Forgiveness

Though I should be writing the Reading Clinic Report due tomorrow evening for grad school, my heart and head are so full that I need to write, to relieve some pressure of swirling emotions so that the logical side of my head can come out to work. It's been awhile since I've allowed myself to open the door and step into the fog of grief. At least two weeks. It feels like progress-- not that long ago, I couldn't go two hours without being hit by pain. I'm in therapy, once a week daily, and it helps. I'm focusing on me--doing the things that I need to do, and right now they primarily include working towards my Master's and achieving tenure at my job.

This week, my T started to talk about forgiveness--if I could forgive Apache for the past year of pain. I can forgive him for a lot of things. I can forgive him for cheating on me. I can forgive him for recycling me over and over again. I can forgive him for promising me a future and then taking it away from me. I can forgive those things because I know that his deployment has a major factor in this because things were different with him immediately off the plane. I can forgive because I love him and his family and I'm so very grateful that I helped him come home. I meant the last thing that I said to him-- I hope that he can find happiness one day inside of himself, without another person.

I can't forgive being abandoned and I can't forgive him allowing her to hurt me. Being abandoned--blocked from Facebook and left without a way of contacting him--outside of email-- hurts because it makes me feel like he doesn't care about me at all. Not a day goes by where I don't wake up and wish that I could talk to him about his day. Outside of the relationship aspect, I miss that connection and friendship that we had. He understood me and he didn't judge me. How could he block that all away without another thought?

My therapist suggested something that I never thought of before. Could the silence--the blocking of all contact be Apache's greatest act of love for me? He knew that our relationship was destroying me, cell by cell. He knew that I had been put on heavy duty anxiety meds at the end of our relationship. He knew that my body was starting to break down from the mental and emotional toll. I know that he had conversations with friends and family about how I didn't deserve to be hurt like that. He even told me that--one night after had texted me while we were broken up-- he said that he knew he should just let me move on and heal.

Is that what he's doing? Removing himself from my life because he knows me well enough to know that I won't heal or get over him while in contact with him? Could the angry, cold exterior really be a way of protecting me from him? And, we had recycled so many times, could he had known that the only way for us to break up--which no matter how much it hurts, I know that we needed, though I wished for a temporary breakup--was to go completely no contact?

In all reality, this is probably the denial talking. I'm sure he's moved on and that's the reason for the silence. I'm sure that I never cross his mind, and when I do, it's with anger. I don't know what the reality of the situation is. How he truly feels about me and why this happened the way it did. I know that it is best for me to believe the worst-case-scenario answer-- to understand that he hates me and i deserve it and that is not going to change. Not now. not ever.

Removing myself from the dramatic equation

Remember those equations in high school or college math that no matter how hard you try you will never be able to solve. It doesn't matter how hard you try or how many formulas you apply to try to understand, you won't because something are just unsolvable?

My life has been like that over the past year. So many different equations in all areas of my life that have been impossible to solve, and I haven't made a move on them yet.  Breaking up with Apache forced me out of the biggest unsolvable equation, but there were other negative relationships that I've been dealing with over the past few months. As I may have mentioned, I'm seeing a therapist who has been invaluable over the last few months. One of the biggest things we have talked about, other than my pain about Chris, has been how I seem to find myself at the center of drama. And we've worked on strategies about how to get out of that. It's a strategy I call "removing myself from the equation." As Susan says, "Let 'X' equal someone else for a while."

The last negative situation in my life has been the situation with my roommate (Cruella) and I. I moved in with Cruella, a fellow teacher, in June, just after my breakup with Apache. Things weren't perfect from the beginning, but i figured they'd smooth over. They got worse after she had her scumbag boyfriend move in "temporarily" in mid-August. Temporarily, hah. yeah right.  Things came to a head this weekend after the condo association sent us a letter citing us for having two dogs; both are hers. The complex only allows one, and, furthermore, she walks the dogs on the property, which is a no no, even though she cleans up.  Talking to her about it this morning, I found out that our landlord asked when I was moving out, because apparently Cruella told her I was only there "temporarily." NEWS TO ME!  I politely told her I would be out by the end of the week, packed up my clothes and that cat, and went to my parents.  Removing myself from the equation. It's for the best, because the drama situation is only going to get worse,  because she has no plans of getting rid of either dog, and the association is pissed.

In other news, I'm sorry that I haven't been on as much. Being back to teaching has made me a hermit as I struggle to juggle work, grad school, and seeing Magic. Its near impossible to juggle all three most days, especially when I'm depressed, as I have been on and off. As for my weight, I'm doing the best I can. I really don't have enough time to make it to the gym consistently, but I've just been trying to watch what I eat. I know that I'm gaining, cause the pics I took today with my friends at today's Renaissance Faire visit look hideous, but I'm doing what I can with what time I have.