Warning! A Lifetime of Crazy on the Loose

I started cleaning up my drafts, trashing those I don’t want to keep anymore. I almost trashed this. It was one of the first things I started on this blog and it has sat in drafts ever since. I sat here staring at the words wondering about the last line and wondering why did I hesitate? I still almost trashed it, but *rolls eyes* (#reverb10 has me in its clutches) it is a good opportunity to put something else to rest and not carry it into next year.

“I just want to hear you say… You’re committed”

Commit myself to being with the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. The man whose arms I want around me as I sleep, the man I want to wake to every morning.

“And if you say anything thats halfway tentative like ‘I will try‘ close your mouth, I dont want to hear it”

I lay for hours staring at the ceiling trying to imagine a future without him in it, a life without his love. I couldn’t. I still can’t.

“Please, tell me you’re going to do everything you can to be with me”

It had been 48 hours and still I hesitated to say the words he needed to hear.

I had walked away, then come back as I couldn’t imagine my life without him. Even though I came back I still hesitated to say it. Why? I know why I walked away, I know why I came back. I know I was hurt by things he’d said before the ultimatum. It doesn’t explain why I came back and couldn’t say the words. We almost walked away from each other because I couldn’t. Yes, in the end I did and I meant it. That was the last week of September… less than 3 months ago. I began to take action, began to make the changes in my life that I needed to make, to be with him.

Only one problem… The relationship was doomed already, even before this. I’ll explain why I believe this further down.

I opened up Skype and loaded up the last 3 months of our conversation. I wanted to look back at that time. I began reading a few weeks before. I had forgotten how much pain I was in during that time. In a single unthinking moment I snapped and wanted to die. I accelerated towards an intersection. That happened a couple of weeks before the ultimatum.

I have something to confess sweetheart
I became suicidal last week |-(
when I left the office last wednesday, I was devastated, tired, I’d had enough
I almost drove into an intersection
I only accelerated for a few seconds before I realised what I was doing and I pulled over
I sat there for a long time crying, telling myself it’s worth living
everything was so dark. even when i did drive home it was like it was night time,hard to see anything
the following days are a blur
I don’t know what happened to thursday
i keep thinking the next night I was sitting in my room staring at my wrists, saying I can survive one more day, one more day and the next is easier, but I think that was Friday night when the kids had gone to the party. thursday is gone in my memory lol
saturday night, I no longer felt like I wanted to die, but I felt like such a failure, that you really would be better off without me
the sense of failure
I couldn’t step past that
I know things had been getting bad, the whole stress/allergy thing says that clear enough
on wednesday something inside snapped
sweetheart, I need to hold on to the knowledge of you, be selfish and want you. (that’s not quite the words I’m looking for) it was like… letting you go on without me was the only ‘good’ thing I was capable of doing anymore.

I had forgotten. Well, not forgotten. *looking for the right words* The pain of the days following the night of the ultimatum drowned the pain I had been in when I almost drove into the intersection. At least in my memories. I reread this whole period surrounding the intersection and the ultimatum.

I cried as I read. The tears started and wouldn’t stop. I went and sat outside, thinking about the words, the tears, the pain. I have a little mantra I’ve been using lately “Feel the pain. Joy will come”. I have a lifetime of practice setting aside emotions so I’ve been using that to remind myself I need to feel the pain now, so that I’ll still be able to feel later.

Anyway, I sat outside. There was a lot of pain. More than the words I’d read could account for. More than the pain of later betrayal could account for. There was the pain of a lifetime. My mantra wanted to fail, but I let myself feel the pain. The future had better be worth feeling all this *glares at the world*

Then I began thinking about the words ” the sense of failure. I couldn’t step past that”. These words really do hold a lifetime of pain behind them. Nothing else in that snippet of conversation comes close. Understanding came.

When I met Chris in 2009 I was detached from my emotions. They were all locked away inside. I’ve read that we all have times that we detach, even if just for a moment. Sometimes we look in the mirror and say… Who are you? We kind of detach, we come back. It passes. I had detached years ago. I could no longer be in touch with myself. Chris saw this and decided to take the risk to bring me back. He didn’t tell me what he was going to do. I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. I thought I was perfectly ordinary. Detached? Not really here? Shall we test out our wings? He told me afterwards that he spent months waiting for that moment he could pull me out. At times he thought it would never come.

This is one period of Skype conversation I wish I still had, but it’s gone with my old hard drive. I wish I’d saved parts of it. I have my memories of the sense of awe… for weeks. Feeling like every experience was the first time. Water running over my hand. Sitting in the sun. Looking in the mirror and feeling like I was seeing myself for the first time. I could sit outside and be lost for hours feeling the breeze trace patterns across my skin. I was very cat-like for weeks. Every sensation brought such pleasure. The first time I stood in the shower, the water running over me… Mmmm, I thought I’d orgasm just from the pleasure.

Edit: Having added posts I did on another site to this blog, I found this post hidden over there describing how I felt. It’s something and at least it was written at the time rather than the memory I carry now.

He told me he expected me to breakdown, to feel the pain I’d locked away for so many years to come crashing down. To feel it, accept it and let it become a part of me in a healthy way. Yes, I’ve had many breakdowns since that time, many times when it felt like I couldn’t accept the pain and let it be part of me. We passed each hurdle and moved on.

The thing I realised as I thought on the words “the sense of failure. I couldn’t step past that” was that I still carry the pain from the past. Some of it is gone. But.  Every time I feel something, it’s like I feel all the pain associated with that feeling. A word, a song, an action could trigger the past and I would begin to lose myself in the pain. It’s why I hesitated after the ultimatum. He had already hurt me before the words of the ultimatum. A small hurt, but it carried the pain of my lifetime with it. The following line says it all for me…

I don’t understand how it goes from ‘dancing in the kitchen while making lunch’ to ‘i fail and i see now i always will’

At least I understand now. It’s like learning I still have to find a way to cross the Grand Canyon every time I come across a crack in the sidewalk. This is why I believe the relationship was already doomed. No relationship can survive what I continually put it through. Almost like a rebound relationship won’t survive, we couldn’t survive my rebound from the past. I couldn’t communicate what I needed in the relationship to feel safe, since every little need carried the past with it. I even waited a week to tell him about the intersection *shakes head* It really was doomed.

It’s a not so short warning to everyone… there’s a lifetime of crazy on the loose inside this woman. Proceed with caution.