right from the start

[Guest]

Right From The Start -

 

I've been looking back over a 4 year chapter of my life searching for an understanding of the real storyline - one that i know is doing nothing for me excpet say goodbye to those i love and hurt and i have been doing so in order to learn from mistakes, learn to love myself and move on from this past.

 

What i have uncovered is i have taught myself and used harmful ways to cope with stress, ways to protect myself and in most cases these reactions were truly unneccessary and simply a result of selfish dishonesty within myself - and that this has always been my downfall. And with each and every example i reviewed, the same pattern and cycle of self-loathing emmerged - always involving a commitment, to someone or something and done so without really taking the time to consider if it was something i wanted, how my reactions would impact others and my life. It was always the same, I commit, as the time grows closer i make myself and those around me miserable and the night before the day of activity, i would self-sabotage and make life hell - in essence taking something enjoyable and making it the opposite.

 

So have did i do this so often? Because growing up this was my experience, what i was taught, it became part of my life. I remember the first time i really became aware of purposely doing this and that i no longer wanted to live my life this way during a trip with my ex gf. now dismantling years of engrained behaviour is not that easy - you need two things to ensure you do this: 1. you must truly WANT to change and do so thru actions and words and 2. lose someone you love eternally so the hurt is so bad for both that the sound of your head hitting rock bottom awakens you.

 

Now what this cycle starts with is non disclosure of things that will make you appear, in your mind at least, unattractive to another, and i did that right from the start, with not telling her about my medication [effecxor], and nondisclosure turns into avoidance, then self sabotage, then lies. So this trip i spoke of was about her and i going up to a cottage to retreive some furniture that belonged to her and she told me how important this was to her and it was the first time i truly disconnected from listening and understanding that and because i had started slipping back to old ways. So instead of having this become something that would pull us togther i made it something she now sees as a negative. That was the first real brick thrown by me towards her trust and it came about because the confidence i had, in her loving me, was being eroded by the trust i had lost during my failed marraige. i started doubting that she loved me for who i am, and that i was not worthy of her love.

 

Little by little i piled mistakes up inside myself until i started reached core elments of who i am and the one core that made me collapse was the one core from my past that i had not healed - my sexuality and the trust

associated with it. see, during my marriage, sex had been used as a justification by my wife to soften guilt and by me as a way of denial - we made something special cheap and a utility and removed the connections that makes sex not just an act but an inimate moment.

 

So finding myself with someone where this was not happening and that it created trust, i opened up again and wanted to talk all the time about how being initmate with her made me feel and how happy i was. But because she didn't feel the same way and i didn't tell her about why i felt this way, she began to think it was too much and so we ended up moving that discussion to email conversations a and she found that upseting and that was when i started to feel like there was something wrong with me, dirty, and i started my decent into depression.

 

now i have always claimed my depression lead to my addiction but i now believe that my addiction to cocaine, with its highs and lows, actually was the cause of my depression and when both hit me hard at the same time i started isolating and watching porn - and what that was about was me trying to find a way to express to her what i liked and did not like regarding sex because while she had always been able to communicate such things to me and i had no problem listening, i found it extremely difficult to do the same and found it embarassing.

 

So watching porn was basically me wanting to have a dialogue with her but being unable to and that made me further disconnect and feel worthless. That was all it was about - wanting to be able to say to her 'you know today, it would be great if we just....' but seeing that as selfish made me feel dirty and shamed me. So when i started going into chat rooms i was just askihng questions that i wanted to ask her. All this grew out of my withholding of information RIGHT FROM THE START because of insecurities. She knew this and always found a gentle way for me to open up ususally thru a confession of hers and that opened the door.

 

See, i never wanted her to 'save' me or 'fix' me but provide the 'reassurance' that i could trust because i had lost that ability. And this woman did everything humanly possible to break down every wall and did so so during a time where i was emotionally abusive to her and she never gave up, even her leaving was her helping, even her using NC, and everything else was her helping me in some way.

 

One day I realized that she was hurt so bad by all of this that she truly was frightened of me and no longer wanted me in her life in anyway, and that in her eyes i was no longer that loving man but a stalker and that hurt me so deep that i went into a period of alienation, where i became phcotic, believed that i hurt her so bad that she wanted to make me hurt more and somehow i imagined her having an affair with a friend of mine [because he disappeared as she did and i even called him stating i knew all about things - gawd] and then that turned into her being so concerned for her safety that she wanted me removed, and that drove me over the edge where i started doing things i felt to protect her, my daughter, my ex wife from people i thought wanted to harm them - those people were ME.

 

that is why i ran and almost died. I was delusional, hosiptalized almost on a form 1, but i have recovered. i have stopped dancing around the truth of the key problem - cocaine and my recovery means abstaince. what i have lost is not her or a great relastionship was my clairty, my judgement between right and wrong, my use of morals and values to guide me, my self-respect and freedom.

 

i have worked on regaining my self respect because it is what allows u to see the truth. it is what takes words of intent and matches them with actions, it is what helps you define who you are, and puts you in touch with the fear of using cocaine, it is the emotional attachment that removes the blindfold and stops you from focussing on getting back together with someone when reality tells you that will never happen and it opens you up to the world again and makes doing the things you don't want to do, doable and it removes

hurt, replaces it with empathy and acceptance that me time with her is truly OVER. i will always love her from afar, but, that is all, and i now can move on.

 

What a strange trip this has been.