I believe in miracles.
Not the rock your world, holy saints and rising apparitions kind of miracles. But rather, the light shifting, change your life, in this moment kind of miracle that takes you by the hand and guides you home. The kind of miracle that awakens you to the truth that this moment is all you’ve got. The kind of miracle that says, grab me and run with me or lose the miracle of your life forever.
I know about miracles like that. I got one on a sunny May morning five years ago when I had given myself up for dead. Well, not dead-dead, but rather, the walking breathing dead kind of living that leeches all energy from your body and leaves you without hope of ever finding a way back to the land of the living.
My miracle appeared in the form of a blue and white police car driving up and arresting the sociopath who had been lying and cheating and manipulating and abusing me for the length of our four year nine month relationship.
When first we’d met I thought his name was Prince Charming. I loved the view of the short cut to happiness he promised me and jumped onto the runaway train of his promises of happily ever after. I never expected to find myself lost in hell, in cahoots with the Prince of Darkness and praying for a miracle I didn’t believe I deserved, to set me free.
But then, that’s the funny thing about miracles. They don’t come looking for believers. They just appear, like stars in a darkened sky coming out at night. It’s not that they weren’t there all along, it’s just lost in the pit of despair, we lose sight of the miracles around us. Too frightened to open our eyes in the blinding light of day, we shut out the world and crawl into the cave of desperation, shutting ourselves off from belief and hope and possibility and even miracles.
It was a miracle the police found us. He was hiding out, trying to escape the country, and I was hiding behind the smile I’d pasted on my face, pretending to be the person he told me to be, or else. The miracle saved me from finding out what the ”˜or else’ might be.
Looking back, it was a miracle I was still alive. I had seventy-two cents in my pocket, a few clothes and my beautiful Golden Retriever, Ellie, who had travelled that rocky road beside me, faithfully keeping step to my faltering footsteps as I travelled further and further from life as I knew it.
I don’t know who said this, but I find it very powerful, “Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”
On that day in May, five years ago, I knew I didn’t get a miracle to live in pain and sorrow. I knew I got the miracle to live in joy. But, in the process of losing myself on the road to hell, I had become someone I didn’t recognize, someone I didn’t love. I knew I had to change. I feared I didn’t know how.
Change is always possible. Ending something that isn’t working for me requires me to change what I’m doing. When I awoke from that relationship, there was very little that was working in my life. So much was broken, so much was in disarray.
To change my life, I had to surrender my disease and embrace my ability to heal. To heal, I had to change the anger into forgiveness. The sorrow into laughter. The hatred into love. I had to let go of who I had become on that journey and fall into love with who I could become in healing by letting go of my fear of falling and learning how to fly free from the pain of the past.
And so, on that morning in May when my world changed and I began to see there was light beyond the darkness, I grabbed my miracle and set out to recover my joy. Step by step. Moment by moment. And, in the process I uncovered the greatest miracle of my life. Me.
I believe in miracles. I am one.
The question is: What do you believe in? Do you believe you’re some big cosmic experiment gone awry in one hopelessly lost human being, or a miracle of life, unique and magnificent, a shining example of the best of human being, full of possibilities, endlessly in love with the wonder and the miracle of being you?
L’il Orphan,
In a moment of rare courage during the course of that 4 year 9 month living hell, I went to the police.
At the time, there was little they could do. His threats were third party, I didn’t have evidence of what he had told me would happen to my daughters if I didn’t stay silent. They wanted to help. They wanted to ‘go see him’, but I was too scared. I told them not to. I told them I just wanted to forget about it all and break away.
The next day, the detective with whom I met called me to see if I was okay, and to ask if I was still adamant about them not going to visit the sociopath.
I’m okay, I said. And you don’t need to go talk to him. I’m never going to talk to him again. (Hah! Little did I know I’d break that commitment within hours and stay another 2 years in that hell)
Before he hung up, the detective said, “What he’s doing is not love. Love doesn’t hurt so much you want to die.”
It would be another 2+ years before I ‘heard’ the truth in his words.
For me, I didn’t ‘love’ the sociopath. I loved the idea of the man I’d met. The mirage of who he appeared to be.
What he was doing to me had nothing to do with love either. It had everything to do with abuse.
Rather than asking yourself, How do I stop loving him, why not give yourself permission to look at whether or not the man you love exists at all. Did you really ‘love’ him, or did you become fixated on the image, and keep falling for the myth?
I never loved the sociopath. At least not the real person. I only loved the image of him. The idea of him. I loved the promises he made. I didn’t love the abuse he doled out. I loved being loved by the man I thought he was. I was devestated by his misrepresentation of love and the damage it caused. And I definitely didn’t feel loved when he was abusing me. I felt defeated, lost, lonely, frightened, suicidal, insane, confused… I can’t think of one positive feeling that came with being loved by the sociopath I know him to be.
One of the reasons I stayed way beyond my best before date with him is, I too believed if I say I love someone, I must stay committed.
But, when I give my love to a lie, I am loving a lie — two negatives do not a positive make. He is the lie.
Period.
Can you ask yourself, what is the alternative to not loving him?
For me, it’s freedom.
LilOrphan,
I don’t know what a “carrot” is on the keyboard.
How do we stop loving them? I stopped when I realized and accepted what a Sociopath is and that the Bad Man is one or pretty damn close… and like ML says, when I admitted that what I loved wasn’t there. There is no man of my dreams in the Bad Man… only an illusion.. only empty words… only thoughts… only lies… only sh*t covered carrots… but nothing real at all.
It worked for me. You just might not be there yet. Letting go of the dream and embracing reality is painful. From where I sit, it looks like other people’s dreams came true so why do I have to swallow this reality pill and they don’t?! I don’t know the answer but I do know that as long as I long for a sh*t covered carrot, I will NEVER taste anything good.
Aloha…
Aloha, you made me laugh again! “s#*t covered carrot” LOL
I always said that I was so deep in denial that if they had served “cat s#*t and told me it was candy it would have tasted sweet!” LOL
It may just be that we have to ACCEPT that there “IS NO Santa Claus, Virginia” As long as we keep longing for the illusion I don’t think we can turn loose of the “dream/fantasy/delusion” as long as we focus on “HOW GOOD IT COULD HAVE BEEN” or “what a WASTE” (in my case grieving about what a waste my son’s life had been versus what it COULD have been if he had had a soul and a conscience.”
But in a way, that is arrogance on my part, too–who the hell am I to tell him how to live his life? If he wants to live it in prison and doing crime–doesn’t he have a “right” to self determination just like I do? ( and the consequences that go with it) Maybe his dreams for himself aren’t what MY dreams would be, but who am I to try to impose my moral code on him? He’s an adult, he can make his choices, and if I don’t like them, I don’t have to put up with him, or worry about him. He has no obligation to me because I gave birth to him and I have NO obligation to him either, he’s an adult. What’s the big deal? I don’t like him, I dont have to associate with him. I don’t have to send money either. LOL (all this is of course some tongue in cheek, but in other ways there is also some truth in it.) LOL
My XBF-P and I were talking and I told him I would never have sex with him if he were having sex with others, and he said to me’ “We’re not married, you can’t tell ME who I can have sex with” and I said, “Yes, that is true, I am just telling you who I WILL HAVE SEX WITH AND IT IS NOT WITH SOMEONE SLEEPING WITH SOMEONE ELSE.”
Yay, you are workin’ the itals — GOOD JOB!!!! 🙂
“So whenever there was anything good, he would turn it bad, to wipe that smile off my face. “
Sadly enough, I remember this kind of experience, as well. And yet, when he was in an expansive mood, he did so much to PUT the smile on my face, on purpose.
I think as time goes by it is okay for me to remember, honor and love the good memories. They aren’t the sole domain of the other person. They are my memories too. It’s far less painful to look at some of them, particularly the night we talked of getting married and some other very wonderful nights, as good moments than as orchestrated lies.
Because, you see, the next time someone tells me that – if there is a next time – I want to have a happier frame of reference and a remote possibility of believing that person. To do so, I cannot associate this memory with a bundle of what I suspect are lies. Just can’t. You smart ladies might tell me I’m in denial, but that’s okay.
There are some sentences and thoughts that I simply cannot allow myself to view as having been said falsely — for my own heart and future’s sake.
I have to find a way to honor the very real love I felt for him in the face of doubts and uncertainty about what he really felt for me. Again, mostly for my sake, but also for the sake of 12 years of life that were spent loving him.
From 2008 and beyond, I can accept that a. whatever his truth is, I’ll likely never know it, and b. even if he did care at all, he didn’t care enough….but some of the memories I want to still treasure and the good pieces of the past.
Orphan,
Congratulations on your CARROT! LOL I still can’t do it, so will stick with the CAPS and lots of laughter!
I get what you are saying about the “good memories,” I was in the same quandry with the P-son. I did have great memories of him as a kid up to puberty, he was a SUPER kid and I guess my PRIDE IN HIM made him my “golden child” that I had so much hope for—Pride goeth before a fall—I have looked back though to see if I “overlooked” a lot of bad behavior in him because of that pride, I even questioned his brothers to see if they knew of any bad behavior that I wasn’t aware of, and except for minor stuff they didn’t either.
So now I just “separate” the BOY and the MAN in my mind, and I enjoy the memories of the BOY but the man is NOT the same as the BOY, they are two different people in my mind. The BOY is gone, dead, vanished, no longer accessible to me, and I sure don’t like the man so it is NC with HIM.
Maybe my P-son’s childhood was the “honeymoon” stage of the P and the rest is the reality. Who knows? The reality is the Kid is gone, and the man by the same name is a MONSTER-MONSTER. (that’s Bold italics) LOL.
How come when I put in the number 8 (eight) I get a smiley face?
Lil Orphan,
I understand your need to treasure the good memories and you did spend a much longer time with your BM than I spent with my BM. Each of us has to find our own way to deal with this.
As I look back, if I am honest with myself, I don’t really have any truly good memories of BM. If I strip away the warm water, the flip-flops, tropical breezes, the adventures, everything… and I just bring it down to pure reality of the moment… it was really terrible beyond the first few dates. I was quite relaxed in the beginning but it did not take long at all for him to start pecking away at me. Even the first time he said he loved me it was when I was starting to waiver and back out because of his sketchy behavior. Therefore, I see it now as a manipulation of the moment rather than a heart felt feeling.
BM always had a mood hanging over him now that I think about it. He never fully laughed.. he never appeared completely relaxed. Okay, there is ONE moment that I will hold onto. I woke up one morning to find him sound asleep, curled like a baby, with his head on my stomach and his arm curled around me. In that moment of sleep, I believe I saw him for real… a person that needed love so bad but was not able to participate in it like he wanted to and I suspect, he didn’t know why. In those rare moments, I would ponder… what is happening here? Why can’t he stop treating me so bad?
BM was not calculating and smooth like some of the stories here and that makes me wonder about the Sociopath thing. Sometimes, I get the feeling that his outbursts were something that happened TO him and he had to go along for the ride… do you know what I mean? He loses control rather than using anger to control someone else… To me and my untrained eye, this makes me think he is an extreme Borderline Personality Disorder because his rages would last 48 – 72 hours. But you know what? It doesn’t matter any more.
All in all, there is maybe less than 30 minutes total of that relationship that I treasure. And what I treasure is the feeling I had about what I THOUGHT was happening. It was sweet to even think that love like that exists, even if it didn’t.
Back to my point… some of us will want to treasure certain times. But for me, recognizing and accepting what was not authentic about those moments with BM has helped me to let them go.
Struggling to let go in your mind is what you have been talking about a lot Lil Orphan, right? (I think it was you.) Check to see what you are replaying in your mind when you are struggling the most… just as an excercise. I do understand the loss a person would have to face if they accept that life’s sweetest moments were fake. That would be very painful. I do understand this… but if this is what keeps you captive in your mind, maybe it would help to set it free or put it away for awhile.
And of course, you can always remember that the LOVE you gave was real and that you were bing authentic in your commitment. You are a loving person with good intentions, a great big heart, and probably the patience of a Saint.
Letting go of him does not mean letting go of you… in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
I still don’t see any carrots on my key board. :o)
carrot carrot carrot
I don’t get it.
Aloha,
From reading, it looks like you work to help other people, youth, volenteer, ect. Have you always done that kind of work or did you start after your bad man experience?