I wrote the following nine months after the p formerly in my life was arrested. I was asked on another thread, was there a moment you ‘knew’? Knew that you would be okay. Knew it was okay to let him go.
Yes and no. In those first heady days of freedom, every moment was filled with knowing I was okay. And every moment was filled with the fear I would never get through the pain to find the light of love within me. I had to make a choice. Had to decide — what do I want more of. Lies and deciet. Truth and harmony.
I wanted to share this piece with you because it speaks to the power of one word to release us from fearing life without them so that we can surrender and fall in love with life within us.
As night settled into its soggy wet blanket, the pooch and I went for a walk. The rain beat a sibilant hiss upon the shiny black road, the streetlights glowed iridescently, casting golden orbs of light, punctuating holes into the dark shadows of the night. I was wrapped in the misty blanket of a rainy evening, my skin moistened by the water-laden air, my breath a frosty vapor leading me silently forward. The pooch pranced happily by my side, her tail a constant metronome displaying the tempo of her happiness as we journeyed forth into the dark.
It was a mystical, magical evening. A night for quiet thoughts that drifted through my mind as effortlessly as the raindrops falling one-by-one from the pearl clad branches all around me.
I thought of love found and love lost and moving on. Of new relationships and old. New found love and love that never fulfills its promise of growing old beside me. Of promises made and promises broken. Journeys taken and voyages lost because the voyageur could not see by the light of the moon and lost his way among the stars. And I thought of my brother to whom I had never said good-bye and the P to whom good-bye was just another word for the door is always open until I say so.
For such a little word, good-bye carries a mighty wallop.
Good-bye can mean, see you in a while, or see you in a year. It can carry us into the night on the hope of tomorrow or it can sweep all hope away as we look back and see there will never be a next time, another day, or a new tomorrow.
For those who have journeyed into the valley of the S or P or N, good-bye is a word fraught with the fear that once spoken it can never be returned. It lays frozen upon our tongues, our minds numb in the fear it might slide out on a breath of air and change our lives forever. Terrified we might slip, we pack our hopes and dreams into that one little word and stuff our pride and dignity into the cracks of our pain seeping in beneath the door held fast against our fear that he will leave before tomorrow ever dawns. And all the while, we search for the perfect last words that will either make it all right or make him hear us, just this once, before he slithers off into the dark from whence he came.
And as we flounder in the depths of empty words and promises, we pray that there will never be a time to say good-bye but rather, welcome back, I’ve missed you. Spiraling into the darkness of the painfully long good-bye they began when they said, hello, we silently hold onto the word that will set us free and stumble through the words of begging them to please not say it.
But in the land of lies, the door we thought we held so firmly closed is always open, no matter how hard we push against it. Eventually, when we have worn ourselves out upon the welcome mat of our desire to be all they will ever need, we must face the reality that we will never have the chance to say our fond farewells. They have already left. Gone in search of new tomorrows. Of some other happily ever after which we never saw coming.
In their passing, we are left holding the shreds of our battered hearts in the basket of our dreams, frozen in time. Alone, forlorn, we whisper, good-bye, into the empty space that lays before us, hoping they will hear the soft promise of our hopes they will find out there, that which they could never find in us. We peer into the darkness of the lengthening shadows, our tears puddling around our feet, forming a river into which we fall, in fear of drowning as we cry out for one last chance to say good-bye.
Good-bye. It’s such a little word but it keeps us stuck on the dream of wanting them back so that we can have the last word that will close forever the door to our hearts they so easily open.
In the end, the best good-bye is the quiet hello we whisper within our hearts as we pick at the scab of our wounds that never seem to heal as long as they keep walking through the door to our dreams. Good-bye lies. Hello truth. Welcome back to me.
In our good-byes that are never spoken we will never find the key that will unlock the secret door to their understanding. It resides somewhere in the dark, beyond the edges of the light. But, beneath the scabby, jagged-edge scar of our disbelief, new skin is forming with our welcome home. If we leave it alone long enough to heal from the inside out, we will understand that he could never hear our good-bye. He could never cherish our hearts because he was always and forever, a figment of our imaginations. He was never true.
In our awakening to the light of a new tomorrow without him we discover, it was only the darkness of being without him we feared. And without him, we have nothing to fear.
In seeing the gift of his departure in the light of a new day dawning, we lift our heads and see, the sun is shining. As it beckons, we step into the light of finally knowing, the only way to say good- bye to what never was, is to accept it never will be.
Kathleen, thank you for your inspiring words. I’ll put that book at the top of my list.
It’s hard to tell, why or even if, I’m scared. I feel indecisive and that there is no point in doing anything for myself. I know some of this comes from the P-parents gaslighting me as a child, and the rest comes from my xP sabotaging all my efforts, keeping me poisoned and alone.
Really, it’s only been my faith in God and the miracles he presented me with each time I triumphed COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT over the P and his minions. No matter how hard I tried, my plans always got derailed. Now I know that the P was sabotaging me, but my subconscience has been programmed that my efforts are not worth it. (My P-parents still hover around waiting for signs of any bit of happiness so that they can squash it. I have to walk around looking depressed for fear of inspiring their envy.)
Despite all the physical and emotional sabotaging, some amazing stroke of luck would always come out of the blue and I would land on my feet. This was never due to any plans I had made, but some bizarre coincidence that blindsided everyone involved. So now, I just feel like there’s no point in trying to do anything when it never happens like I planned, but instead I wait around for everything to fall in place, like it always does. I know that this isn’t an “adult” way of thinking.
Even my 25 years with the P is another example of this. I thought I was going forward as an adult making choices and managing my life when the whole time I was just a play thing for a mythological creature. In the end, the experience has been very interesting and eye opening. It will serve me well, I know that, but JEEZ, it’s not what I had planned! I’d just like to for once – not to usurp God’s power or wisdom – but for once, I’d like to have a goal, a plan and accomplish it as I had envisioned it.
I would like to direct my life, not just be swept along by it. But nothing seems like the right choice, so I just don’t make any choices. I’m kinda waiting for that thunderbolt to hit again.
Does anyone else have this type of “magical thinking” going on? or is it just me?
Kathleen, you wrote:
“I think the enemy is us. Yes, there are broken people out there who have completely blocked capacity for bonding and anything like compassion. But those of us who deny or are unaware of our own power over our lives and the world around us are existing in the other side of that pathology.
The stories of the victims are heart-rending, but the big question is why are we victims? What is it in us that makes us value security over freedom? This is not simple, either the question or the many factors involved in answering it. We need something like order in our lives simply to survive. But that does not mean that we have to give our souls away to get it.”
Powerful stuff. Thank you for writing that.
When I was in that relationship, I valued security over freedom, at all costs. And those costs were high. Very high. Yet, the payout is greater than I could have imagined, because…
I survived.
Period.
That relationship Hurt.
Period.
I am alive today to live this one beautiful life passionately in love with me, myself and I.
Not in a narcissistic way ;). In a “I am human, this is me” kind of way — and if I can’t love myself, how do I love the world around me? How do I create a ripple effect that sends the best of me out into the world?
I am Darkness and light. Sorrow and joy. Sadness and happiness. Alpha and omega. Up and down. In and out and all around.
Henry — your words further up the thread were very powerful.
The poetry offerings are beautiful.
And what is most inspiring, incredible, awesome, beautiful is… the heartfelt willingness of each and everyone of you to share and support and be open and honest and loving of yourselves and each other. WOW!
One of the biggest challenges of healing from these cretins is — we get stuck in the story of what they did. We spend our time trying to figure out why they did it, how could they have done it, what was true, what was lie — and all of it is under the guise of telling ourselves, I must understand them to find where I lost me in them.
Reality is — We never ‘lost’ ourselves in them. They are not that powerful they could contain all of us — our beauty, wonder, truth, integrity, honesty, love, joy, sorrow. Those attributes are still contained within us. They are our treasure.
We lost ourselves in the crazy-making world of their presence in our lives. Without them physically in our lives, we are the one’s keeping them here after they’re gone with our focus on — he did this, or that and I said, he said, why couldn’t he, why did he, what’s with that? dialogue. We give our power away every time we fall into the victim’s place of spending our precious breath on trying to figure them out.
Figuring out ‘the individual’ n or s or p is a waste of our precious energy. Understanding the collective n or s or p pscyhology is important. It puts what we experienced in context to the collective understanding of the psychological condition and provides each of us an opportunity to know — we are not alone. ‘My’ p lied to me about his health. I thought he was dying of a heart condition. “Check”. Many ps lie about their health. They use poor health as a ploy to create artificial empathy in their victim. Check. Confirmation that what I experienced is a common experience for those encountering ps or ns or ss. Ps lie about health. What happened to me makes sense on the continuum of encounters of the p kind.
The degree to which they expanded the lie is simply the degree to which they went to test the boundaries of our belief, gullibility, ‘love’. The impact of the original ‘sin’, the lie about health, is what I need to know to understand him — he’s a p, what else would he do except lie? The impact of how the depth of his lie effected me is what I need to understand me, where I went and what I need to do to find myself again.
They are not the one’s who deserve our attention. They are not our light, nor our darkest hour. What they did had nothing to do with us — they did what they did because they could. Because it is what they do.
The question is: What are you going to do? Right now. Today. To claim your right to live this one, wild and beautiful life for all you’re worth? What is your worth?
If anger is where you’re stuck. Express it.
If sadness is where you’re stuck. Express it.
Where ever you’re stuck. Find a creative way to express it and move through it. DAnce. Scream in the forest. Throw eggs at trees. Take a rubber tube and beat up a tree. Get a bag of potatoes and smash them up. Stomp on them. Get physical.
And breathe.
Imagine taking the circular line of your emotions around and around his crazy-making, and straightening it out. Feel the tension in the line. Feel how it wants to go back to its circular shape. Keep straightening it out. Press it down. Glue it down. Straighten it out. Imagine that line is a big thick arrow leading out of darkness into a lightness of being. At the tip of the arrow is a big huge EXIT sign above a door. You’re moving towards it. You’re gaining momentum. You’re at the door. You want to move through — and you’re scared, worried, frightened. You keep looking back, trying to pick up part of the line behind you, but you can’t. The line has faded into black. You must step through that door into the light. And once you step through that EXIT door, there’s no going back to round and round the mulberry bush of his insane antics. There’s no going back to pick up your thinking about what he did and how it hurt you and why it was wrong and mean and unkind and selfish and horrible…..
It was wrong and mean and unkind and selfish and horrible.
Period.
Imagine — this is your moment to make the choice. Stay stuck in the circle line of round and round the crazy-making. Step through the EXIT sign into the light of a brand new day. A brand new way of being — FREE.
Your choice.
Which direction will you choose?
Like you Kathleen — I tend to write long 🙂
And once I’ve written, I let my words go. They are just my thoughts appearing on the page. They are released. I cannot determine nor control nor be measured by how someone receives, perceives or reacts to them. What I write, I write from my heart balanced in love with all I’ve learned and become in having opened myself up to growing through that encounter. What I write comes from my heart with the belief that my words will resonate out there. My words are my ripple effect. And they flow from love.
May each of us be touched by the Divine today. May our hearts be broken wide open in love. May our arms embrace our spirits in joy and wonder that today we are alive. Free to dance and laugh and sing and leap for joy. Free to be our most amazing selves.
Nameste.
Louise, your post brings up my second question: Do normal people ever walk around being open and honest or am I the only one?
It seems like everybody is playing head games all the time. Everyone has a hidden agenda, even if it’s just to pull emotional strings or feel empowered by getting the last word.
I’m going to give a tiny, irrelevant example just to show you how this happens in situations where it serves absolutely no purpose:
A dance studio holds outdoor salsa dancing at the beach during the summer and I liked to go out there and video the dancers, just to improve my skills with the camera. Then I was going to upload it on Youtube for the benefit of anyone who was there and wants to watch. The studio owner approached me and asked why I was shooting and I explained. He asked me to please let him see it before I uploaded it. So he gave me his email address and I tried to contact him to ask which file format he preferred to receive. Then he didn’t answer so I sent him another email and he responded with “whatever”. I sent him a small file and he didn’t reply, then I emailed again and he said he couldn’t open it blah blah blah. It went back and forth with various delays. Finally he responded, “oh, that was great, I liked it”
I could see he was playing for power, but why? I don’t even know him. Why do people act like this? I can honestly say that I only know one person that doesn’t act like this. With my new found P-radar, my disillusionment becomes more profound each day.
I’m just the opposite. I speak plainly and truthfully as much as I can, even when talking to people who are obviously not truthful. I just can’t imagine being any other way and I’m wondering if this is part 2 of my problem.
lostnsad:
glad you found us. and hope you’re doing better. day by day, you’ll find new reasons to feel better, feel worse, wonder, hope, hate him, love him, but if you can stick to NC, you will get the objective viewpoint you need to really truly understand what you were up against. a complete demon, a sadist, a cruel sick sub-human.
btw, your name is fine. i’ve had mine for almost 15 months now when i first found LF. then, i really was completely LOST and very much IN GRIEF … after 25 on-and-off years with someone i was certain would ‘love’ me forever. now i know he never loved me, and talk about ‘nothing left to take’ — geesh.
and even though i’m no longer ‘lost’ or ‘in grief’ over him, this name allows me to see how far i have travelled on the road back to wholeness.
today is his birthday … i sang him a song …
altogether now!
hope you drop dead today!
get out of everyone’s way …
back in your hellish dungeon
you will forever pay!
TOWAAAAAAANDA!!!
Wow, Ladies. Now that’s what I’m talking about! Really great stuff on this thread; creative, inspiring, encouraging, rational, imaginative, compassionate, healing.
I am one who has read,”Violence and the Sacrid, and got a lot out of it. I have also studied Joseph Cambell, and Jung, some Freaud, Feminist theorists, and read a little bit about paganism. I used to write poetry, and paint in water-colors, but unfortunatly those things seemed to have fallen by the way-side.
I wrote this short stanza this morning:
This poem is drinking coffee, and teaching itself to knit.
You hear the tat, tat of the needles, and then the pause-
to sip.
v
Hi Skylar,
It is possible that in the moment of connecting with you, he was concerned/worried/curious — and wanted to have control. If you look at it from his perspective — you were a stranger looking to upload his dance class and he had no idea how good you were — or what your intentions really were.
So, in the moment, he acted from a place of fear and asked you to connect with him first.
When you did connect with him — the moment had passed. He was busy/occupied/had forgotten about your conversation/didn’t really have much concern — any host of responses that were relevant to his life and of which you had no idea.
So, when he finally did respond, it was like a, ‘oh yeah, fine. there’s no issue here what was I so freaked out about’ response.
His initial reaction had nothing to do with ‘you’ and more to do with the ‘unknown’ of what you were doing.
NOw — having been in similar predicaments where people have sent me files and I’ve had trouble opening them — I get where he might have been coming from – I am not technology savvy and at times find it intimidating/frustrating/confusing — and it takes time. And sometimes I don’t have that time so I too get to a ‘whatever’ place because I don’t know the answer 🙂 and I hate not knowing the answer — but not enough to become techie savvy 🙂
Is it possible Skylar that your p-radar is hypersensitive? Is it possible he was just being himself, which is not p or n or s or anything other than a guy who loves dance and was concerned someone was taking pictures of his clients dancing and he was feeling protective of them — which I understand. We have people coming into the shelter where I work all the time wanting to take pictures and video, etc. I am very selective in who can do it as we have to be a)conscious of the privacy and their right to privacy of our clients; and b)what is their intent? See — they could tell us — oh I just want to use it for my university class on homelessness, when actually, they want to use it to exploit our clients.
If you turn your situation to his perspective — he could have been wondering, who gave you the right to….. He doesn’t know you are a straight speaker. He knows you are a stranger with a camera. If he had had an encounter with a p and was a member of this board — you wouldn’t know that. He could, though, be looking at the world through p radar eyes and seeing someone looking to exploit his clients.
Can you ask yourself – am I really being open and honest when I see the whole world as filled with ps?
When you meet a stranger, do you say — I see you as a potential p because I see the world is filled with ps. So, any interaction we have is going to be based on my paranoia/hypersensitivity/belief, you are lying.
Or, do you say — Hi. It’s nice to meet you. I am willing to believe you are a unique human being like me, looking to find their path in this world of wonder. I am open and honest, and I look for openness and honesty in you. I hold myself 100% accountable for how I act in this relationship. I trust you to hold yourself 100% accountable for how you act. I reserve the right to walk away at any time based on my experience in this relationship….
See, when we filter the world through suspicious eyes, everything that happens is suspicious.
Perhaps it isn’t that people aren’t open and honest — your belief they aren’t open and honest might be what is tripping you up.
I believe there is good and evil in all of us. Some people have the potential to stay on the dark side. The majority of us are looking to stand in the light — my responsibility is to be my light — and to trust you to be yours — and to trust myself to walk away/speak up/wake up– when I feel someone else’s darkness clouding my light.
I look at the world through eyes of wonder — it is what makes my world such an exciting place where I want to wake up and open up every day to the limitless possibilities of freedom.
Can you see that in judging his actions to be a power play, you were seeing a stranger through your familiar eyes?
You are a woman of beauty and infinite power Skylar. Live it up. Live large and dance!
Hugs
Louise
Kim, gorgeous stanza.
Louise,
First of all, no one is intimidated by me, especially at first glance. Physically, my bones are tiny and I’m thin. I’m 43 but still look like a little girl in some ways and people find me approachable almost to the point of crossing my boundaries (if I had any). Touching me, kissing me, hugging me, telling me personal things, are common occurances from people I don’t know well or have just met (both men and women). It doesn’t bother me, I find it amusing. I’m pretty sure people think I’m stupid when they meet me. I’m very non-threatening.
I respond in kind. I talk to people, pretty much like I post here on LF. I just say what I’m thinking and don’t bother censoring myself much. This causes people to open up even more to me. It’s interesting. But that didn’t happen with this guy.
He was brief, authoritive, defensive. Then he avoided answering. He was sending email from an iphone, so he knew what to do. I also sent him VERY explicit instructions. Then after a couple of weeks of no response, I asked again and he said that he liked it. It would have taken just a few seconds to type, “cool, thanks” after he watched it. Not 2 weeks later.
Before I knew what a P was, I wouldn’t have thought much about this guy’s behavior, but now I see manipulation occurring everywhere. Everyone is doing it all the time. I just don’t know why.
Anyway, I was thinking about this guy because I’m considering contacting him and asking if I can practice shooting his dance classes for more practice. I just wonder what kind of paranoid behavior he’s going to exhibit and how I can get around it.
lostingrief,
LMAO!!! I “love” your birthday song…
You know my like 3rd to last text to my ex was something along the lines of “I hope you get into an accident and don’t die…but become disfigured as that will REALLY kill you….”.
A bit harsh…but him just “dieing” isn’t nearly enough pain he needs to endure.
However, it kills me to know that I want to call him…That the thought of his arms around me makes me long for him even more… That’s when I get out the recordings of our fights and listen again to all his hurtful words, and read all his hurtful texts and tell myself that the man that I miss does not exist.
Maybe I should have a funeral for him…find all of the stuff that is was left behind and go to the beach and light it all on fire (I’d prob break some kind of law…lol). But maybe as the smoke drifts away whatever hold he had/s over me will be diminished just a bit more…
Or maybe I should take up self flogging and for every thought of him flog myself — I think of him at least 100 times in an hour…you’d think in a few days I’d be reconditioned to NOT think of him. But the more disgusting sick realization is that being with him and the pain he caused to me emotionally is SOOO much worse…yet I stayed!!! WHY did I stay?? That’s the part that pisses me off… Yes, he was a jerk an ass…whatever… BUT what made me stay…
1) Was it just how good looking he was
2) How charming he was (when he wanted something)
3) How good in bed he was
4) The thought that this time he really would change (all those false promises every time I took him back.)
5) The thought that I was strong enough to handle it and that setting him free meant that you were inflicting this ass on someone else…
So many thoughts; so many regrets; I just want to stop thinking about him and all this crap….I want to rewind to January 2007 and take my car somewhere else to get that tire fixed. I want to change that day and make it so I NEVER met him…
lostnsad: at first you will think about it, and him, all the time. part of the process, i guess. the ex-s/p/n on this end was also gorgeous, sexy as hell, charming, successful. he was also a whore, a thug, a non-stop liar, a blamer, an impulsive asshole. just before i threw his sorry ass out (he got some half-my-age girl pregnant), he was just starting to show skin at the back of his scalp — and was OBSESSED with looking at the little round balding patch. so, in addition to hoping he crashes and burns, i’m also hoping that his balding process is progressing nicely. he’s SO narcissistic and vain (mirrors are his best friend), he’ll suffer terribly as he grows older and loses his looks.
i miss his arms around me, too, but that’s a small price to pay for not having him around to tell me — when the mood struck — ”i don’t want THAT!” or ”why do you love me, i don’t even call you!” just gross, gross, gross.
your 1-5 are classic signs. none of it is real. just mirroring our beauty, and charisma and sexual prowess! they have nothing on their own. they are ALL big, empty lies.
i told him when he left that i wish i had never met him. he laughed and said, ‘yea, but then who would you have given your money, body and soul to!?’ i shit you not.
NC is our salvation. trust it. trust that he will fade from your mind and heart. do for YOU! and come here often. you will soon realize that ALL of us have gone through the same thing — the s/p/n ritual of take, chew and spit out. they are not human which is why they are so unforgettable. for me, it was like watching some unbelievable movie that repulsed me, yet i had to see the ending. the whole thing is sick. i don’t know why i was so attracted to the demon. and sometimes i don’t want to know. i just want to live for me and be well … and shine my light to those who may benefit.
shine on …