder that my body was is continually being used against my will. And frankly I would much rather that birth control was widely available and then we wouldn't have to have this fucking hypothetical discussion.

And yes I swear - you know the ridiculous part when I wanted to tell him to fuck off for pulling away for the last month and a bit because he knew it wouldn't work and that he's fucked with my heart in a totally inhumane way, I couldn't do it. Maybe because I still love him or maybe because I've done such a number on it all and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I just I don't know anymore. I don't know how my preference to text because we both have busy lives and instead of having an hour long conversation in the morning all I say is hey I've been thinking about you is an issue. But it was because I would only to get a response hours later with no information, just a hey.

And yes I don't drive. There are plenty of people who don't own cars - how is a relationship determined on these grounds?

The part that killed me the part that just gets me is he wasn't going to bring this up and yet it was me the one that wanted to stay together who was trying to figure out how to get clarity on his supporting of me in discerning my call and then I get this bullshit, this list, this rejection on all my faults and a trite well you're nice, you didn't annoy me like my previous girlfriends.

I just don't get it - but I guess this is where I end this for now, as I go through all the stages of grief another dozen times before I fall asleep wish the one person I want comfort from, the one person I love would be here and knowing he doesn't love me. Don't know if he ever has, sure doesn't feel like it.

When Things Get Tough... the tough or the weak or whatever I am, write a post...

So a lot has happened since December.

Um... well I basically lost my job/quit/laid off - they took away my hours and the office went to hell sans hand-basket, so I left (and may be returning although I so don't want to but they're nagging me and I like the ones suffering but you know complications).

So I started cleaning and we all know my OCD appreciates the smell of bleach and scrubbing bathtubs. Seriously. So it's been therapeutic, BUT it's not a way to make a living.

All in all the loss of the job has actually been a huge stress relief and I did have some money left over from my student loan which I have been living off of.

All that being said - I have entered a time of discernment it seems.

I know discernment is one of those weird words and I have a hard enough time trying to figure out what I'm doing right now never mind trying to explain it to LG who I totally get is a little freaked out though he's sort of hiding it (but not really).

What this all means is one big question mark that I know cannot be solved in one go, I get that the likelihood that all the pieces are going to fall together is incredibly small and not helpful to even consider.

The pieces? The main one is whether I should maintain looking for jobs in the medical secretarial/technician world or if I should be looking in the region I am planning on/hoping to work in/need to be working in at some point which is church ministry.

I am totally over qualified for one and under for the other with a huge gap in between them where I am actually trying to find a space to land in.

What do I mean by that?

What I mean is to say, I have recently (last 2-3) years felt directed (I loathe the term "called") toward medical chaplaincy. However, right now that's off the table because the only program that is accessible to the general public (ie. it does not require I do my masters with them to start) is in Alberta and it's "suspended for review" the lovely vague term I am assuming related to their admissions, training and likely an issue of having either huge demand or not enough. So no training program means no training. So I could hope that changes but if I stay with LG leaving for a year doesn't seem like an option either.

So that means if the program does come up either long distancing it or ending the relationship. Neither are great, one is far, far less great than the other.

And so at this moment, you may wonder why the idea of ending a relationship is even on the table.

Well... I love him, but I know we've got our challenges and one of them of LG is my job prospects. I will never, unless the economy dramatically changes and funding is restored in the area of chaplaincy, make a lot of money, quite frankly I could make the same if not more as a teacher or in medical administration. He doesn't like this. I'm not sure why he even thought about dating me but it's an issue for him and it's not for me. But I get why it is for him. He cannot imagine moving out of his neighbourhood and to raise kids in an apartment because we would never be able to afford a house in that area doesn't appeal to him.

So I could and I am considering whether I need another Master's in Gerontology in the hopes I could find my way into some kind of patient liaison type job or something in the medical field that borders on social work while working in a church.

The issue also becomes I am trying to come to terms with the likelihood I will ever be hired by a church given that I am a woman and the movement right now is away from female hirings.

So there you have it - I have a guy I think is great, who may or may not need to come to terms with his dreams and I have decisions to make and a lot of emotions and an impulse to in these moments clear the decks and remove everything as an option.