The aftermath, morning 1
So I was kind of worried last night that the reason I felt better wasn’t because I sat down and talked to her, but because we spent time together. She has become such a constant in my life in the last few years that even just coming home and knowing she’s in the house has made me feel better. So of course after I started talking to her last night I started feeling alot better. Seeing her smile at my lame jokes, even seeing her cry all made me feel better. I had so much emotion pent up inside me over this that I really felt exhausted after talking to her. It’s the next morning and I still feel better about it, I’m not sure still if I can forgive her but the unrelenting anger inside me is ebbing. I kinda knew that I had to do this if we were going to ever have a chance at even friendship after this and I can feel that I was right now…. it’s the same kind of emotional exhaustion I felt the first time we slept together years ago, which think was about the same time I first told her I loved her.
Welp, at the very least I have no more secrets, she knows exactly how I feel and what the stakes are — the rest is up to time and karma to decide. I will walk my path, she will walk hers and that is all we can do. The words I left her with last night were “It has been a pleasure.” It truely was and it is only because of that fact that I am even trying to forgive her.
The talk…
I had ‘the talk’ with the ex. She got the best delivery and fullest disclosure out of me. We talked from 5:30ish to about 10:30. It went as well as can be expected. I am as pleased as I can be given the fact that we’re going to be apart for quite some time with the possability of never being even friends again.
Plus I got cheesecake!
Ma-te cheesecakie daiske!
Holidays
I usually enjoy the holiday season, but it marks the first Christmas in 3 years where I won’t be celebrating it with my now ex-girlfriend. It is so wierd to even type that much less say it. I am pretty depressed about it all and it is only getting worse as Christmas and New Years approach. It also hurts that she’ll be spending it with her new boy, perhaps that is what hurts most of all.
I pray for strength to steel myself against this trial while allowing my heart to remain soft,
for the wisdom and compassion to learn to forgive,
for the sight to see my path ahead of me,
and the will to stay true.
I’m not a relgious man, but I am an Irish man…
It is funny how sometimes google brings you words that make your heart a teeny bit happier…
“May you see God’s light on the path ahead
When the road you walk is dark.
May you always hear,
Even in your hour of sorrow,
The gentle singing of the lark.
When times are hard may hardness
Never turn your heart to stone,
May you always remember
when the shadows fall—
You do not walk alone.”
– http://islandireland.com/Pages/folk/sets/bless.html
That which is going on
So, since no one I know reads this I will introduce the background before I go into what is going on. My wonderful girlfriend of 3 and 1/2 years and friend of 7 years whom I love and adore with all my heart broke up with me a little over a month ago. I am currently living at my mother’s house because I couldn’t bear to be around her right now, I’m too hurt and going through too many emotions and now I’m just trying to figure out how to say goodbye. I am of course still as in love with her as I always have been, nothing but time will change that fact, but I am faced with the hurtful reality that she cannot be in my life anymore. Maybe after some time has passed I can trust her again and the hurt will heal enough for me to be able to be her friend again, but for right now I can’t deal with it. So I’ve been trying to figure out how to say goodbye to the woman I love, whom I wanted to marry and build a life together with and I’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong. Of course like any relationship it takes two. Things were great until about 6 months ago when the anger and depression started to sweep over the house. It was almost tactile towards the end and yet no matter how mad I was at her for how she was behaving I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to her about it. There in lies my biggest problem, communication. It was easy for the years we were just friends but the moment we kissed and looked at each other the first time it just got harder and harder to talk about stuff.
That scares me, because that’s totally how my father reacted, and for those of you who read my first post of the year know that I’m terrified of becoming like my father. So much so I think that as I was seeing myself shut down in this relationship the farther it drove me into this fear that I was becoming my Dad and I think the more it caused me to shut down. One of those oroboros things. So after we broke up I bared it all and told her everything. And from that moment on I promised myself that I would try to never let my fear keep me from communicating my feelings. It is going to be hard and it is going to take alot of work, but all relationships do. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be worth it. The other thing this woke me up to is my whole fear of having a family. I know deep down inside that I do want to have a family someday. All the joy I get out of taking care of others naturally extends to the desire to have children. Of course once again this is something I am now facing because of all of this.
So all in all this is a good thing. When I first started dating her I saw before me for the first time in my life what I really wanted. I wanted her to become my wife and to build a life with her. To that end I made alot of changes in my life, I became a man and took on the responsability that I would need to make my goal come true. Now in her leaving me I can see what I did wrong and can take that to the next logical step and work on that. Someday I will have my life, a wife, children, everything I want and she will be responsible in part for my success. It doesn’t make now any easier of course, but knowing that I will be better for all of this is comforting. I wish her just as much success and hope she finds whatever it is she is looking for. I am sorry that it is not me.
I hope in time after our wounds have healed that we can be friends. I honestly don’t know if that is possable, but I truly love this girl and truly want her in my life. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry her if I didn’t love her.
So that is my story, and that is why I am back to writing on the interwebz.
(Note: Name(s) and details of specifity omitted on purpose, please don’t bothor asking)
Strife always does this…
It is funny how I will disappear off the internet for years at a time when things are going well. I guess I don’t feel a need to toot my own horn when stuff is rocking. Anyway stuff has kind of turned on its ear now and so I’m back at it! While I’m not really ready to go into details about what is going on with respect to the turmoil, I can talk a bit about the rest of life. Back on 4/20/2006 I was promoted within Frontier to Systems Administrator II, which is a senior level position which I’m thrilled with. A whole lot of corporate drama ensued, but I’m fairly content and happy about it. I work with a great bunch of people and while I am in charge of a number of very serious production systems it’s nothing like Xerox where I had systems that did payroll and accounting and SEC compliance under me. An outage for me may be stressful and customer affecting, but it probably won’t result in any federal actions or paychecks getting screwed up! I do get to take care of some very neat toys, like our EMC gear, which is big, loud and fancy. Over all, it is a very good thing — being on call here is nicer too, much less of a chance of having to drive in.
In other news, I quit smoking on 9/24/2006 and have been smoke-free ever since! I am feeling a lot better physically, I don’t wake up every night coughing up crap, I’m not totally out of breath after a few minutes of ‘elevated’ activity and unfortunately my sense of smell has pretty much returned full force! :) That might explain the new-found use of air fresheners in the house. Along with quitting smoking I am also walking on a pretty regular basis. I am up to about 3 miles a day at a pretty brisk pace. I am generally feeling good about that as well.
Finally I can say that the tumultuous events of recent past have jarred me into realizing that if I want to obtain my goals of finding someone and building a life with them I need to work out a few issues I have been carrying around for the last 15 years or so. A lot of the fears about becoming like my father have haunted me for a long time, nipping at my heels and causing me to deny myself the thought of starting a family. For so long I have been convinced that I shouldn’t ever have children, that it would just drive me to the edge and turn me into my father. The thought of perpetrating the same thing upon my own offspring upsets me to no end so until now I have always staunchly been against children. I won’t say that I’m completely over it now, but I’ve thought a lot about it over the last month and now I realize that it is just fear and that I can overcome it with the right person by my side.
Now to find the right person!
Surfing Safety.