Thank You All, My Time On This Site Has Come To An End

[livebuzzwords]

Thank You All, My Time On This Site Has Come To An End

 

Seeing that this is the last post I will be inserting here, please excuse the length – but I had to cover a whole years worth of stuff as briefly as possible.

 

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost one whole year since I first started coming on this site. That’s a long time, and that just so happens to be the same amount of time it took me to really know that I have healed after the breakup from my last relationship. I don’t remember how I came to find this site – maybe someone pointed the way, or I stumbled across it during one of my frantic Net information searches but the how is not important. What is important is the fact that this site actually helped me as I went through the different and extremely difficult stages of healing.

 

When I first came on here, I was angry and posted nasty comments. I was actually banned from this site three times because of such behaviour. See, my ex-gf had just left me, and she did so, while I was in the middle of a deep depression, suffering from a cocaine addiction, and reeling from an illness not yet uncovered. I was angry because I felt cheated, she left me when the going got tough – I never expected that from her especially after I had been her rock during the relationship for so long. I was Mr. Everything and it was a job that I did freely and believed was the role of the partner, a man, and it fit with my morals, ethics and values [i discovered though that doing so has its down-side as it is impossible to be everything to everybody – so I don’t do that anymore]. I was there for her at the beginning of the relationship when she really needed me – I supported her financially, emotionally, shelter-wise, career-wise, boosted her confidence and self-esteem, provided protection, a healthy environment, caring and understanding, and did so for her child as well. That wasn’t asked for or expected of me, I just did what you are supposed to do when you love someone. Be there for then when the going gets rough – so when it was my turn at the trouble wheel and she bolted, I felt cheated and it came out in anger. And I felt it was unfair; felt she was blaming me for getting sick, like I wanted that to happen – sheeeeeeesh. No-one does something like that. I felt she was judging me and blaming me not treating the really problem – the depression. You should never do that to someone because it is a crushing thing to do and it rips away their confidence, self-worth and self-esteem and leaves them vulnerable to a truly nasty emotion – guilt.

 

The next time I came on this site was when I was truly a lost soul, a heartbroken man, a guilt-ridden partner [guilt is such an extremely dangerous and destructive emotion – more on that later] and was totally confused as to why someone I thought I knew so well, had changed so much. She was someone who never ran and hid from a problem, always was accountable and responsible for her share of things. And she always communicated with me, honestly, openly and face to face when something important needed to be tackled. She broke up with me over the phone – OVER THE PHONE! Who does that kinda thing – I never imagined getting dumped that way. That was a low blow. She simply didn’t feel the requirement to tell me straight to my face, [nor did she tell me why], she had already moved out, and as she was the one that dumped me, she had a head start in the old healing/planning game.

 

After she came back from a vacation, while we were officially just taking a “break”, she just called me said she was done with this relationship, and that I was to have No Further Contact with her [i had never before experienced the really hard pains that NC brings – its nasty business and I will never use that on anybody ever because it is selfish and leaves you with the last image you have of your partner as something you start to see as who that person is – and that is wrong in so many ways and causes more trouble down the road]. And, for good measure, she would give me no reason why she ended things. Then she went into hiding, just like she had been when we met, refused to return any of my attempts at communication [she’s freaking good at the NC thing, she has not contacted me once since the end – what an amazing feat. Not something consider a good trait though – kinda mean-spirited, and cold if you ask me and that was so not the woman I knew].

 

Think about it, who does that kinda thing after being ‘in love’ with someone, we had been together 7 years, the good times far out-numbering the bad, after all I had done, and she fully understood that my behaviours stemmed from the depression, addiction and that I was fighting against an unknown illness and for our relationship. I did everything that I could to get better faster – but she had a head start from me, and had found refuge elsewhere – I was simply no-longer needed. That is a huge guilt trip to play on someone in that state. That’s was all the respect, and compassion I was afforded from her.

 

The level of guilt I felt because of that trigger the cycle of self pity, and self destruction and whenever I reached out in agony because of feelings so strong it was like torture, she simply never responded. How can somebody do that? It confused me even further and lead to me isolating myself, trying to find clues as to why this had happened, and I started abusing myself and self-harming through substance abuse. I have no idea how she has managed to remain that way to this very day.

 

Later on I came on this site; I was in a state where I believed the woman that once loved me must now truly hate me because I got sick because only someone that hates another will treat them that way. So, when I came on here then I was shell shocked and just read the posts of others and never posted myself. When I felt that way, I stopped trying. She had blocked everything with a master’s touch. So, I simply dismantled my computer. I am no longer a fan of the computer world, never really was. But I must say that over the last 7 years, computers and the Net have played a huge role in shaping my fortunes and misfortunes. I can’t say the Net is that bad because I did meet my ex-gf off one of those dating sites, but Net also is a place where you can get lost and confused and believe that fiction is fact.

 

I was at the healing stage where you simply give up – that’s not healing – that’s avoiding and it always comes back to bite you on the ass. I started dating someone and believed that I was over the ex-gf. After all, when you think someone actually hates you, there is no room for possibilities then. After 3 months of dating this woman, I realized I had not fully healed and recovered from the ending so, to be fair to her, I broke things off. Explained the situation, in person, and because we did things that way we are still friends.

 

I started getting pissed off that I was still not over someone who had treated me that way – and that was well my undiagnosed illness [bi-polar] reared its ugly head and the combination of that and the cocaine sent me into a truly manic state where I was often delusional and suffered form flights of fantasy, believing in things that simply were not reality and behaving in ways that had really bad consequences. So that was the state I was in when I came on this site that time. And every post, every comment, sounded and looked like it was directed towards me. I engaged in communication outside the site with “people” I thought was my ex-gf and that lead to serious trouble.

 

At this stage of my healing all I wanted was closure [healing for me], assurances [for her] that I understood she hated me and that we would never have a second chance, and compassion [for us both] so we could both move on and heal with a level of respect, one that surely should have been given to a 7 year relationship that held two people once in love, and once considered soul mates. None of that happened. What did happen was my mania got worse, my substance abuse when insane, and I had three extremely serious psychotic episodes, one that nearly killed me.

 

I rode the balance of what I knew was fact and fought against what was playing in my mind as fiction being believed to be fact. And that’s why I was amazing able to never fully come into contact with her during my attempts at making amends because I knew it was wrong and false, but my heart said try, and my mind was playing tricks on me. That went on for months. And it was the worst around special times; we both loved – like Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, Valentines Day. This period lasted many months and I was a time where I basically could not live in my own home, because it was haunted with the memories of her living and leaving me there. So I basically lived in my car, stopped going to work, stayed for weeks at a time until I would collapse with exhaustion – always after I had become so gone that I would try to make contact [Matt Mays has a great song about such a thing – When The Angels Make Contact With You – wicked track] with her for amends [see, GUILT still playing a role in this and fueling the cycle], and every time I did so, her reaction was to report me to the police, still NC, and eventually I landed in prison. She sent me to prison for these things. I was unable to grasp the reality of that until I was actually behind bars, wearing an orange jumpsuit and staring up a razor wire fences. What a wonderful thing for an ex-soul mate to do to someone obviously ill. And she works in the health care field, she knows this stuff, had her own problems so she can relate – I couldn’t understand. The level of guilt I felt for disappointing everyone by getting ill was amazing, I simply can imagine the level of guilt she must be suffering now that she knows all the facts, and if she isn’t, she will have to deal with it at some point because that stuff gets driven deep inside and takes a ton of work to get rid of [bUT I DID IT – YEAH FOR ME – only took me one year - LOL].

 

So I was off this site for a while as I spent sometime in a prison and then was transferred to a hospital where I regained my heath, found insight and the power to choose between a healthy life and the one I had been living and before I knew it all the pieces of the puzzle started coming together. My cocaine use, which I continued to use because I started during the relationship and wanted to end that with her [ultra respect] [see GUILT again, and had been attached to my faults at the relationship I was able to untangle – that had been a huge struggle [self worth], and that’s a huge accomplishment. I have been clean for quite a while now. I never even liked cocaine, stopped getting high from it ages ago, and where I used at the beginning to recover from the depression, at the end I was using as a form of self-harm [GUILT]. So TOOOTING MY OWN HORN for beating that beast. Then, once I had done that everything else fell into place, and the guilt I had associated with needing approval, assurances, compassion and understanding from her just simply vanished. I just stopped caring what she thought about me and I couldn’t care less what she thinks about me – that’s where the prison thing really helped. You don’t need help from some that would do something like that, let alone want to be with them. That is not a diss at her, she did things she needed to do for herself and she alone will have to deal with that. So, when I started coming on this site then, everything was fitting together and I had almost fully recovered from a whole year of madness.

 

And that my friends is the end of the story, the only work I need to continue with is personal and requires no assistance anymore because if I can survive all that, I can tackle anything. And after a whole year of time truly wasted [a two minute phone call would have solved everything – Never happened], and I can now feel good about myself, my life, my new gf and live a healthy life in a great relationship because of lessons learned, events that I tackled, and did not hid from. I still care about my ex-gf and I wish her well, much happiness, and good health. She is a good person – she didn’t mean to harm me in so many ways, just as I didn’t mean to harm her – happens and you just have to deal with it and roll with punches. So, this is my last post on here. Time now will be spent outdoors, doing fun things with someone who cares about me [that really was a great motivator for me to tackle the baggage because I was not about to get into a relationship again until I had done the work – I HAVE DONE THE WORK. Thank you all for your help and support and stay kewl. Goodbye.