HEADACHE!!!!!

 My life feels like a big headache right now. 

I'm not getting things accomplished and I cant figure out why. Maybe I need to start planning my time daily like a job. I get up when I want to, but its usually no later than 8:00 AM, and even on days when its earlier than that it seems like by the time I get finished simply getting my morning routines done its after 10 or even 11 AM. Like right now, its after 11:00 Am and I have yet to do a single productive thing. 

*sigh*

I signed up for classes for my Unmanned pilots license the other day. Yesterday was supposed to be the big day of class beginnings and I didn't do anything all day because of a crazy headache. I get "Aura Migraines". I have gotten them since 2008-2009 ish. Seems like they come in waves during stressful times. I woke up with one yesterday and the headache that followed stayed with me all day. 

The same thing happened this morning. I literally opened my eyes to see the turbo flashing of the zig-zag patters blooming in my vision and now I have a dull headache. Much improved from yesterday but still. 

God I'm SO tired of feeling bad all the time. I feel so unhealthy and gross. Aimless, and wandering through time day after day. Repeating bad behaviors that make me feel worse instead of improving myself. 

I miss Ray. I hate to say it but I do. Or maybe I just miss having someone in my life all the time. Even when he was not here I knew he was there somewhere. A steady "date" for the weekend, and even if I didn't want him sexually, he was just company. This past Friday I was going to make myself go out and play pins, but was delayed leaving and by the time I got ready to leave it was after 5:00 PM so I took off my "street clothes" and hibernated in my sweats the rest of the weekend. Unacceptable. I have to do things by myself. Ray was my only company for a long time so its an adjustment for sure. 

I don't want him back though. I really just want to move on but its hard to do that when he keeps sending me stuff. He's been sending me emails stating the same stuff over and over again. I block one address, then he sends me stuff from some new address. Last night I started getting text messages from a new number. 

So far I think he's sent me mail from 3 different email addresses, one of which came from some new web address that leads nowhere. Now this new phone number. I mean seriously? Does he think that's helping me trust him? All its doing is showing me how sneaky he really is. How many places he hides. 

I just want my life back. I miss happiness. I know I'm in charge of that happiness so I have to make myself do better.

 I will go to the gym today, right now in fact, and when I come home I will start my reading for my license. I will go to bed early tonight and not indulge. Tomorrow will be a better day. 

Getting my Courage Back

 Looking back to this time of year in 2020, before the world lost its mind and I seemed to have taken a nose dive, I wrote that I had gone back to The Wellness Center for the first time in years and it was like "coming home". Well, today I will be going to the new gym. Not for the first time, in general, but it will be for the first time before I have an actual shoot. 

I didn't intend to get up at 6:30 AM this morning, but my dog felt otherwise, so once I was up I decided why not get ready and go to the gym. I have to leave in about 20 minutes, and I'm nervous.

This will be my 3rd trip to this new gym. The first one was in the afternoon on a week day. Fairly light crowd, and lot of muscle heard and tight assed women. I did manage my full elliptical and also lower body on the machines with the exception of the ham string machine (which turns out is pretty important for me to do) because it is configured to have you ass-up with my lard butt basically in peoples faces so I decided to skip that one. 

Th second time was this past Sunday, and I only did elliptical. I had intended to do more but I was intimidated by the number and kind of people in there. 

I am going to have to overcome these feelings if I want this to work. I know I have a hard road ahead mentally and physically, but I want it to be a daily part of my life just like it was 2 years ago. I've repeatedly stated that if Covid19 had not happened there's no telling how different my life might be right now. I feel like I need to just time warp back to that head space and grab it. Hold on to it tightly and let it sink in. Maybe I can imagine that the tight assed 25 year old's in this new place are the 75 year old's at my old comfortable gym. 

Whatever I need to do to get my ass there daily in the morning is what I need to do. I need to get my courage back and JUST DO IT!

Off I go. 

1,088 Days, then Day 1

 1,088 days. That is how long I have been physically and mentally involved with Ray. Just shy of our 3 year anniversary. Even during our separation of 2 months in 2019 he was always in my head. 

When I agreed to meet up with him on Tuesday my heart was aching and my head was foggy with memories and doubt. I was doubting myself, and doubting my decision to end things with him. We were supposed to meet at the park, and so I went there with my puppy and walked through a beautiful field all the while thinking and praying out loud to God to please help me know what to do. 

The meeting was changed to the house when I got a call that a delivery was going to be made so I called him and told him to just come there because mom was not home. 

I got back to the house before he arrived and was in the back yard when he suddenly came out through the back door. It was strange to me to see him again. I had not seen him in almost 5 weeks, and I was glad when he hugged me and wanted to give me a kiss. He even brought me a white rose. 

My heart was torn because I felt very much like I needed to have this time away to make myself whole again, but I was also feeling like maybe this time he really would be different. Over the previous few days in spite of my request to have radio silence he had been texting me, asking....no, begging me to please reconsider, and during that one conversation we had on Friday, and then the last one on Tuesday before I met up with him, we got a lot of issues out and on the table. 

All of that stuff was going through my head, and while I was walking alone before we saw each other I thought about the things that I wanted to talk with him about. I didn't want to be distracted by his loving words and apologies, so when he got here, in spite of the flower, and the hugs and the warm words promising change and his deep and everlasting love, I stuck to my course. At one point he sat next to me, holding my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. He told me he loved me so much and wanted to marry me one day. He promised that all the things we had talked about we could work on together. He said he wanted to be here for me through all the bad things that I am facing, and that he would work hard to make a life for us in this home. 

Sounds great huh? I sure thought so, but even still, something in his eyes...I don't know...just didn't seem sincere. It was as if him saying this stuff was so unnatural to him he was a different person. He was fall of 2019 Ray. He was the Ray that made all those promises before and never kept them.

One of the things that has always bothered me was how he kept his phone so "secure". He was never far from it and never really wanted me to have my hands on it for very long. This always made me suspicious that he was hiding something, so while we were talking, I told him that, and he immediately proclaimed that from now on I could look at anything at any time. I said, "OK, let me see your phone." He said, "can we do it later?" "No, I want to see it now." I said. 

He gave it to me, and even as he handed it over deleted something in the hand off. I started looking, and it didn't take long to find what I had suspected all along. The first thing I saw was an email from match.com. I showed it to him and he claimed that it was an old account and he thought he had closed it. 

The second thing I saw was a text conversation from the day before with a woman that he evidently had been seeing in 2019, and had never deleted. He was asking her if she wanted to meet for lunch. Now I was getting upset. He defended that by telling me that I said we were done, and even though that was true, I still didn't understand how he could just jump into seeing someone all the while telling me he loved me and wanted to be with me forever. 

Then the real bomb dropped. I found a text stream with a woman that he had mentioned last fall. Eva. The sister in law of Larry, his buddy and band mate that lives near him. The very same Larry who has the football parties that Ray never wanted me to go to. Last fall I offered to drive over there to go with him to one and we got into an argument because he didn't want me to go. So much so that he said he wouldn't go at all which made me very upset because why would he rather not go at all than have me go with him? That very argument was part of what we had talked about, and he told me he acted that way just because he was being childish. I directly asked him about Eva too, and if he had slept with her, or had any kind of flirtation with her at all. He told me they were only friends and barely that. 

Well, the texts I found proved otherwise. Even as I was scrolling through them I was asking him about the "hugs" and "Kisses" he was sending her and he said he was just trying to be nice. When I got to New Years Day I stopped. That day, as I wrote in a post about that horrible weekend, he got up claiming to be sick, but still hung around for a couple of hours. At one point on that day I walked into the sunroom where he was laying on the sofa and he was texting someone, but when I came in he put the phone down. It was her. The were making plans to see each other that day, and he was just hanging around here until they were set, then he left. 

I lost my shit. We were sitting on the front steps and I told him he needed to leave now. He protested and I told him he was a liar and to GET THE FUCK OUT. Then...and I cant really believe it but it just proves how little this relationship actually meant to him...he wanted to go inside and "get the rest of his stuff". The man was more concerned with getting the pair of shoes that I had forgotten to pack up than what was happening. He continued to protest then switched to "I'm sorry I didn't mean to lie to you". 

In spite of me telling him he could not come inside he did anyway and for a minute I really thought, 'oh my god, what is going to happen? What if he really is crazy and now I'm alone in this house with him.' He followed me upstairs, all he while begging my forgiveness and trying to weasel his way out of what I had caught him in. He kept telling me he never slept with her or anyone else, and that he loved me soooo much. He even got on his knees and grabbed my legs. I almost kicked him in the face but thought better of it. I screamed at him to get out of my house. He finally got up and followed me back outside, where he again tried to keep talking his way out of it. I wasn't having it. I told him I never wanted to see him again and never to contact me again. 

Later I checked the Ring cameras and saw the exchange between us as he was finally leaving. Him trying to come back inside and me yelling NO at him and GET OUT. The last thing the camera caught was him exiting the garage, and as he was getting in his car, his voice totally changing to calm, with no sign of even being mildly upset, saying "oh well". Just like one would if you bought a lotto ticket, checked the numbers and saw that you had yet again lost, but no big deal. 

I didn't cry about it until last night. In spite of my telling him to leave me alone he still has been emailing me, and in one from last night he admitted sleeping with Eva, all the wile trying to gaslight me into thinking it was somehow all caused by me making him feel so unloved and so insecure. I finally responded to that and ripped into him. I told him he disgusted me. I also told him that if he didn't leave me alone I would take all these emails where he is still telling me he loves me and that basically this Eva woman means nothing to him at all, and send them to his buddy, his buddy's wife and Eva herself as well as his entire family so they can all see what a piece of shit he really is. he sent a couple of similar responses then they stopped. 

I was, and am furious about this. All the time wasted on what I sincerely thought might be the person I would spend the rest of my life with. All the money I spent on him. All the friendships and family stress being with him caused. All of it. It makes me sick. 

Yesterday I joined a gym up the street. the same gym that I was at when my father died. I had decided that I needed this change before all this happened, and going there yesterday made me feel so good, only to read all that last night and end up feeling bad. 

I woke up this morning sad and feeling very deflated. I had a bad day in general. I didn't get to the gym because of physical therapy, but I guess I need to give myself a break. Ill get there tomorrow. 

When I came home from therapy and errands there was a box of flowers outside the garage door, from Ray of course. I got them in the house, unpacked them, and read the note. 

"You are my heart - Love Ray" 

I broke down. I didn't want to cry about this anymore, but suddenly in that moment I realized just how much he really had meant to me, and how much I really did love him. It also became clear that all of those precious moments that I had hoped to keep in my mind as fond memories were all lies and I could never trust that anything he told me was true. 

When I started this break up process I sincerely struggled with it, and in the end had come to the conclusion that although we loved each other we just simply wanted different things in our lives. I had hoped to part ways and be able to be friends in time. All of that was shattered when I discovered just how much of a con artist he really is. A friend of mine was gracious enough to look him up this morning in state  and county records and there is a laundry list of bad debt, evictions, and even an assault charge against him. He had told me about that, but his version was that it was his horrible abusive ex wife and that the charges had been false so they were dropped. What she found was that it was some guy named Craig that evidently he had had a fight with, and it was bad enough to go beyond the simple mistake he claimed it was. Also, she couldn't find any record of him having her removed from the house and a restraining order put on her. Finally, she couldn't find his divorce, which was supposed to have happened in January of 2020. He even showed me the papers that had been signed. I was left dumbfounded. I mean, who IS this man? Is he crazy? Is he dangerous? Or is he just a guy that had a really bad life and thought he saw a savior in me, but still wanted his old life too, and enjoyed the many benefits that came with being my boyfriend. It doesn't matter. All of it is bad, and he just doesn't seem to get it. I NEVER EVER want to see him again, but he just keeps on coming like he really has not done anything wrong enough to justify my anger. 

Even in his emails to me, that I have now discovered are still coming in spite of my warning to stop, he still thinks we are meant to be together. I'm so tired of all of this. I want to wake up tomorrow and be happy again, so I will MAKE myself happy again. I'm going to go to the gym, and maybe when I come home and get cleaned up Ill go play pinball a while. Then Ill make a nice dinner for me and my mom. Sounds like a good day. Yeah there is a ton of actual work that I need to be doing so I can get my business rolling again, but right now I just want to do happy things tomorrow and start the work week on Monday. 

Tomorrow needs to be DAY 1 of my new life. A life where I am happy with myself and my choices. A life that is healthy, and full of gratitude for all the wonderful things and people that I have in my life, and void of those that would take advantage of me and hurt me. 

I will have to be strong. I will take any future emails from him and store them away without reading them, keeping them only in case he does something stupid. God I hope that will never happen. I hope he just eventually gets tired of waiting for me to respond and goes away. If he doesn't, well, Ill cross that bridge if I have to. 

Its bed time and my mind and body are very tired. I'm so lucky that I have such a good support system in my friends and family. I am grateful. Yes, very grateful indeed. Day 1, here I come. 

This

Taking Chances

Well I did it. I mailed him his things and said goodbye. 

Now I am in a place that I am familiar with and unfortunately I don't know how to handle it. In 2019 when I broke up with R he was fine for a month. Then when he discovered that I was dating someone else he flipped a switch and suddenly started pursuing me like crazy. 

That's what has happened in the last 4 days. I talked to him on Friday before he got his box of things. Maybe that was where I made a mistake, but I wanted to do this in a way that would allow us to remain friends at some point. During that conversation he repeatedly asked me not to give up and to please reconsider. I told him I needed a month of zero contact to get myself started on a better path, and he was shocked. So much so that I told him just 7 days. I just wanted to get that ball of zero contact rolling. He agreed, and we hung up. 

He didn't last 24 hours. 

I'm exhausted mentally and physically and I don't know what to do. I do love R, and I have said it over and over that if I thought it would work Id never stop trying. This attempt to keep me talking to him instead of listening to me and respecting my wishes is just proving to me that he is incapable of  real change and that if I went back to him he would be great for a while then revert right back into who he really is. 

I tried to tell him all this just now on the phone, and instead of telling him no to everything I agreed to go meet him at a park that's near my house in a little bit. Its probably a huge mistake but my feeling is that I will do this for him, and then ask again that he respect my wishes to be left alone and if he doesn't do it, then it really is over. 

I realize this is taking a chance that I probably don't need to give him yet again, but I want to see his face one last time, if it is really the last one. 

Gone Baby Gone - The Uncomfortable Zone.

 Its almost been a month since R left my home, unknowingly, to never come back. 

This past week has been hard in many ways, not the least of which was getting into what I hope is a final argument over text with R.  It was not my intention to end things over text. I had hoped to have a quiet conversation with him about it, but I guess that was going to be impossible. 

Every time I tell him the things that have bothered me all these years he gets defensive and tells me he's doing the best that he can, and that I am causing all this by living in fear.

He's right to some degree. I do fear change. I also fear the unknown.

I certainly could just keep things the way they are. I have actually even though it was making me unhappy, but the universe is screaming at me to get off my ass and make the life for myself that I want. I've been hearing the cry for a long time, and all the things that have lead to this moment have pushed me even further to the edge. I have resisted, I have struggled, and I have at times just given up, letting things remain the same. Its so much easier to just go along. Fighting for what you want is much much harder. 

I thought that Iden dyeing, and the 2 weekends that followed were the final straw, but I was still having doubts that breaking things off with him was a mistake. That was, until Monday when I found out that my oldest sister is in such bad health that she has significantly shortened her life. I'm not going to say she is dying because I cant wrap my head around that, and its also not true...yet. Right now she is fighting for her life. Not in the hospital, but in her head and her body.  

My sister used to be my best friend, but as much as I love her, she is also toxic to be around. She never had bad intentions but I can look back through the years of posts on this blog and see what an impact living with her for so long had on my life in a negative way. When I finally broke free of her my life changed. It was hard work, but it did, and eventually we came to a place where we could be friends again without her life choices rubbing off on me as much. Even then there were many many times when I would fall right back into those old bad habits with her. Why? Because it was comfortable. 

Comfort. What is it to be comfortable? Is it the way your pants fit? Is it the ease (or unease) you feel in the company of strangers? Is it the way a cookie might make you feel calm when you are in anguish? Is it a hug when you need it? It is indeed all of these things and much more. Comfort can be a wonderful thing and every living thing on this earth needs it to some degree. What I have learned is that there are different types of comfort, and not all of them are good. 

I can honestly say that I am comfortable with Ray, but not in a good way. The comfort I feel in him comes from him just being here. When I say "here" obviously I don't mean just in my presence because that is part of our issues. What I mean is that if I left things alone, I mean really just let things ride like they are and allowed my life to flow on the stream that HE is comfortable with, I am sure he would be in my life forever. There is a part of me that wishes I could just let go of the things I really want to experience in my life with another person. I know people that have done just that, but I also know they are not really happy inside. They stay in their relationships "for the kids", or, like me, fearing the onset of age and having to put myself out there again to start anew with someone else. Assuming that that chance is even out there. 

I have a friend that is happily married, on husband #2, and she had to make that choice several years ago. She could have stayed married for the kids, but she was unhappy, and finally after a "last straw" kind of event, she finally broke free. I know she struggled financially to a degree, and had many other issues to overcome because of that choice, but she got out. She saved herself, and now she's married to the RIGHT person. Oh I've seen them have issues too, but look, I'm not delusional. I know nothing is perfect and I know that even the best relationships struggle at times, but I feel like those couples have something that holds them together beyond money or kids. I cant say what that is exactly, because I've never had it myself. I think though, it must be the love and trust of that other person. Knowing, REALLY knowing, who that person is, and for the most part, liking the same things. 

Can you really KNOW another person? I myself have never had that experience, but I have to think that those people that have these successes do know each other as much as humanly possible. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe that's part of what R is talking about when he says I have expectations for people that are unreasonable. Or, maybe he himself has never experienced it and because of that, it doesn't exist. I can tell you, it does not exist between us, and after 3 years, my thought is, its never going to. 

I'm melancholy today. Its raining yet again. I feel like the last 3 months have been a true test to every part of my body, mind and spirit. The weather has been like this, or just grey, more often than bright and sunny which in a way is fitting since that's been the way I have felt. Its time to make my own sunshine. Sometimes you just have to decide to be happy. 

I cant be totally happy today because I'm packing up Rs things into a box and shipping them UPS to his house. I know this is going to blindside him and he will be sad, mad, and broken hearted. His happiness has been tied to being with me, which I can understand but is also unhealthy. I don't think that those couples that seem to have a good solid relationship tie their complete happiness to their mate. I think they are happy as individuals, and even have different interests to a degree but at their core, they really do like the same things which allows them to enjoy those things together. That, I believe, is the other half of the equation. Knowing someone and having interests that you like to do together, not just for the other persons sake. Do people do things for the sake of their mates? Of course, but the core things they like to do with each other because they already liked them before they met. I think you can also be introduced to new things and grow to like them, but the bottom line is , you DO like them. 

R told me all the time that the reason he does the things that I like to do is because him liking them is not important. He says that just being with me is what's important. I've told him over and over that I don't want him to do things just because I want to do them if he doesn't like it. It goes round and round and just like every other issue we have, gets nowhere. 

I can appreciate his efforts to do things that I enjoy just for my sake, and I would hope that he would grow to like them as well. That really hasn't happened and he uses it as a pedestal to preach to me on, which of course makes me feel like an ass. How can I get mad at someone who sacrifices himself so often just to make me happy?  The more I think about it, the more it makes me feel manipulated. Of course if you asked him he'd be all "Oh so me being a nice guy and accommodating your needs is a bad thing?"

My needs. I think I just grasped what he thinks fulfilling my needs means. The pool is a great example. I love swimming. I love to be by the pool. Literally in the summer on the weekends that's pretty much all I want to do, which he has known since I met him. How did he know? Because in our first communications on line when you are asking the other person what they like etc.. I told him. It was also on my profile. That's what you do. You tell people your likes and dislikes hoping to meet someone who is compatible and has similar interests. I think to him, when he sits outside in the 98 degree heat beside the pool in long pants and rarely gets in the water he is meeting my need to be outside by the pool. He's sacrificing his comfort just to be with me. Its the same thing when people come over. He plays nice to people he calls sheep just to make me happy. It a nice gesture, but its also ridiculous, and I doubt sustainable. No one can do things they really don't want to do for the long haul without consequences. For us, these came out through his constant need to remind me of what a good boyfriend he has been, doing all these things just for my sake. What he has never gotten in spite of me telling him this, is that any enjoyment I might have is being lessened by the fact that I know he is unhappy and would rather be doing something else. What would he like to be doing instead? I really don't know. Honestly, I don't. I mean I know he's a musician, but I've only ever seen him play music on old videos. Other than that hobby, I don't have a clue. 

I have always thought we have a lot in common, but maybe we really don't. If he is "sacrificing" his own likes and needs under the guise of being this great boyfriend that cares nothing for his own personal comfort because just simply being present in my space is enough, then not only do we not have things in common, but I have no idea what he actually does like. 

This also means that I don't really know him, and because he has never ever made a real effort to let me into his life, in his own personal space, I never will. I think in his mind, he thought one day he would leave his space behind and be a part of mine, but that was never going to happen without me getting to know him in his own environment. That's a discussion we had repeatedly too, and just like the rest of them it went nowhere. 

I keep writing more and more about him and the things that are wrong, and I know that is a lot of negativity. I hope that I am getting it out of my system through this. I feel like I've been poisoning my body for so long. Not just with negative mental things but physically too. My unhappiness has always manifested in food and alcohol abuse, and its been totally out of control for the past 2 years. 

Monday after my sister told me her diagnosis, Portal Vein Hypertension with Ascites, I read a lot about it. Its bad. My sister was told almost 3 years ago that she had to quit drinking and she didn't. Now, after having a game changing ER visit that turned into a 3 day hospital stay, she is home and sober. She says she's been sober now for 3 weeks or so. Quit smoking too. She did these things finally because she literally was about to die. I really hope she sticks to it, because one drink more and that's it. As it is, her chances of living another 5 years are about 50/50. 

My sister knew she was in trouble but she didn't want to believe it. She was happy and living her life the way she wanted to. Shes' married to a man that would walk on fire for her, and she loves him just as much, but for some reason, she didn't love him, or maybe herself, enough to quit before the real damage was done.  What a life she has given up. They could have had 30 more years together or more. Now they absolutely will not unless she, by some miracle, gets well enough to get a liver transplant. I cant believe this is happening to her. To us. Our family. She and I have had a strained relationship at best ever since R entered my life. I understand why to a degree, but maybe I was being stubborn too. I know she wants me to be happy, and I think even though it took a long time to happen, we both finally realized that we were never going to be able to be as close as we once were with  her husband in the picture. She always thought I was jealous, and maybe I was. Not of her having John, because I would NOT want to have him as a mate, but I would like to have someone that loves me as much as he loves her. John and I have never really gotten along, and sometimes I have blamed him for her being such a mess too. There's a part of me that thinks that he should have quit drinking 3 years ago and MADE her do the same. I also know that my sister runs that family and she was going to do what she wanted to do regardless, because she knew he would never leave her no matter how bad it got.  

I guess my point is, she's happy, and I don't understand how she could have just let it all go just for a drink. That being said, the day I got this news the first thing I wanted to do was get a glass of wine, but I didn't. Scared straight? Maybe, but I'll take it. The last 2 days I've had drinks, but a whole lot less, and I've already scheduled a Dr appointment for Tuesday next week to get all my shit checked. 

What if I get the same warning that she did 3 years ago? Will I blow if off like she did? I guess when its you that are in that situation its different, but I have to believe whatever they say about my health that I will take what's happening to her and make those changes that I have been writing about for years. I mean seriously, do I really need another message from the universe telling me to make changes now?

I wish with all my heart that Ray and I could have a life together, but the reality is, I've been dating a man for 3 years that I only know in a limited way and that's just not enough. I want more. I deserve more. Maybe it wont happen for me, but I cant stay where I am even if that's true.  

I've got to make myself uncomfortable to move forward. I've got to do things that I don't want to do, period. Change is so hard. So uncomfortable. I have to find new ways of comforting myself. Food and booze are not the answer, and neither is staying in a relationship that doesn't work. 

I'm off to do what exercise I can, and then I am going to pack those things in a box and go to UPS, no matter how hard, or uncomfortable it is.