Long time gone

So after an absence of more than two years I return. I am once again drawn by the need of writing. I have been writing in my bedside book. But now need to put more thoughts out.

Catchup: In the last two years I moved back from the Caribbean at the request of my then fiance'/boyfriend. Who promptly freaked the eff out and we split. I finished the guest bedroom in my mother's house and redid century old hardwood floors that had been hidden for more than 50 years. Oh, and I lost 25 pounds. Looked great! Moved to Vermont. Discovered happiness grows in VT - Who knew!?!? Vermont men loved me and I loved them. A fireman, an artist, a IT/dj, a beefcake. Done, done and done. Cabot cheese and Magic Hat were also new loves. Finished my thesis and graduated from my two graduate programs. Then He Who Cannot Be Named returned and begged for me back. For no reason other than I am a bad judge of character and an eternal optimist, I broke it off with my ever loving VT cadre of lovelies and took him back. Insert a move to DC where I would work for Congress. Insert a new proposal, a new ring, a "new" man and - no surprise- the same mess and the same issues. Right before I ran my first marathon (no running to running a marathon in 25 weeks!) I realized that it was all over all over again and I asked him not to come up for his next visit. In fact it was almost exactly after our 6th anniversary. The present I got myself? Freedom.

That was last October. I have since regained my normal weight (and even a bit more curves), found amazing friends, have dated all over the district (yes, he had a girl in the wings who is now the "love" of his life), got a new job with a great non profit, moved out of an uncomfortable living situation into my own digs, got braces, lopped all my hair off, invested in boots and heels, went on my first vacation (i.e. no conference, no visiting family, no school break, just fun), got a queen sized bed, splurged on an armoire, joined the low carbon diet (Zipcar), bought a bike, etc.

When folks ask me why I look so happy, how I look so good - I respond with a line blatantly plagiarized from my bartender's stories, "I lost 175 pounds of jerk!"

So that is what you see behind me. The starting blocks on the edge of the pool of life.

"Forget him"?

Again, I am thrust into the land of trite. Cliche broken heart - where love is turned into a weapon and used against you. Where heartbreak is rehab, and all are made out to be addicts of self inflicted torture - love.

I stare at the phone hoping it will ring (not knowing if I could answer it if it was him.) Eyes drawn to the window at every car noise. I endlesssly comb the email in-box for any hope, to the real mailbox too. I read, and re-read every note, searching for clues, for a grain of hope that I can balance my life on. I hold the phone in my hand every night for hours, number dialed and cry. Cry for him, cry for me. Cry for the loss that he doesn't even seem to have the good sense to realize has/is happening. Cry because he doesn't care. Or doesn't care enough. Hours endless march across the darkend room I have created while I search my head. When I can sleep, I sleep every night with a shirt that no longer even carries the remembrance of his smell. And wake up to cry again.

Intellecutally, I know that I should not be hung up on a man that has knocked me up, left me (2 times), broken my heart, thrown me into walls, cheated on me, embarrased and humiliated me, insulted me at every turn, torn me apart at every seam just to watch me deconstruct.

And yet, I love him. Unconditionally, like I promised. I do love him with my whole heart. I ache for him to love me again too. I dream every moment of a call, a surprise visit where he swoops me into his arms, covers me in kisses and begs for my forgiveness, telling me he loves me true. Where he spends the time to get me to like him again. To court and woo me, to heal every scar in my heart and on my soul that he has made.

I love him. I wish he hadn't used that against me for so long.

I love him still.

What I have been avoiding

So I have spent this last month of absence in hiding. Hiding from commentary that I might/probably won't want to hear. A year to the date (remember that date would be my 1/2 birthday) DCS turned me out again. A scant month after returning home (which he asked me to do.) So I packed my meager belongings and have been camped out at my mother's house, two hours south of our/his place in Jax. During this time, he attended two weddings (to which I was uninvited) and spent two weeks in Europe (on a trip that WE had always talked about taking.)

Nice, huh?

I have spent the last month pulling up 30 year old carpet, painting, patching plaster, hanging beadboard, sanding, writing, refinishing hardwood floors, working on my thesis and drugging myself into jelly with mindless movie watching. I have also interviewed for a plum placement (10 other people interviewing, don't hold your breath...) the end result? A month later? Still a mountain of confusion, hurt, disillusionment, heartbreak, and one beautiful guestroom at my mother's house. Into which I have moved. Nothing like digging your own grave and then taking up residence.


DCS has kept just enough hook into this poor fish that I am to keep me on the line. Flesh gouged out, mortally wounded beyond repair (?), but on the line nevertheless. I know that "I" am the one letting him do this to me. But my choices are painfully simple. No more anything with him, or let him hurt me for the slim possibility of something. Intellectually, we should all choose and would choose the walking away. How long must one be mentally abused, hurt, manipulated and squashed to move on? Don't you think I pep-talk myself so every night, every moment after I think of him, after I cry for him, after I contemplate the unimaginable? Until a person is here in this situation, it is so easy to say "walk away", but I know now why women stay in relationships of pain and hurt and degrading actions against her. For that one last seed of light buried beneath everything he has done. That seed of hope that he might recognize all the goodness in her and everything she has done for him and come to value that and her to the worth that she is.

I hate being in this same place a year later. I hate knowing that I should walk away, but somehow can't. I hate not knowing how to make myself happy anymore without him in my life. I the the fact that I have turned into the type of woman I despise. I hate not laughing, not having any reason to laugh, that all my smiles are a facade and that joy knows not my life my existence. I hate feeling like a a commercial for depression, knowing that it isn't in my head, it isn't me, but this heinous situation that I can't wrench free of. Can't wrench free and can't find peace in.

I wish that there was a step-by-step guide on what to do. What actions to take to find ones self again. How to get beyond the lonely nights spent watching the ceiling and being to overwhelmed to even cry, or crying for hours. If a girl were to write that book, it would surely become a top seller! It would have to be more in depth that the empty platitudes we all sell each other "Stay busy" "It is for the best" "keep your mind off him" "Find out what makes you happy" "Find yourself again" "Discover joy in the little things" Truly - those are all nebulous garbage spat out from mouths that have no need to use them, so can't realize that they are not really directive advice.

HOW does one keep your mind of it? HOW does one find joy again? HOW does one refrain from hoping for reconciliation? HOW does one find ones self again? HOW do you find joy in a life that is so base in misery for you that you have no desire to be even an idle spectator in that life, much less the participant?

This is not a cry out for medication or counseling, but true baffled lack of understanding on what a person would really need to do to not be in the place that I am now. This place that many have stood before me and will after. This isn't good place, and many people I know have been here. Some stay longer than others, some never leave, some lucky bastards never visit at all. It is like Disneyland of hell.

It is a real shame that a girl like me can wrangle everything in all parts of her life to be most impressive and worthy and valuable, except for the most personal parts of all. I hate to hear well meaning people compliment or praise me for my abilities or education or upcoming placement in Congress, because it only makes me feel even worse that anyone else can see value in me. Anyone but DCS. If I am so great that everyone keeps saying, why can't I keep a decent fellow? Why can't I love a man that is, in fact, a man? Why is every aspect of my love life burning like Atlanta and DCS is Sherman on his march through me to the sea?

On that same note, everyone says the same about DCS, and sometimes I feel like shaking them and saying "He knocked me up and then broke up with me. He is an insulter of women and manipulator. He breaks hearts without a second thought. He sleeps around. That is the real man that you think so highly of!" But how can I go on loving a man that I know all these things about?

I haven't been writing because I hate to see this in writing. It is more pitiful in black in white than just whirling in my head.

I return to my thesis.

Month in - Report

So I have been "home" for about a month now. The ease of relationship hasn't appeared. In fact, I don't understand - she loves him, he loves her; but it just isn't working somehow. I hate that I can't even detail what is wrong to address solutions, and neither can he, it seems. I hate that our relationship has become the proverbial elephant in the room. I don't know what to do. I am so tired of being unhappy. Tired of everything else in my life being fine, and the part I want most to be great - being the worst.

If I stay, I am unhappy. If I leave, I am unhappy. There is no winning.

If you say that I will get over it sooner if I leave sooner, and this happens to everyone, I will reach through the screen and rip your carotid artery from your neck with my bare teeth.

The whole play house until it is real again isn't working and I want it to work, he wants it to work, it just isn't. And I don't know what to do.

I am so scared. Scared of losing him. Scared of losing myself.

Counting Good Things

1. Did I mention that I got the more prestigious part of an already prestigious fellowship? I just found that little snippet out last week. Only ten peeps out of the whole world get picked for it each year. I am one of those peeps this year. hoorah

2. So I now have a second hand kayak that will be really fun as soon as I acquire a paddle!


3. I have outlined what remains to be done on the old thesis and have ticked of many of the targets. Pheew!

4. El Gato has been retrieved. Kc and DCS and El Gato make three. It's nice to have him around - okay under the bed anyway...


I just wish I felt more joy and happiness in these things. I am not depressed, life just feels so tenuous and uncertain. Seems to negate the joy of these really effing cool things I have just done or am doing or achieved. I wish there was a guaranteed non fiction book: "How to find Peace and Happiness that You Misplaced One Day"


Join me in Saving Science Friday and Snuffleupagus:
http://civic.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/

Yak. Attack.

So I fear that I am falling into that trap of never finishing once a person returns home from grad school pre-final finish. I hate that idea too. Motivation is at all new lows. I can't seem to get my garbage together to finish. I just stare and stare and stare at it. This is all a bad thing.

On a side note, I was contacted by the fellowship people if I would be interested in a certain part of the fellowship that is even more prestigious than the what I got already. I am stoked there. I didn't tell them about my lack of motivation.

Put in an appy to a dream (ish) job here in town working at a GREAT conservation place. Having concerns about taking it KNOWING that I will be ducking out in 8 months to rule the world from DC. The concern is that it is a place I would like to work at when I return. I would hate to burn that bridge by leaving. Care to throw in your ideas on this one?

Finally unpacked at the house.

Things are mellowing out with the boy.

Coming to terms with moving away from my great house and my great JEEP and my life to his (our) house, his (our) car, etc.

Bringing a kayak to live with me. Picking it up this weekend. Looking forward to that. It will finish all my funds (read: traded my JEEP for a kayak, that is how little I got for my JEEP,) and I am looking forward to it. After research I decided which one I wanted and found out when I told DCS, that was the one he ordered and was at his folks' house. Mine is, of course, not ordered new. Pre-loved. Red. Little Red Riding Yak.

Drafting small goals for the final revisions. Maybe ticking things off a list will help. Maybe freezing my wireless card will help.

My life needs some structure.

On a side note, I am completely stoked for my girlfriend Chel who just received notice that her designer Asian baby is ready to leave the Cabbage patch! Mr.Chel retrieves her in a month! My other girlfriend Shells is almost done with her house, okay...Mr.Shells is almost done with their house! A typing ovation for the girlfriends that sound like exoskeletons!

Lurching along,
Kc

Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the Music!

Contrary to the whole vagina thing - I am now a fellow.



Okay, not a fellow yet - a finalist, which is what they call the fellows until their first day on.

Everyone was assured I would get it - except me. I was hopeful. They were right.

Please join me in the happy dance.

POV

So parts of me know everything you have said have said about DCS, gentle reader, are true. And part of me knows that they are this phase he is trying on. I do know that if I was to hear of a friend being treated (an letting herself be treated) like that I would balk and encourage here to leave too.

I love him, beyond reason. I do not know why I cannot go. I sincerely want everything to work out with him and I guess I am trying to put my money where my mouth is. If I want unconditional love, I have to be able to give love unconditionally. If I want a supportive partner, I have to be a supportive partner. If I want him to be a certain way, I have to also be willing to do/be that. That is my philosophy on life (Yes, this never really pans out for me in my personal life, but on paper it is a great philosophy.)

But, enough of that right now. I am really and honestly trying to focus on the positive. Like this weekend maybe unpacking some boxes. Baking a cake. Testing some recipes (I am a test kitchen for a cookbook-to-be.) Retrieving my cat from my mother's house and bringing him home. Getting rid of some stuff on Ebay. Maybe a ball game with the boy.

All good things.


~~~~~~~~~
Thesis Update: Revisions - stalled
Jeep - sold for almost a quarter of what I had wanted. Guess soemthing is better than nothing. And it is off the head of my very true friend that is dealing with it. As soon as I find a notary anyway...

Back on the Wagon

So, with the crush time of both thesis defense, conference prep, conference, moving, settling, etc. - I have been lost to internetland. Have no fear, recent introduction and fast friend forming with the BEE-YOO-TE-FUL new library has allowed me to reconnect with the web. Got an appy for my favorite addiction - Pottery Barn. Maybe some mindless employ might help. A bit of moola, a discount, and maybe I can make my life seem like the pages of perfection that their catalog implies (yes - I do know that that statement is a head doctor's playground.)

To catch you up:
DEFENSE (said in a sing song basket ball game type voice): done! Passed well too
Conference: presentation went well, conference went well, saw old friends and colleagues, made new ones
Fellowship: find out within the week
Move off Armpit Island: Successful, if you don't count that I couldn't sell my Jeep and the single possible offer is less than 1/3 what I had wanted to get (that is stressing me a bit)


Yes, I am in DCS land. Things have been INCREDIBLY rocky. I am not dumb enough to blame it entirely on the us matter, because I know that moving an loss of home, truck, change in independence and lifestyle, loss of income etc. are all big factors. But of course there are still "us" factors too. Last week (first week home) was bad. Weekend was intolerable. This week has started out better. Please offer up a thought for me, us, sanity, but most importantly peace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thesis Update:
I have revisions to make. I have some easy ones, and some very difficult ones. The difficult ones are the ones in the writing. All the info is there, just needs to be said different, better. That is the hard part. If I had gotten all the changes made last week and submitted them by this Thursday, I could graduate this year. I won't, so I will finish them over the summer semester, so I won't graduate until NEXT June. They only have one graduation a year. What bunk is that?

Need ideas-help

Okay my lovely reader-freinds, I need a boon. I am looking for a short, nice quote about family to include in my thesis acknowledgment section. Something along the lines their support and strength allowing me to be all I am today. Or the like. Usually I am good at this stuff - but honestly - my brain is in overdrive an can spare no room for this triviality.

Please help me out here if you have a good idea.

I know that I am overworked, because all I can come up with the Jesus quote along the lines of "Through you, all things are made possible." Zoiks!

Okay, back to revisions.

Oh. and thanks for the hand in lis, my lovelies. I appreciate it. really, I do.

REVISE! REVISE! REVISE!

28 April - 9 full days left.