Hot. Sunny. The slits of the blinds filter the light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Birds twitter. In the distance, traffic hums. The city awakens.
I helped my friend’s daughter move out of her house on Saturday. My friend’s daughter who discovered one morning that her fiance whom she was to marry in August was untrue. It was a tough time. A difficult day. Yet, amidst the sadness, a day of hope took shape. A day for new beginnings took seed. New ideas were planted.
JS, the young woman who’s heart is broken, did well. He was there too. The man who has lied and deceived her. The man who promised he loved her, and only her and yet, does not deny the two other women who believe the same lie. How can it be true?
“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” said JS.
“Believe it,” I told her. “Believe it because in the willingness to accept the truth, your freedom from his lies awakens.”
We packed and carried. Talked a little bit. Not much. His presence was like a dark cloud threatening to storm. Glowering. Menacing.
In the end, she tried to remove her pictures from the computer. He had protected them. Read only. She had to ask him for help. He downloaded the photos onto CDs. “Now delete them from the computer,” she said.
“What about me?” he asked. “I want to keep the pictures of you. I want the memories.”
I could see her resolve wavering. I had stood with her while he downloaded the photos. It’s not healthy to stand alone in the presence of the man you loved and who lied with one breath. It’s not healthy. Your mind wants to play tricks on you. Your mind wants to tell you to listen to his lies one more time, just in case… Just in case this time he tells the truth.
“You have a choice,” I told him. “Delete the photos or give her the hard drive to take away and clean up.”
“I’m not going to give her the hard drive,” he said.
“Then delete the photos.”
“Why can’t I keep them. There’s one’s of me in some of them too. I want to keep the memories of my life with her for the past five years.”
“Your life with her was a lie. Delete the photos.”
“Why can’t I keep them if she can?”
“Because you cannot be trusted. You are the one who visits porn sites. You are the one who sends naked photos. Delete all the pictures she tells you to delete.”
He didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t deny. He deleted the photos.
When the packing was done, we drove in tandem, four cars carrying her possessions, back to her parents house where everything was to be stored in the garage until she could make plans for what to do next.
“Play your music loud,” I told her as we set off. “Let it blare so you can’t hear your head thinking. Your head will start to replay everything. It will want to re-write the script. It will want to change his lies to the truth. Play your music loud.”
Midway to her parents, she pulled her car over to the shoulder. We followed suit. She raced from her car to the grassy verge of the road. Knelt over, her body arched into a question mark, her shoulders shaking.
“I’m going to throw up.”
Her mother stood on one side. I stood on the other. “Breathe.” I commanded. “Breathe.”
I drew a long slow breath. In. Out. I leaned my body against hers. Wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Breathe with me.”
She began to breathe. Her body shook. Her hands could not remain still. Breathe.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to wail.
“You can’t do that yet.” I said. “Right now, you have to concentrate on driving. You have to focus on getting back to your parent’s house. That’s the job right now. Later. When you’re settled in, you can fall apart. You can wail and cry, but for now, you must not cry. You cannot fall apart.”
She nodded her head. After fifteen minutes, we got back into our cars and drove to her parents without incident.
She is a strong young woman. At twenty-three she is learning a life lesson that will forever change her perspective on love, on living, on relationship.
In time, the harsh edges of the pain will curl up and dry. The burnt embers of her sorrow will crumble and fall away. Dust to dust.
In time, the fear will ease. Slip back into the waters of life, into the river of tears flowing endlessly to the sea. Healing waters will replace the tears as she learns to live with the sorrow of having loved the one who is untrue.
In time, the sorrow will fade. Dissipate like fog in the morning sun. Rise up and clear away. Its memory a faint mist over the horizon, somewhere over the rainbow.
In time, she will smile again. Laugh again. Love again.
In time, she will see her strength. She will acknowledge her amazing courage. Her ability to do what had to be done, even when her heart was breaking.
In time, she will heal and in her healing she will rise up. A woman of strength. A woman with a powerful voice. A woman who has walked through the fires of his lies and found the courage to turn up for herself, in all her pain, in all her tears and be heard.
In time, she will heal.
And she will rejoice in the text message that tore her world apart. It brought her the freedom to find the truth and take action to save herself before she sank beneath the quagmire of his lies, lost to the world around her.
It takes time to build a web of deceit. Time to deceive the one who loves you into believing your lies are the only truth she needs to hear, to know, to see. It takes time to break apart a heart, chisel it into a million little pieces and scatter them to the winds.
It takes time to be deceived.
It takes only a moment of time for the crack in his facade to appear. It takes only a moment in time to step through the gap. And in that moment, the dam of his lies crumbles and the truth pours in.
And when we step through, when we face the lies, our hearts begin to heal. The tiny shards of glass cutting us apart from the inside out begin to soften their edges. Our hearts begin to heal as we pick up the pieces of our lives and begin the process of putting ourselves together again. Slowly, in time, we heal. We learn to sing and dance and laugh. To speak. To care and love, ourselves and those around us who are true.
And in our healing, we rise up and call out to others lost upon the road of their deceits. We call out and shine a light of hope for them to follow, away from the lies. Away from the pain of loving the one who is untrue.
In our healing, that is the gift we share. Our light for others to follow.
In time, this young woman will heal. And she will rise again. Like all of us who have survived and thrived after loving the one who is untrue. Like us, she is one strong, courageous woman. A wonderful woman of worth. A magnificent human being flying her true colors for all to see.
apt/mgr
thanks! I am really excited about the whole thing as it gets closer. You are the first person to say they envy me though, especially knowing a little of what happened! I am so big and swollen right now, that my neighbors laughed when they saw me. How many babies do you have in there? They giggled. I am not a big person, but my stomach is huge! Even people who don’t know my situation beyond my pregnancy look at me with pity:)
Blondie-Henry is right. You did write scared a lot. I really think that is a warning sign. You will do what you need to do about taking him back or not. But if you take him back, and when it ends horribly again, you will say (like I do now) Yep, I saw the warning signs, and didn’t listen.
Maybe you should read the book “Women who love psychopaths.” It probably explains you to a T, it did me. One of the things that is soooooo wonderful about women who love psychopaths, is that we are adventurous, loving spirits. We also are daring and big risk takers. We are attracted to the scariness of psychopaths! But it is too risky for us. Because we have such a great capacity to love, and they don’t.
If we want to date, we should be ready for a person who gives us a thrill-while still being able to love. If we don’t want to date in a relationship, then we can find it in ourselves to create our own thrill.
Read the book. At first it describes the psychopath, and I was reading it like “well, what is wrong with that? It sounds perfect.” But by the end they get to the reasons why the scary thrill of a psychopath is bad for our life. This is our life!
Psychopaths are like cigarettes. They feel good to put your lips on sometimes. But then the nagging cough comes around-and you think, maybe it is a warning sign I should quit. Some people quit and the cough goes away. Others keep smoking. Their skin turns yellow and their voices are perminently low. They have many cold days standing outside in the snow. And then it kills them.
The ones that quit find something else that feels good to put their lips on. And this time, they still look good, sound healthy and they aren’t killed from it.
Either way, it is a choice. It is your life. And as long as you know a psychopath will kill your spirit and turn your skin yellow-and you choose to do it anyway, then all power to you! The people who can love, will still love you. People will not look down on you for it. And if you ever decide to quit again, people will be here to support you through it.
When someone doesn’t know they are sucking on a psychopathic cigarette. That is when you can’t blame them. But eventually you will find out. And then, and only then, the choice is finally yours to make on how you want to live your life.
Bird,
Your analogy is right on. They take the very breath away from us. I walked around for such a long time, with my head down and wouldn’t make eye contact. I had nothing left in me. My girls didn’t do that to me. My husband did and that left me so battered and worn, that I almost fell at the feet of the “friend” I met. It just amazes me how a man who is so handsome, could be so insecure that the only way he can get a woman is to steal another man’s wife.
The one is my life doesn’t want anyone full time, but he leads them on to think he does. It was all a smoke screen, until he had his fill then I was set aside. He didn’t get all of me, but enough to leave me doubting his humanity.
But your being all swollen and such, is just a sign that something wonderful is happening inside. You are participating in a miracle. Even though the dad is going to miss out, you won’t. And if he’s that kind, what’s to miss? He won’t be around to damage your child like he did you. Good luck on a successful delivery and a future of joy.
Thank you for that post, every time I have doubts and start thinking, maybe he did love me, maybe he told me the truth, I read something that brings me back to reality. No, I meant nothing to him, and I think of all the other lies he told me, and it still hurts but I’ll be fine, we all will.
blackrose i feel that you are in the same place as me feeling the same emotions. some days i question my choice on leaving him, but then i read these post and it brings me back to reality. we will be fine, just like you said. keep your head up!
My ns exb left me, quit taking my calls, never called me back. Just like that, without explanation, he was out of my life, after one year of telling me how much he loved me, he made me feel so good about myself, and then made me feel so bad. I also blamed myself, went over and over in my head of things I should have said, done, but it did not matter, because I think he had made up his mind to leave me long before he actually left. I still miss the man I thought he was, miss what I thought we had, and it will take time. Just remember, we did nothing wrong.
Blondie,
Two weeks, huh? Two weeks since you discovered the man you love was full-fledged parasite, a monster, a liar. Oh, sweetie, I know it hurts so much you feel as if your soul is crushed. You can’t think one clear thought, as your emotions are storming within you, altering from rage, sadness, desolation. I know. I really do. I’ve felt what you are feeling right this very minute so many times in my life that I once considered it to be second nature. That I was becoming resolved to the fact that my eternal heartbreak was my best and only friend in the whole wide world.
Guess what, dear? I no longer feel that heartbreak. I’ve stared into that pitch black abyss, teetering on the fragile edge, one too many times until I had no other recourse but to confront and accept the evil machinations perpetrated toward me as being foul and undeserved. I didn’t deserve to be treated like an object, only to serve the needs of a most nefarious man(men). I didn’t deserve to be treated worse than dirt, stepped on, cheated on, lied to. YOU don’t either. You are a beautiful, wonderful, loving, caring woman and this truthful, powerful revelation will be shown to you as you heal yourself. As you purge, and purge the grief within your awesome heart and awesome mind.
Being exposed to/involved with Psychopaths, PDIs, soul sucking losers, provides us, the good people, valuable insight, knowledge so we can forever after protect our lovable selves from the covert, many times insidious EVIL roaming hither and tither all over our precious world.
Eventually, in your own time, you will embrace yourself, Blondie. You will acknowledge what you have known all your life, but this time you will believe and nurture such a truth: you are a powerful, beautiful woman and by truly loving you, the possibilities of fantastic, extraordinary happenings will start to gracefully flow towards your bright, shining light.
And Blackrose…ditto for you too, hon. Please continue to share with the LoveFraud members in an effort to understand, care for you and for your own healing and recovery.
Bless you….**Big, Bear Huggs**
the pain is so deep when your whole life has been pulled out from under you. all i want to do is hug and cry to someone. someone to understand what iam going through, and how hard this for me. This weekend will be my first holiday away from him, not going on our traditional vacation that we usually do. Its going to be hard this weekend, not going upnorth where i was soppose to be. it hurts, bc that was my life, and now im rebuilding my life.
thanks janesmith for the support
i read somewhere that we need to ” Stop Listening to what he says and start Looking at what he does”
thats my new motto to live by with everyone i ever meet in my life!
Dear Bird,
I am so glad that the baby is going to “hatch” any day now, and that you will not be so big and swollen any more that you can’t see your toes. Oh, how I remember those days nearly 40 years ago when I could set a saucer and a cup on my belly which stuck out like I was having a baby elephant! LOL
I sat over the crib for days just watching them sleep, wishing they would wake up so I could hold them or nurse them.
Bird, I am so thankful to God for you and the Baby Bird both that the psychopath is OUT of your life. I know there are other women here on this blog that have to share custody and all that with the Ps, and how awful it is for them. With him gone, and taking no responsibility, you should be able to KEEP him out of the life of our prescious Baby Bird so the baby will be SAFE.
I know it will be tough having to do everything for the baby by yourself, but that is so much easier still than having to deal with the pain from the P at the same time. In the short time you have been on the blog I have seen so much growth in you (inside not only outside LOL) and how strong you have become. How you have taken back your POWER and focused your energies on you and the baby!
I bet’ya there is no baby in the world who has had so many prayers sent up for him and his mom, or any baby who will have as much love than yours! (((hugs to you and Baby Bird))) Oh, here is a picture of BB (8>) Doesn’t he have a cute little BEAK!!! LOL
Blondie,
We here at LoveFraud emphatically understand your situation. The intense pain, the emotional whirlwind, the confusion, the lack of self esteem caused by such wicked duplicity perpetrated towards a good woman such as yourself, even a loss of your own precious identity. And the vacation you took together was a tradition for you. A joyous tradition I suspect. Even though you discovered your ex is a 1st class loser, that time with him was considered wonderful, correct?
It will pass, hon. You will find other things that bring much more joy in your heart than a vacation with your ex. Remember, it’s the simple things that bring the most pleasure, the most peace and relief from pain. As Oxy says, search for activities than inspire you, that give you positive energy in return for the negative energy your ex forced on you. Do whatever you wish to do to help you during this time. I know you probably don’t wish to hear any advice or recommendations right now, and that’s ok. But come back some time later and read your posts as well as others in an effort to improve your life after the loser is gone. Trust me, there is life after the Psychopath. We all are living, breathing, loving/lovable proof of it. With your newfound knowledge and rekindled strength and self-respect, you’ll be able to focus on your inner beautiful self, to love and nurture her so she can blossom like a sun worshipping daisy. 🙂
**BIG Cyber hug just for you**
Bird,
I second Oxy’s sentiments. How wonderful the baby bird’s about the hatch…haha..so cute! You’re going to be a great little mommy!! You’ve come so far and so fast, which proves how resielent you are regardless of the trials and tribulations you have endured. Is it alright if I call you my new hero?