Let's Take it From the Top

Last post I asked my few (but no less loved!) readers to ask any questions to help with the recent writer's block jag. So, here we go.

First question:
"-how you decided to "forgive" him and try to make things worse???" (I'm going to assume here that she meant how I tried to make things better, and not worse. Am I right, Wanda??)

I admit, it took a LOT for me to be able to push this whole incident of his cheating to the back of my mind and move on. I would think it's safe to say that most women have this ingrained fear of being second best, or not measuring up. When someone cheats on you, it's easy to give in to that fear and let it consume you. I really had to take a big step back from our relationship at that point. I had to learn that The Ex cheating on me was HIS problem, not mine. He cheated for reasons having nothing at all to do with me. Only HE was responsible for his actions. I know that I kept wrestling with the idea that if I had been a better person, nicer, prettier, more SOMETHING that it wouldn't have happened. But that's really not the case. Once I came to realize that it wasn't my fault he cheated I had to make the decision to either leave him or to forgive him and move forward.

I was raised to believe that it's important to forgive people. People deserve second chances (and, obviously in this case, third and fourth and fifth chances too). We broke up for a couple weeks while I was dealing with this betrayal. We stayed in contact and The Ex took every opportunity to show me how sorry he was. I truly felt that deep down, he WAS sorry. I could tell he felt ashamed of what he'd done, and the fact that he told me right away instead of hiding it from me said a lot for him.

Honestly, I wanted to forgive him a lot sooner than I did, but I felt like I had this point to prove. I had to make him know that he couldn't betray me like that without some sort of consequence. When I eventually did decide that I would forgive him and give our relationship another try, I was so cold to him. I would get into these moods where I would just say the most scathing, hurtful things to him in some twisted attempt to make him hurt as much as I had. And perhaps if I was doing those things to him, I hadn't TRULY forgiven him, not completely. I'm not proud of the way I treated him after that, but I understand where those feelings came from.

A lot of work on my part went into rebuilding my trust in him. Right away I made him get screened for STD's, and for a long time after that there was very little physical contact between us. Even holding his hand would make me cringe. My overactive imagination would play these scenes of him with her over and over in my mind. I kept thinking "he touched HER with those hands." or "she was here, in this room, on his bed." The best way to describe how I felt at that point was un-safe. I don't know how to explain it exactly, except that it felt like all the familiar things about him were no longer just mine. All the things that I thought were shared only between us were now tainted by this outside person he had chose to let in.

Eventually, over time, things got a little easier to deal with. The wounds from this healed over but left proof that they were there at one point. I would constantly catch myself doubting his loyalty, lashing out at him when I thought he had done something shady. And maybe I never completely got over it...

A Lightbulb Went Off

At 5:30 this morning, when I woke up next to the most fabulous boy ever, I got a really great idea:

Dear readers, you can help me get over this "blah" non-writing period. Send me some suggestions, things about this whole ordeal that you're curious about. Or ask me some questions. Something, ANYTHING to get the ball rolling again.

Do my dirty work.

Thanks in advance.

XOXO

It's Been A While...

I haven't written in almost 3 weeks. Writer's block. There is just so much to say. It could easily come pouring out, spilling forth in a way that would probably only ever make sense to me.
How do you tell the world all the thoughts swirling around inside your head in a way that they can understand and relate to? Maybe this isn't so much "writer's block" as it is "writer's flood".
I want this to come out smoothly, making complete sense, no wrinkles or hang-ups to figure out. No tangled webs to sift through.

I want to talk about the things we sacrifice to be with someone, and all the ways it's so easy to lose yourself along the way. I want to talk about getting swept up in something bigger than yourself, and finding that it wasn't where you wanted to go at all. I want to talk about the fights, the drama with almost-in-laws. I want to talk about sticking up for myself, FINALLY.

So there's a sort of map to where this journey will go. There will be more stops on the way. Let me finish sorting this out.

Public Service Announcement to Unwelcome Commenters

"so all i have to ask is you cheated on him the day after you two made it official! Look i am ok with u saying these things but dont think that you are the good one in this. It takes two to make it work and there are many things i could write to make u look as bad as anthony on this so maybe u should write about the truth in the next one!"


Someone who chose the enormously intelligent moniker "tokeindbuds" left that comment for me on my last entry. (By the way, were they possibly "tokeindbuds" when they wrote that comment? Holy Bad Grammar, Batman!)

First of all, I never once claimed to be "the good one". I never once said that I did not have my own transgressions and mistakes in this relationship. But this is MY story, from MY point of view. If The Ex would like to go ahead and write his version of things, he is more than welcome to.

I didn't plan on mentioning this until later entries, but I am almost certain that NOTHING I did ever amounted to The Ex going to jail for threatening to "bash [your] head in with a hammer" and choking me with his bare hands on TWO seperate occasions.

If anyone out there feels that what I am doing is wrong or deceitful or one-sided, then don't read this. I am telling 100% of the truth. If you can't handle it, move along. If you are The Ex, or one of his "bud toking" friends, I would say your time would be better spent elsewhere. In the future, any further comments from the peanut gallery will be deleted.

P.S. Hey, Ex-fiance, go ahead and thank your friend for telling everyone out there your name. Notice how I chose to keep you anonymous, and your friend called you out. Perhaps someone was a little too high to remember to use some discretion.

P.P.S. This so-called "cheating" that Super Stoner alludes to was a kiss. One. A far cry from sleeping with someone else while completely inebriated on pills and alcohol after telling someone you love them just a few weeks earlier.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

The Things We Let Ourselves Overlook

Sometimes in relationships it's easy to ignore the enormous red flags that are so obvious that they practically slap us in the face. WHY do we do this? Is it that whole "love is blind" aspect of the relationship? And do any of us TRULY believe love is blind? I would say the adage "love is in denial" is more accurate. Saying love is blind implies that there is simply NO knowledge of the wrongdoings of our lover at all. Saying love is in denial implies that we know EXACTLY what is going on, that we feel every transgression and sleight, and still choose to ignore it in the name of love.
Normally after a relationship is over, it's easy to inventory and catalog all the hurtful, crazy, horrible and vile things our ex has done to us. It's easy to pinpoint exactly what happened to cause a shift in the way the relationship functioned. After my relationship with The Ex was over, I actually found myself saying "yes, right there, right that VERY second, the rift opened up." Sadly, this rift occured when our relationship was still in it's forming stages, and while I was not completely innocent myself, it was he, not I, who pulled the single thread that unraveled everything...

The Ex and I started dating in August 2002. In a few short weeks, I was leaving for college and wasn't terribly keen on jumping into something serious. But he came along. He was my complete and exact opposite in most ways. While I do believe that opposites attract to some extent, having similarities really does come in handy. You need to have your personality-paths cross at some point, otherwise you are eternally running parallel to each other.

I left for school, and things were okay for a while. It was strange getting used to doing the "long-distance relationship" thing, but we made it work. I was only living an hour away, and we both made time to see each other on weekends. By January we considered ourselves exclusive. February came around, and we made plans for Valentine's Day. (My memory gets a little cloudy here, as it often does when we have tried to block something out for so long.) Less than a week after Valentine's Day, I was at school, getting ready for some big tests I had coming up when I received an Instant Message from The Ex, telling me we needed to talk. Now, most of you know that NOTHING GOOD comes of a conversation that starts off this way. Ever. I called him immediately, and I could hear the slightest change in his voice. Something big had happened. I begged for him to tell me whatever it was he had to say, and he insisted that he had to tell me in person. I dropped everything and drove an hour home where he was waiting for me. We went for a drive, and only made it about a mile away from my house before he dropped the bomb...

He had slept with someone else.

I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea of someone, who just told me a few weeks earlier that he loved me, completely betraying my trust that way. I felt my eyes fill with tears, but I REFUSED to let him see me cry. I asked him to pull over his car and I got out and walked the rest of the way home.

In short, that was Red Flag numero uno. But, as betrayed lovers often do, I forgave him. But I could never forget. There was always that nagging little voice in the back of my mind, reminding me over and over that he could do it again. And maybe that isn't entirely fair of me, to offer up a second chance, but still not truly ever let it go.
That one little transgression on his part, no, not little, MONUMENTAL...set in motion a slippery slide to the detriment of our relationship. The seed of doubt was planted, and in my mind, a jungle sprang forth.

Doubt and mistrust will destroy a relationship faster than anything else, but you don't always see the effects until it's too late.

A little honesty goes a long way.

I really didn't want to mix topics here, but recent awesome-nosity in the new relationship department is causing some SERIOUS writer's block on this end.

It is VERY hard to write about the tumultuous crap that The Ex has put me through when I am on Cloud-9 with The Boyfriend. You would think that such a stark difference between the two would send me reeling with tons of new material to regale you with. Unfortunately, that is just not the case.

Maybe it's the holiday season that has put me in such a fibbity-fabulous mood that I can't be bothered to drudge up the past and relive that dark time right now. It is true that angst and sadness are the best muses, and my dark muse is LONG gone at the moment.

So, until that shadow comes wandering back in, I'll hold off on updating. This journal is meant to be a true account of the roller-coaster that was the last 5 years of my life, and I don't want to let anything muddle that up.

Good morning, can I muddle up your life?

I have been trying to figure out how to best go about organizing this new blog. I know my main focus here is going to be telling the story of how I became a Runaway Bride. However, I think I will get too bogged down if I try to tell it from the beginning all in one straight shot, so I'll probably bounce around quite a bit. And guess what...I'm allowed to do that, because it's MY blog. :p

This morning, right as I got into work (late.) I received a text message from someone unexpected...The Dreaded X. It said "Could you stay outta my dreams already?" Hmph. Well. Could you stay out of my INBOX already! Since calling off the wedding almost 6 months ago, our conversation has mostly been limited to discussing the house we're trying to sell, and that is just fine by me. I am perfectly okay with not talking to him. On the other hand, it seems he always manages to find some way to contact me every so often. Just when my life is flowing along smoothly, not a care in the world, BAM! I'm hit with some completely random email, text, phone call that I could have done without. As much as I've tried to ignore it, it somehow always manages to knock me off balance. If any of you have any of those lingering ex's out there, you know what I'm talking about. The ex's that always manage to pop up again when it is least conveniant. It's like they have some sixth sense about when your life is going so great and some little alarm goes off signaling them to come crashing in again, mucking everything up.

This particular breed of ex, the Ex Fiance, is an especially stubborn one. For weeks after we broke up, he would call me, begging for another chance. Even going so far as showing up at my office and actually getting on his knees in front of the building, lip trembling, asking me to change my mind. It was something right out of a movie. Not one of those adorable Romantic Comedies, for sure. More like the most PAINFULLY embarrassing scene in the WORST B-movie sob-fest that you've ever seen. It wast the kind of thing that leaves you pleading with the other person to just stop making you have to be so cruel to them in order to get your point across.

Now, don't go feeling all bad for The Ex just yet, homeboy turned into a Drama Queen in the first degree. About a month after I actually moved out of the house, he would call me to tell me that he had slept with someone else. Great! Wonderful! GOOOD for you. Except, he then called me back to tell me he was lieing, and just wanted to see my reaction. What the hell? My co-worker, Joy, and I have a word for this: Menotional. It is when MEN get all wah, wah, dippy-downer and start doing and saying things so dramatic and out of character that you are left entirely speechless and just shaking your head in wonder.

It's also the kind of behavior that made me breathe a HUGE sigh of relief at getting out when I did...

In the Beginning...

So, as first posts go, I'm going to keep this one short and sweet. This is the open-ended story of my journey from single girl, to girlfriend, to fiance, to ALMOST bride...and back again.

This journey hasn't been an easy one, but isn't that the way of most journeys? If it were easy, it would probably be called a "jaunt" or a "stroll", but this is definitely "journey" status, at least in my opinion.

Come along readers, it's going to be a bumpy ride. But this is my story, and I'm ready to tell it, if you're ready to listen...