"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.