Right Outta My Hair

This blog is about to become a PC-free space.

I'm tired of talking about it. I'm tired of letting his bullshit affect me (If anyone is a grammatical genius and can explain to me, coherently, how to know when to use affect vs. effect I would be forever grateful.), which is something that should end when a relationship ends. I'm trying to tie up loose ends so that I won't have to associate with him again until he comes to pick up his things. Aside from the self-serving wish to have it all over, I really do believe that is the best thing for both of us.

I could continue to detail the conversations that we've had (PC asking me if I had been accessing his email account and the ensuing revelations that I knew what he had done; the subsequent denials of everything except what he knew I had concrete proof of), the things that I keep finding around the house that he took without asking (like my razor blades, as if we hadn't had that argument about 8 times) or that he left undone (like the dirty coffee pot that I happened to find and clean before actual mold formed). But I'm not going to do that. Well, any more than I just did.

I'm going to do, on the page, what I've been doing in my head since he left. I'm going to move on. I almost feel guilty for disconnecting so quickly and thoroughly, but it's hard not to when I was constantly on the verge of disconnecting for most of the last year. I feel better. I feel lighter without him. I feel slightly panicked about the prospect of dating again and having to impress men again. But even that feels good.

So, next step in the process is: Research.

Lyrics of the Day

"There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave. You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave. I'm not sorry I met you; I'm not sorry it's over; I'm not sorry there's nothing to say. I'm not sorry there's nothing to save." Stars Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

Lie To Me

I've been lied to before. The Speed Freak tried very hard to cheat on me, and he may have actually accomplished it. He never told me the truth about any of that (or much else, really). The Ex lied unintentionally (and probably more to himself than to me) when he rushed me into the semblance of a relationship without the ability to finish what he started. But I'm not sure I've ever been so violated.

I'm losing sleep over this. I really can't believe that it really happened and was happening for so long. Part of me really wishes that I had been told earlier, when everyone else knew but me, so that I wouldn't have made the mistake of those last few months. But the rest of me knows that I needed to make this mistake, learn this lesson, and do it on my own. The people that protected me were doing the right thing, even if it is painful to think about how long it was that I was the only one not in on the joke.

The problem is that now I want to obsess over this information. I was, as a wise friend put it, spied on. I was spied on by a person who swore up and down that he admired my independence and respected my privacy. I let him share my computer, trusted him with my phone, told him about the existence of this space. Because he said I could trust him.

Is there an excuse for that? For being stupid enough to believe someone when they say something to you, even when you've caught them in blatant and bold-faced lies on more than one occasion? Is that the desire to trust or just some pathetic, subconscious attempt to keep from being alone?

The truth is that I can't figure out exactly how this is making me feel. I have flashes of near-livid anger. I have long periods where I can't really conceive of the reality I'm now living in. I have moments of nauseous anxiety and moments where I want to call him and tell him exactly what I think of him and his uber-creepy activities. In the end, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to call My Husband and apologize for putting him in this situation. I'm going to, definitively, move on with my life. I'm going to get everything I possibly can that belongs to him out of my house. I'm going to change my passwords, just in case. I'm going to try to get it through my thick skull that it doesn't matter how much he lied to me anymore, so I don't need to spend my nights thinking of things he could have lied about and analyzing the likelihood that he did.

Because, in all honesty, there are probably more of those things than I will ever know or ever want to know.

Lyrics of the Day

"Why you always making me cry? Why you always making me cry? You look me in the eyes and tell me all your lies. So why you always making me cry?" Joe Purdy Why You

Trust No One

I don't consider myself an optimist. I really tend toward pessimism and I anxietize about everything. But I guess that I tend to want to see and believe the best in people and it turns out that can be a dangerous game.

I feel that I should give a little background...

Last November, my family went on a trip to the Dominican Republic. A family vacation for a family that may or may not be whole for very much longer. After the vacation we went to California for Thanksgiving and I planned a weekend in LA to catch up with friends and hang some more with The Sister. I ended up spending most of that weekend with My Husband and a good friend of his, The Editor. The Sunday that I was in town, the three of us and my fam spent, literally, a full day drinking. We started at about 9:30 am for the Redskins game at the bar in LA where 'Skins fans are known to congregate and made stops at a couple more bars throughout the course of the day. I had a connection with The Editor which was flattering and surprising. In the end I ended up enjoying the attention too much and flirting with him and I upset My Husband. This is not the first time this kind of thing had happened and he didn't talk to me for a while, which I basically expected. Eventually, after a sincere apology over email, we started talking again casually. But it has gone in fits and starts and now I haven't actually talked to him in a few weeks.

My family is in Florida right now. My parents came to town for 2 weeks and they decided last week to fly The Sister down for the weekend so that we could all be together. My dad seems to be losing ground fairly quickly and we're seeing the need to spend as much time together as we can. More than once this weekend, The Sister or my parents mentioned doing things with MH, talking to him, future plans with him. I was pissed. I thought that it was completely uncool that he was still basically shutting me out but he felt like it was totally fine to still involve himself with my family. This morning, I told The Mother that I was pissed. That it bothered me that he would still insinuate himself into parts of my life but shun me personally.

Then the truth came out.

No one wanted to tell me, because they didn't want to be responsible for breaking up a relationship that I was trying to make work. No one wanted to get involved when they weren't sure that they should. But it was time I knew. I had to know.

PC had called MH. He had called because he suspected something and wanted to know what happened. He called because he had been reading my email and he saw my apology letter to MH. He called after he looked through my phone and got My Husband's number and put MH in the worst position possible. My Husband stopped talking to me to protect me from what he knew about PC. He wanted to protect me from the knowledge that PC checked my phone and my text messages and my emails. All the time. And part of me suspected things like this. Part of me thinks that he found this blog (though I still can't figure out how, if he did) and that he's been using it and everything else that I've typed to keep track of me. But I wanted to believe that he respected my privacy. I wanted to believe that I could have things that were my own. Because I can't honestly conceive of doing that to someone else. Why would you want to be with someone when you trust them so little?

Lyrics of the Day

"If she only knew, then he'd be through. But who knows which parts are true. She hates how it looks, but what can she do? The girls all talk behind her back, they say she's being used." The Good Life Notes in His Pockets

Walking Wounded

There is no such thing as a good time for a break-up. I know this. But somehow right now seems like it might have been the worst possible time for me to have finally dropped the axe. Don't get me wrong - I'm way too far down this path to think about turning around to look for bread crumbs, but some days right now coming home to an empty house feels worse than coming home to the possibility of a fight.

Everything bad comes in threes, right? So maybe I should have expected all this. Okay, that sounds melodramatic and I do like to avoid melodrama when I can. But it's been a tough week or so and I'm beginning to feel worn down. The worst part is there isn't really anyone to talk to about it. That's one of the most glaring losses in the end of the relationship: the loss of PC as a constant and sympathetic ear. (The irony of this is that it actually drove me crazy that he always wanted to know everything about everything; it would feel like he was constantly grilling me and invading my privacy by asking what I did or what I talked about every minute of every day.) The problem with living across the freaking country from nearly everyone you love and hold dear is that it's impossible to keep them all up to date on daily happenings in your life.

This is the long way of saying that things have suddenly gotten harder. The job that I moved down here to take was a wonderful job when I got here. It was a good environment with entertaining coworkers and challenging professional demands. In the last 2 weeks this has all gone down the toilet. The two Fort Myers locations of my office have just merged and all the charm that existed in the other office has completely disappeared. Now, the coworker who decided to hire me and is my direct superior is actively and aggressively looking for a new job. This would leave me with the possibility of either being thrown to the administrative wolves without her here, or the possibility of having her job (and it's infinite responsibilities) shoved on me. Suddenly instead of relaxed and happy to go to work, I'm getting as close to a panic-attack as I've ever had every morning. I'm just waiting for the next explosion.

Worse, though, than any of the rest of this (worse than the break-up by far, really) is that my parents have come into town to visit. That, in and of itself, is a wonderful thing. The hard thing is that my dad's health has been getting steadily worse, no matter what he and my mom try to do about it. Almost every radical or experimental (and not covered by insurance, of course) treatment that anyone out there has ever done or heard about is being tried. They just spent 3 months with The Sister in LA trying something that was supposed to have an 80% success rate. Yet nothing has made a difference and the way things are going I'm not sure how much longer my dad is going to stay out of a wheelchair. This is what happens to me every time I haven't seem him in a little while and then I see him again - I have to realize how bad things are and re-learn how to cope with it over and over again. Every time a new treatment is started, we are all hopeful and positive, but it gets harder to do each time he continues to lose ground despite all that is tried. He weighs less than I do now and he's got more than six inches on me.

It feels like a lot. It feels like so much that I wish I had someone else to help me carry it all. PC was around for all of it. He was with me when we first figured out that my dad was really sick and my parents flew to Mayo Clinic to find out what was happening. He was there at Christmas to do things that my dad couldn't do. He was here when I started this job and here when I started having misgivings about how it was going to turn out after the two offices actually merged. He's been with me for all of it and now, he's not. Now it's me and my big, empty apartment and my silly cat.

Don't worry. Really. I'm not going to call him. I may have been pretty selfish for most of the end of the relationship, but I'm not selfish or cruel enough to think that my personal problems give me license to hurt him any more than I already have.

Lyrics of the Day

"Wide awake and he shakes in a panic, never woke up alone ever before. Had his woman long as he can remember, tries to forget but he can't, he can't." Pearl Jam Alone

Let Go

After the drama was over, and tempers were more even, I stood my ground. In my eyes, we had both moved past the point of turning back.

As someone commented on the previous post, I never really conveyed the conflicts in the relationship in this forum. That was not unintentional. As much as I have used this space as a place to vent and to work things out, there are consequences to sharing everything. And that doesn't just apply to writing about it - it applies to talking to friends and family as well. If you tell your mom or your sister every time you have a fight, they're going to be a lot less likely to forgive and forget and think that you're not crazy for staying with someone when the fight is over. So I was trying not to completely poison the well here with stories of the bad times, just in case things were to turn around. But there were a lot of bad times. Too many.

Last Wednesday evening I came home from work and set to the task of convincing PC that I had meant what I said the night before. I told him that it had gotten so far past the point of resembling a healthy relationship that we both needed to walk away. Yes, it was his actions that spurred this particular timing, but it would have happened either way. That's the part that you all know about: the fact that I was unhappy and didn't see that changing. I took maybe slightly more of the blame here than I was truly responsible for, but like I said, I didn't want to talk too much smack about him. After some disbelief and denial and some attempted bargaining, we came to the agreement that he would move out by Saturday and we would do our best to end it like grown-ups.

And we did. And it almost made it harder. Did make it harder. It's so much easier to let go of something when you're angry. Then letting go and moving on feels like revenge and there's a power in that. But letting go of something that wasn't horrible all of the time, with someone who genuinely has so many great things about him: that was (is) hard. Much harder than I thought it would be.

He packed his things. He put them in storage for the time being and bought a plane ticket home to Iowa. He left me the most obvious and useful things: the couch, his TV (which is in the living room), the mattress. We rented a stupid movie and had one last dinner together on Friday night. We slept in the same bed one last time. Then, in the morning, I drove him to the airport.

We said goodbye. My heart broke more than I ever thought that it would, after all that we had been through. It was hard then, at that moment, to remember the bad times. Hard to remember why I was intentionally cutting out a piece of myself and sending it away. But I did it. Still am doing it.

Lyrics of the Day

"The last time that I saw her she was picking through which records were hers. Her clothes were packed in boxes, with some pots and pans and books and a toaster. Just then a mouse scurried across the floor… we started laughing ‘til it didn’t hurt. " The Good Life Album of the Year

Things Fall Apart

So it turns out that it wasn't just me. And it wasn't just PC. It was both of us. Like baking soda and vinegar. And we homemade-volcano'd ourselves right into the end of our relationship last week.

We had a bad night. It was a bad (Tuesday) night coming on the tail of bad Friday and Saturday nights. So much fighting. A broken cell phone. Middle-of-the-night bike riding. Dwindling hopes of sleep. I may have even said that I wished he was dead, which I'm ashamed of and surprised at myself for.

Long-story-short (and I am going to make it short), things just went to hell and they went there for the last time. I stayed in a hotel room that night. The next day, I told him that it was over.

Lyrics of the Day

"So I thought hell if it's over, well I had better end it quick or I could lose all my nerve." Matchbox Twenty Rest Stop

And She Lived... Ever After

Prince Charming and his white steed have left the kingdom.

I am alone in the castle now.

Lyrics of the Day

"I love you so much, it's so bizarre, a mystery that goes on and on and on. This is the best thing and the very most hard, oh, we don't get along. After countless appeals we keep spinning our wheels on this mountain of new fallen snow. So I let go of the catch and we are over the edge. You have left me nowhere to go." Shawn Colvin Shotgun Down the Avalanche

Wandering Eyes

So part of the problem with my quandary over the future of my relationship with PC is becoming more and more apparent to me as I find myself settling in here in Florida. I can't help but wonder if there is someone else out there with whom things could be easier. Or at least someone with whom I could feel more compatible. Then that thought will yo-yo me back to the idea that it's really me and my intolerance for anything outside of my own comfort zone and there will never be anyone anywhere that could do everything Just-Right-Enough to make me happy. But I can't help but wonder...

I've always been a shameless check-out artist. I think it's nice to be checked out, so why shouldn't you stare brashly at the hot guy in the next car - it should flatter him. It flatters me when I'm stared at, so I figure I can return the favor. Of course, this is a habit that I've curbed somewhat since I've been with PC: out of respect and because he's way more of the jealous type than he'll admit to himself. He hates it when I talk about my actor crushes. But as The Mother always says, "Just because you're on a diet, doesn't mean you can't look at the menu". (I'm just realizing now what must be the myriad of grammatical mistakes in that sentence, but that's how she says it.)

It's not that there is a wealth of hot, single, young guys in Southern Florida. Especially not right now, when we're in what's called Season (or The Season) and all the snow-birds (translation: retired folks from northern states escaping winter) are down here clogging up the roads and filling up the Olive Garden parking lot. But my eyes do start to wander a little, mostly when I'm out alone, and sometimes the dissatisfied part of me feels just a little bit excited at the possibility of being single again one day.

Lyrics of the Day

"Untie me, I've said no vows. The train is getting way too loud. I gotta leave here my girl, get on with my lonely life, just leave the ring on the rail for the wheels to nullify." The Shins Gone For Good

My New Look

I have been dragging my feet on joining Modern Times with my blog template - but today I have done it. So things are essentially the same, but the colors are more pleasing (seriously, I'm not sure how I picked something so pink in the first place). Also, you can now easily follow my blog if you're a blogger yourself.

If you're REALLY bored, you can go visit my other upstart of a blog. I'm using it to ruminate on random happenings in the world, with a bit of a focus on TV and football. If I can use my spare time to build a little sample of how great I am at ranting incoherently, it could just become something I could parlay into a legit sports or entertainment blogging project. The web is somewhat lacking in women who speak semi-intelligently about football and I would love to fill that gap. So I'm going to be working on updating it more regularly, but it probably won't become an every-day thing as I just don't really have time every day. But, like I said, if you're bored you can check it out. There's a lot less whining and sniveling about feelings on that page.

You're Not Listening

Lyrics of the Day

"Smeared black ink, your palms are sweaty, and I'm barely listening." The Postal Service The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

Wandering Mind

I think that I wrote last time that I've been semi-silent because there really isn't a lot going on now that things have settled down post-move. That is mostly true. But there is another reason that I haven't been writing much and I'm going to suck it up and not be a coward about it.

I started this blog as a whim - nearly three years ago now. I thought it would just be a fun writing exercise and something to help me reflect on my dating experiences. I never really thought that anyone would read it. And I realized that the more people were reading it, the more I wanted people to read it. But then the knowledge of the people reading began to affect the writing. I went through phases of extreme self-consciousness, some misguided attempts at being "edgier", and long periods of silence. Now I am realizing that I am holding back from being completely honest because I know exactly what some people are going to think and to say about what I'm feeling and what I'm doing. But it's a little bit chickenshit of me to let that stop me from doing what I need to do here: vent a little and ruminate out-loud, as it were.

One of my girlfriends (well, not just one - many. It's starting to feel like all of them lately), LAJ, is getting married. She's running off to Scotland with her fiance next month and they'll tie the knot. She's been through her share of bad relationships and has been with guys before that she thought she might marry. So I asked her recently how she knew that this guy was one that she wanted to commit to. I don't know if I really thought there was any other answer, but the one I got was the one I expected: she just knows. She feels happy and secure and loved and accepted by him. She feels they balance each other and the relationship feels right. I mean it's the most basic stuff in the world, but stuff like that seems like such a mystery to anyone outside of it.

Here's the thing: It was easier before. It was easier back in the Ohio Days, when PC was the one causing trouble in the relationship. It was easier then for me to think that things could change and that the relationship might right itself eventually. But PC has really made a huge effort and is really beginning to have his stuff together. And he makes sincere and progressive efforts to respect my requests as far as living together (with our own belongings) goes. Occasionally there is stuff that happens and arguments that are his fault, but it's really just the normal crap.

The one thing that can't seem to change is me. Maybe I've been the problem all along. Maybe I just focused on all the other stuff that was going on to deflect the inner knowledge that I didn't fully have the desire to be in the relationship in the first place. Maybe I'm broken. Or maybe it's just not the right relationship for me. How can I know?

This is where I expect to get jumped on. I know that it seems like I'm leading PC on, or that I'm being unfair to him. The problem is that we've had that very conversation. More than once. More than 3 or 4 times. I tell him exactly all these feelings and doubts and that I can't see this lasting for the long haul and that he's going to hate me so much more if we continue to be together for another 6 or 9 months and then I still break his heart. But nothing that I say seems to change his mind. That can't be healthy, in and of itself. He truly believes that we are going to work out and that now we're here in FL things are just going to improve. He would rather give it what he says (though we've both said this before) is one last chance while we're sharing a lease and settling in. He would rather keep trying than to protect himself. But then again, I'm not sure he has really tried to envision the true end of the relationship anyway - so the idea of us breaking up (completely and finally) doesn't hit home to him.

I don't know. I don't know what to do. I do still love him. But I'm not sure I'm in love with him. That is stupidly cliche and I can't help but hate myself a little bit for typing it. I'm sure I sound like a vapid, self-absorbed, entitled bitch right now too. It's my instinct to care what people think, even if those people only know me as a figment of internet imagination. So I can have the desire to sugar-coat it for all of you, but I'm not going to lie.

Lyrics of the Day

"I don’t believe we need love to succeed, but the least you could do is pretend. Either you love me or you leave me don’t you leave me on this picket fence." The Good Life On the Picket Fence

Me

There are times when I think that it's all me. All of it. The good things, the bad things, the ambivalent things. How much of the ebbs and flows of my relationship are purely due to my hormonal fluctuations and the fact that I seem unable to either control or mask them?

I haven't written this week, well, because nothing has happened. And I'm not sure that anything will happen in the near future. The excitement and adjustment of the move are over and now we're (I'm) just coasting. Just waiting to see what will happen next, if anything at all. I've thought, more than once in the five weeks that we've been here, that maybe I should go back to chronicling everything like I did in the beginning of this blog. Maybe I should put every nook and cranny out there to exercise my writing muscles and to give you a more complete picture of what every day life is like between PC and I. But then I'm just not sure that I'm ready to expose that much truth - be it ugly or pretty in the end. But what else is actually going on?

The problem is, I'm back to where I usually have been (not counting those initial excitement/lust-fueled months that PC and I were dating), which is back to not knowing a goddamn thing. I don't know if I want to get married. I don't know if I'm really ready to be settled down. I don't know if I want to (or even could bear to) have kids. I don't know if everything that I have in my life right now is enough, or if it's everything that I want.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful (which I'm not) or selfish (which I most certainly am), but there are just so many "ifs" and "buts" in my head all the time. I wrote a friend this week that I still think about all the possibilities that would be involved with meeting another guy. But I also wrote that there are so many things about PC that I don't think I would find again. And isn't the grass always greener until you're on the other side of the fence?

Lyrics of the Day

"Then it started getting dark and I trudged back to where the car was parked, no closer to any kind of truth as I must assume was the case with you." Death Cab For Cutie Bixby Canyon Bridge

Addendum

I feel like I am not done writing yet.

There is a Danger in my brain. It's not just the half-bottle of wine speaking (that's a normal night for me, wait until I finish the other half), it's a Thing that bubbles in my neurons and I don't feel like I can control it all the time. I hardly ever control it. I think that it mostly It controls me.

Maybe it's just the Loneliness.

I hope so.

Lyrics of the Day

"So why do I get so lonely, when there really ain't nothing wrong. Cause I can sleep just fine when you hold me, can't sleep at all when you're gone. And why do I stay out drinking, when I should just get back home? I guess the company of strangers is better than drinking alone." Joe Purdy Why Do I

Starting Over

Well, it took almost three weeks exactly, but it's come to this: I've gotten lonely.

I forgot what this was like. I remember, intellectually, that it took me more than two years to really start finding true and valuable friendships in Los Angeles. But emotionally, being here and knowing that I'm not just in and out in three months or so - it's more of a struggle than I was really anticipating.

I've been on my own almost every night this week, with PC working, and mostly I prefer it that way. I can come home and unwind, decompress and do my own thing. But I'm feeling more and more each night that weighty fact that I don't have my own friends here. I don't know anyone really, outside of my new coworkers. And don't get me wrong, my new coworkers are surprisingly cool and I know that we will hang out, but the lack of a friend or core group of friends is becoming apparent.

After all of this, this search for love and companionship, I'm in a relationship and I find myself longing for the thing that I've always had and occasionally took for granted: friends.

Is there some way to internet date for friends?

Lyrics of the Day

"You've got a new friend. Likes to go movies, likes to drink red wine. A film school drunk can be so hard to find." The Good Life A New Friend

Changes

I've been absent, and during this time, so much has happened.

I've finally done what many of you have been suggesting - you not knowing exactly what I was doing career-wise and why I was doing it. The traveling job gig was good, but in November I saw an online posting for a permanent job that seemed too good to pass up, so I sent my resume in.

Long-story short I interviewed for, and accepted a permanent job in southwest Florida (where it's WARM). Last weekend, after a nearly-3000 mile trek from Montana, PC and I arrived in Fort Myers, Florida to put down some roots and really see how things will be.

Pertaining to my last post: I think that I was displacing feelings. It's very difficult for me to compartmentalize completely and I tend to take just about everything out on whoever is around me at the time. Unluckily for PC, he's always there and is an easy target for my negative emotions. Though I'm still not sure how (or if) things will go for us, I'm now more conscious of where my feelings are coming from and try to check myself when I'm being unnecessarily negative. This is not to say that I'm completely sure about us now, but I'm now being more realistic and I'm willing to see how it plays out from here.

As you know, we have not really had a chance to test the relationship in any normal-life situation. Beyond the usual relationship trials and tribulations, we've had innumerable outside stresses that have made things tougher than they probably would have been had we met when we were both in stable situations. And it is entirely possible that I am off-base and that things will still be just as difficult and as much of a struggle now that we're going to be settled for the foreseeable future. But maybe not. Maybe this stability will show me (and us) that we really do want to be together and that we can do it realistically in a real-life setting.

So now we're in a wait and see situation. We are settling (as of last Saturday) into this beautiful place, with amazing weather (there's a cold-front moving through - it may get down to 50 degrees! And that's COLD for SW FL.), and great people so far. I'm liking my new job, PC has a job or 3 so far and it's ridiculously cheap to live down here. I'm hoping that I like it enough to look into buying a house toward the end of this year (while the market is still tanked) and we're going to take this time to see how the relationship is really going to play out. I can't lie. I can't tell you that I'm sure that it will go either way. But for now, things are pretty good and I'm willing to give it a bit longer to feel sure that I know which way it should go.

Lyrics of the Day

"Well she tapped me on the shoulder, she said, "Lets go inside, 'cause I've been looking all day long for someplace good to hide. We can ride it out, we can ride it downtown." Joe Purdy Cinderella and the A-Train

Of Death and Dying

Tonight it just occurred to me that I might not be as in-control of my own thoughts and emotions as I think I am. Once again I, horribly ashamed of myself, am watching Grey's Anatomy and crying for little to no reason. And I'm thinking how I've got to find a way to break up with PC and make him understand the reason and then I sort of have a realization.

What if all this stuff that is going on with my dad is changing the way that my brain is trying to process my relationship?

Things have been pretty good. Especially in comparison to how they were in Ohio, things have been quite good. PC is pulling his own weight financially and giving me more space (he's actually out right now, allowing me to cry and watch Grey's and write) and we're hardly ever fighting. And yet, I'm apathetic. I look at him and I know that I have feelings for him and I still feel like being with him is more of a burden than being without him. It's not fair. It's horribly unfair and yet I know that I'm doing it and I keep doing it.

We even talked about it. I told him how I'm feeling and how it's not fair. Somehow he doesn't agree. Somehow he thinks that this will pass and that we will work out.

Inside of me, I know this isn't true.

But what if I'm wrong? My father is dying - however slowly it's happening - and it's almost harder to watch what it's doing to my mom than it is to watch what's happening to him. She has to be strong and be the rock and still know that the man she's spent nearly 35 years with is going to be gone. How can anyone want to commit to that? How could I really want to commit my life to someone when this is how it turns out?

I don't know. I don't know what's behind my feelings. I don't know if they will resolve or change or whether I'll keep coasting until I realize that's all I'm doing.

Lyrics of the Day

"It's all the good that won't come out of me and all the stupid lies I hide behind. It's such a big mistake, lying here in your warm embrace." Rilo Kiley The Good That Won't Come Out

Play It Again, Sam

So, I know that I may incur some wrath from y'all faithful readers, but I did finally come to a decision where PC is concerned.

I'm just not ready to give up quite yet.

We have been apart, both as a couple and geographically, for a month now. During this time, it does seem that things have started to head in the right direction. PC knows what he needs to do now: make an effort to give me space and turn to other people in his life for some of his emotional needs and pull his own weight financially. He's spent the last month on a ranch in South Dakota, helping some distant cousins prepare the ranch for pheasant season. He's been making money, giving me space and has had a lot of time to think about how things went wrong. And I have done the same.

I've got a new job, back in Baltimore where I was last summer but at a different location. I'm leaving tomorrow to head out there for just a quick 9 week gig. In the last week since learning that I had the job, I thought a ton about what I wanted to do concerning PC; I realized that I do want to give it one more chance. I don't want to put myself in a position to regret not seeing if it could work out under different circumstances. I don't want to wake up one day and think, "Maybe PC really was the guy for me and I let it go too soon."

I don't know. I can't be sure that this is the right decision or that it will work out. But I will say that I'm optimistic, which is a big change from how I was feeling when I broke up with him. If, by chance, it doesn't work out, then I think that I will be able to be satisfied with the fact that we both gave it all we could and it just wasn't what was supposed to be.

Lyrics of the Day

"She swears she hears the phone but she only gets the dial tone, so she imagines what she'd say, 'If you feel like coming home to me, sometime. Yeah if you feel like coming home to me anytime; I'll be waiting at the door, there's nothing to be sorry for." The Good Life You Don't Feel Like Home to Me

Losses

I've been writing. I've been starting and stopping and erasing what I've written. There is some hole in me that I've tried to fill with rational thought and questions about the right thing to do; the hole swallows these things and grows.

I've been thinking of loss. Of the losses that have been and of those still to come. The losses that I have control over and those that are coming no matter how hard I rage and struggle against them.

How often does one meet another person that really loves them for who they are? How many chances do we get at these things that seem so monumental and so small all at the same time?

Lyrics of the Day

"And I filled the emptiness and the pain inside with a whiskey and a woman's touch, and that's as good as love." Joe Purdy Meteor City

Decisions, Decisions

I have been practicing avoidance. Avoiding telephone calls, avoiding conversations, avoiding this blog. There is too much that has been happening that I just don’t want to talk about. I’m not even sure that I can really talk here and now.

For the moment, I’m going to skip my family life and go back to what the purpose of this blog was in the first place: My Love Life.

Or lack there-of.

I guess that it’s time that I tell y’all what’s been going on with PC.

*Deep breath*

*Big sigh*

I broke up with PC.

Technically.

But I guess that there’s still a part of me that’s undecided. I don’t know if it’s the part of me that has gotten used to not being alone (how quickly this happens), or if it’s the part of me that loves him, or if it’s the part of me that fears any and all kinds of change. But I’m not sure whether or not that part of me that is hesitant can override that part of me that was just suffocated by his neediness for so long. That’s what finally did it – the suffocation, the neediness.

My family situation at the moment is a lot to handle. Not only am I having to handle it myself, but I have to be here to be strong and to support the rest of my family; having to be the only emotional outlet for PC at the same time just proved to be too much for me to deal with. I had thought, when PC and I decided to spend a week and a half apart after leaving Columbus, that I would have time to think about our relationship and how difficult things had been and whether or not it was worth continuing. Absence really did seem to make the heart grow fonder, as I started to feel myself missing him as it approached a week of being apart. Then he came to meet me in Montana and attend a friend’s wedding and everything that had been plaguing our relationship just rose straight to the surface and bubbled over during the five days that he was here. I was even considering giving it more time (I was having this High Fidelity idea that maybe a break-up would be too much stress for me to deal with in a time already brimming with stress) until he just pushed and pushed and proved to me that being with him is more stressful than being without him. And I broke it off.

Almost the minute PC left, he says, he started to really realize what it is that he needs to do to make the relationship work. Ignoring , of course, the fact that he’s told me almost the exact same thing three or four or five other times. Ignoring, of course, that I’ve given him chance after chance after chance to understand what kind of relationship I wanted – that I thought in the beginning that we both wanted. I am, and always have been, an independent person. Only-child-independent. I need space, I need a man that has his own friends and his own life and won’t begrudge me mine. I just don’t have faith that these are things that PC could ever give me.

But he’s begging. He wants so badly to have a chance to show me that he can do it. I know that it would be best for me to be strong and to stand firm with my decision. But can I?

Lyrics of the Day

"So when you ask 'Is something wrong?' I think 'You're damn right there is but we can't talk about it now. No, we can't talk about it now.' So one last touch and then you'll go, and we'll pretend that it meant something so much more." Death Cab for Cutie Tiny Vessels

Space is Not Just a Place for Stars

I guess that I've come to a sort of conclusion. Unfortunately, the conclusion is that I cannot come to a conclusion.

As a couple of you commented, maybe space is what I need. I actually know that it's what I need (and something that has been in terrifyingly short supply over the last 6 months or so), and I'm coming to a decision about how to get it.

PC and I are leaving Ohio on Saturday, July 26. There will then be 3 or 4 weeks until I am to start a new job in another city, which I will be spending in Montana with my family. During this time, PC and I are negotiating a way to spend some significant time apart. I'm hoping for two weeks to process and get a chance to get some perspective.

Maybe I sound foolish, but I feel like I can't fully make an informed and rational decision on the future of this relationship (or lack thereof), without getting a chance to truly reflect on my own thoughts and feelings. I just can't get that with PC giving me puppy dog eyes and insisting that we're perfect for each other every moment of every day. He means well, but he just doesn't know how to drop it.

So there's limbo right now. Waiting and seeing.

Lyrics of the Day

"I'm starting to feel we stay together out of fear of dying alone." Death Cab For Cutie You Can Do Better Than Me

* Special thanks to Chris for the link to the Gibbard song - and a Death Cab lyric today as a bit of an ode!

Ugly Update

I'm not sure that now is the time to write, but I feel the need to reach out and it's getting to a point where it's now or never.

I disappeared because my grandfather died. My grandfather was an amazing man and the ever-present and dearly-loved patriarch of my family. He was 87 years old and we never really believed that anything could beat him, but nature eventually did. This was a much harder thing for me to digest than I really ever wanted to admit that it would be. Even now I'm crying. It's just not something that I will ever be ready for, even though it's over and done. My dad is also sick. He's been tentatively diagnosed with a disease that is progressive and eventually fatal. Only 50% of people diagnosed with this disease survive 3 years after diagnosis. My dad has always been invincible to me (to everyone else and himself as well) and this is something that I still can't truly digest most days. I've been with him recently and I've seen the changes and I know that it's true - but I still can't believe it.

The worst thing is that in the middle of all of this my relationship, and the smoldering rubble that is has become, has been more of a focus of my waking thoughts than my family. That mere fact makes me so angry and has spurred more than one long, middle-of-the-night fight. The money troubles never cleared up. PC tried, sort of, and the money trickled in. Of course, while it was trickling in, I was still paying for the groceries and the nights out and the cell phone bill (not to mention that the rent is part of my compensation). There were things that PC could have done to change the situation that he was in (or that we were in), but he didn't (wouldn't). Instead of addressing the problems and improving the situation, he clung to me. He suffocated me. He depended completely on me.

There were times that it seemed like things were looking up, or like it was going to be okay, but I think that I was just ignoring my own feelings and ignoring the problems as much as PC was. But it gets exhausting to be so miserable all of the time. Last time I posted, I was trying to blame some of it on my job. And some of it was that - but more of it was him. I should have gotten the warning signs earlier when I would leave work feeling alright, but do a 180 after getting into the car with PC. Then, somewhere in the last two weeks, everything went to hell.

Part of me wants to write that I'm sure it was my fault, because I have been picking fights at least once or twice a week, but then I think that I've been picking the fights because I've been so unhappy and because he always swore that things were going to change and still nothing has. And that's the crux of the matter - it's not the situation (the broke-ness, the money struggles) that is the true problem - it's how PC has handled it. He's procrastinated, he's made excuses for himself and for everyone involved in his difficulty making and getting money, he's allowed himself to be walked on - all the while allowing me to pick up the slack but still expecting me to feel that we are on equal footing. The purpose (aside from accommodating my schedule) of staying in Ohio for so long was so that we (he) could catch up and start fresh and try a life together and that purpose has not been fulfilled by any stretch of the imagination. We're almost exactly where we were 4 months ago when I was less than a centimeter from breaking up with him. Truth be told, I would have broken up with him by now if it wasn't for the fact that we're stuck in Ohio with one car and it's almost more difficult to get rid of him than it is to stay with him.

He promised me when we were in Montana that things were going to change. He promised me on the drive out here that things were going to change. He promised me 3 months ago when I was extending my job here that things were going to change. And here I am months later, feeling cheated of my own security and aspirations, being asked to believe him as he promises me that this time things are going to change. What evidence do I have to help me to believe that this is even a possibility?

This is the hard part. This is what I don't want to admit, but I have to if I want to receive any feedback at all that could be helpful to me. I have these feelings now, and they're involuntary. I don't want to kiss him. I don't want to be affectionate. I don't want to have sex. I don't want to be close or intimate or cuddle at night. When he tells me he loves me (as he assures and reminds me twenty times a day, as if that could change the past), I can't say it back. I say, "I know. Have a good night at work." I say, "I know. I'll call you at lunch." I say, "I know. It doesn't change anything." I say, "I know, but it's not enough."

It isn't. In a perfect world, love would be enough. But it's not. You have to live with someone, you have to be able to make a life, and how can you do that when only one person is living and the other is behaving like an emotional parasite.

Part of me thinks about the other kinds of guys that I could be with, the other types of relationships that I could have. Part of me never wants to be in another relationship - ever. Part of me can't really see leaving him. Part of me wants to believe that it could work out, even though most of me can't imagine that it will.

I remember once relating some of the story of The Ex to a co-worker. At the time the wounds were still a little raw (though it may have been a full year after the catastrophe, which is freakin' pathetic), and it was tough for me to talk about how I had felt he had started to back away from me and treat me poorly because he couldn't handle the idea of having real feelings for someone (after having been cheated on by the love of his life). My co-worker asked how he treated me like crap - did he hit me? Did he cheat on me? And at the time I almost felt like my hurt feelings didn't mean much, since he wasn't actually abusive or anything. Even though he did manage to rip my heart out and step on it as he walked away.

No, PC did not cheat on me. No he didn't hit me. No, he didn't actually steal money from me or wreck my car or gamble the rent check away. But I've been so unhappy for so long that I can't just say, "Well this is just part of being in a relationship." Because it shouldn't be. At least not this far in. We haven't even been together for a year and a half. PC abused my trust and my good intentions and my willingness to give him chance after chance to make things right.

So do I give him one more chance? Or do I drop him off on my way back home in three and a half weeks and start over?

Lyrics of the Day

"Some things don't work out like they should. Bang my head against your walls, but it ain't no good. 'Cause I'm screamin' at you, but you're screamin' at me, 'bout what I think you should do or how you wish I could be. 'Bout what I think you should do or how you wish I could be." Joe Purdy Some Things Don't Work Out