Dealing and Healing Pt 3: Remeber to Sleep

I AM NO SPRING CHICKEN so rallying after being out literally all night and heading to the pool with a handful of friends for some day drinking was a struggle. I chugged a Gatorade, ate a piece of pizza, several bottles of water and a nap later I cracked my first beer. 

Now tonight was a little calmer. there was a big group of us until about 9 when we all went our separate ways. Mic decided to drive like an hour away with a few friends to some rave. Not my scene so I was out on that. Bearclaw decided to have a chill night with the man she is kind of seeing since they were going to the football game tomorrow together and all I wanted to do was sleep. 

So I headed to a friend of ours house for a movie and some couch time. This is where things get funny. My girl friends have been pushing this guy on me all weekend. He is a super cool successful beer brewery owner. One of the best in Oklahoma. I know him just through these friends but he was gracious enough to offer Me a chill night on the couch with him. 

I head that way and he has apparently had conversations with both my girl friends while I'm in route. Mic informs him that there is no way I will be sleeping. Bearclaw informs me that I should do whatever feels right and apparently this man has some massive sex appeal in a one on one scenario. 

I go to his house pretty much exhausted expecting to have a glass of wine and fall asleep watching a movie. I think he may have had higher hopes but I gotta have some resemblance of class. There are only so many one night stands acceptable on a vacation weekend and I was not going to add one more to this weekend by getting to comfy with this guy. So my plan is exactly what happens. After half a glass of rose I am sawing logs in the middle of whatever movie he had picked out for us. I remain on this couch until morning when I head over to Mic's to get ready for game day! 

Let's take a moment to look back on my dating history. I had a strong showing of rich old guys in my mid twenties. There was a time when this man would have been high on my things to do. He was the idal candidate for 25 year old me. As I got older and men closer to my age matured into acceptable tax brackets and conversationalists I no longer wanted to waste my time on men twice my age. I can't actually imagine building a life with someone 20 years my senior. When I'm 50 he's 70? What the hell am I going to do with that?... I'm lucky I bailed on that pattern before it became permanent. 

Now that I'm extremely self sufficient I am much more likely to date a recently graduated frat boy than a CEO of a company. I want fun. That pretty much my only criteria: attraction and fun. It's kind of a nice place to be in life. The age appropriate men are young, hot and successful. The not so age appropriate men are oddly attracted to my 30 something age bracket. The young ones think we are hot and not clingy and the old ones think we are just hot and still fun but not stupid enough to make an ass of ourselves in front of important people. Right now just might be the best age. 

I feel like I'm rambling and you'd probably rather read about the 35 year old businessman I met at a tailgate and the goal to kiss a frat boy at the football game... Let's move on to Pt. 4: Remember You are Fun! 

Dealing and Healing Pt. 2: Remember, You Are Desirable

THROW YOUR SH*T IN A BAG AND GET HERE! As I read those words, I thought HELL YES! This is just what I need, a last minute get out of town weekend with one of my favorite girls. All I knew was that whatever happened would not be planned. I knew it would be fun and that I needed to pack for anything. This was going to be a night which usually means a few nights with Bearclaw and that is always an adventure. 

I stopped for gas and two liters of smartwater and headed south on the turnpike for a weekend so epic it could not be planned. 

It started at simple enough with a much needed gab session between two girl friends. We talked about life and love. We went through our last few years of history and just caught up like old friends do when they never miss a beat. A couple of take a ways from that conversation: 

She let me know that the way she was dealing with the end of her marriage was to only focus on today. It is easier said than done but making a conscience effort to not dwell on yesterday and not worry about tomorrow was helpful. I think this is something I need to work on, being more present in the moment. The other thing she is always a supporter of is doing what feels right in the moment. 

Now, I am not saying lets be careless with the decision making abilites of a 22 year old co-ed but give yourself permission to enjoy life and not be worried about how the 5 year plan is coming. Plans change and my life has changed drastically in the last 90 days. 

After a nice sunshiney day at the pool we cleaned up to hit the town. All I wanted to do was get a little drunk and make some bad decisions. Bearclaw was on board with this plan. We hit a nice little rooftop bar for a meal and some drinks. Met some fun people and got our party started. From there, Bearclaw and another girl friend, Mic and I went to a kareoke bar and then to round off our night a little happening place down the road. I had been pretty well maintained up until the last stop. I was nursing my beers at an acceptable rate to keep all composure but then lets just say it took a turn. 

This story ends, or should I say begins with Me, a Swimming Pool and an Assistant District Attorney.

Bearclaw runs into some friends, I see a friend and then there is this man just looking at me. It is a look that I love, he was staring, he was soaking me in and I was giving him every indication that he should in fact come buy me a drink. Now, I am in my element. I was surrounded by people laughing and having a great time but I was also tossing some mad bedroom eyes in this mans direction. It is a neat trick to be totally engaged in your current conversation while heavily flirting just with your eyes a few steps away. 

We finally get introduced, this man is just what the doctor ordered. A friend of a friend, about 6footish or so, nicely taken care of body, preppy collared shirt and a smile for days. Turns out he was an Assistant District Attorney, also going through a divorce with a cheating spouse. We were on the same page in every way. I am pretty sure I looked at Bearclaw before he even approached and said, "I think I have to have him."

The shananigans take flight from there, we spend the next hour chatting, the bar closes and he grabs my hand to lead me out and make a plan. At this point there are 6 of us not quite ready to shut this night down. So, we head to Pete's. Who is Pete? No clue. All I know is Pete has a pool and Pete does not mind if we move the party to his place or so Pete's buddy says. 

Turns out given the recent waive of cool nights that pool was cold... The party dismantals rapidly and I am left drunkenly kissing the ADA. This progresses rapidly but it was exactly what I needed. This man was a lover. He was passionate and engaging, he was the kind of man that made you feel like this was meaningful even if the only meaning was to feel pleasure. He made me feel like a woman, like a smoking hot, desirable woman. That was a feeling I had not had in so long. He wanted me and he was going to make sure I knew I was wanted. 

This was probably the best case scenerio for losing my post break up virginity again. Someone insanely attractive, that I have very little chance of ever running into again, that was the kind of lover that inspires trashy novels. He was delicious and I was enjoying every moment. 

We actually did not sleep, we were the perfect combination of tipsy and full of animalistic desire. This man tapped into a part of me that I was afraid I lost to the rejection of not being enough for my husband. He found the piece of me I was skeptical even existed any more. He was passionate and attentive, he was focused and he made me feel so good. When we did finally dose off for a few he held me close and I let him. 

The ADA was a welcome back gift from the universe. He was exactly what I was hoping to find on my little weekend getaway and this is only night one. I ever expect to hear from this man again, nor do I have any real desire to, but this was just what I needed to take the edge off my Labor Day weekend. 

What the rest of my time has in store for me... I could only imagine...

Dealing and Healing Pt. 1: Finding What You Deserve

AS DIFFICULT AS IT IS FOR ME TO ADMIT the end of Mr. Greaseman has been HARD. I am talking a shell of a person, tearful mess on the bathroom floor with actual thoughts that I would not recover. There were moments when I was so blind with the heart wrenching pain of the man I loved more than anyone else in the world, the man I committed my future to, the man who's ring I wore and the man that I promised whole heartily to be faithful to until the day I died - The day that man left was dark. The weeks following were dark. It is a sad place to be broken at your core.

I don't think I am quite ready to dive into the depths of my depression which ended in a most traumatic turn of events. At some point I will be and I will write of that most vulnerable time. I think it is an important part of the story and probably one any girl going through a romantic loss needs to here. I pride myself on being strong and independent but even those of us who portray ourselves as the most Alpha of the Alpha Females have moments of doubt that they can even move on in this life. 

Shizzz is getting deep... So let's move past the Dealing and on to the HEALING. 

I have said it before and I will say it again, My Fabulous Ex-Husband gives THE BEST advice. I can't remember which of my torrid love affairs was ending some time in my mid twenties but I reached out to him with an 'another one bites the dust' story. Whoever it was must have been impactful because he greeted this with words that I carry with me to this day, "Sunshine, sometimes you just have to get under one to get over another." 

As crude as that sounds... It is true. Sometimes you have analyzed and dealt with the emotions. You have asked all the questions, you have carried all the blame. You have gone through every "what if" scenario known to (wo)man and the pain is still there. You have been FORCED to create your own closure. Let's stop there for a second... 
      In romance this happens more times than not and the moment you figure out that the man, is no longer capable of being there for you emotionally, that he cannot provide support for you and he will NOT be giving you the closure that you so desperately seek. That moment, you find that you have to create the end of this story all by yourself is when it is time to also remind yourself: YOU ARE DESIRABLE, YOU ARE WANTED, no matter what he has said YOU ARE SEXY, YOU ARE A WOMAN and your DESERVE HAPPINESS, RESPECT, and the occasional Orgasm. 

For me, I have been devastated by the fact that I found another woman's panties in my home. That I lost my man to someone else. That he actually said the words, " you are not sexy, how could you be, you never do anything sexy and I don't even want it with you any more." 
Ouch... I don't care who you are that stings and it is not true. 

Fortunately for me great stress brings great weight loss and with great weight loss comes renewed self esteem and motivation. Motivation turned into a healthy diet and a workout routine that I had given up in my last few years of cohabitation. So here I am TWO full months since the man just stopped coming home and almost four months since he last "wanted" me. I am down a whopping 20lbs and I have all the confidence in the world that the other side of this heartbreak is in view. 
I can see the light!

This weekend was going to be hard but I didn't want to spend it with Netflix and the pizza delivery lady. It's Labor Day Weekend and Mr. Greaseman is living up this holiday on OUR boat at OUR lake house going out with friends. Drinking entirely too much and since we know he fidelity was not his strength even while under the same roof, you can bet he is capitalizing on the fact that his ring tan line is officially gone. 

I think that accompanied by that fact that I have put forth two months of therapy (actual therapy once a week with a trained professional) and a solid month of deep dark mourning over the man of my dreams. I deserve to make a few decisions as a newly single woman, solely for my own enjoyment. I DESERVE to feel at my best and to have just a good time this weekend. It is time to end Shiva and go be me or at least figure out who this new me is going to be. 

I was given the opportunity to go out of town and visit an amazing girl friend of mine. This woman we will call her Bearclaw is an actual inspiration to all women. In short our story goes like this: We met dancing with beers in hand at a Ben Harper concert almost 10 years ago. We just instantly connected. We have had so many moments in the last 10 years, we have had our falling outs, we have had our closest of times. We have been through many men and many styles. We have been married, divorced, suffered loss, found great success and made life changing decisions all since we have known each other. We support and love unconditionally, and mostly from afar. This woman is a big part of my tribe, a big part of what has shaped me. Even though we are rarely in the same city, I think of her often. 

It so happens that as with most of our relationship the cosmic powers have brought us into a similar season at the same time and back into each others lives. We are both going through the end of relationships with someone who we intended to have as a life partner. We are both transitioning back into single womanhood. We are in this together... Again. 

Her story is that of triumph. She had worked her ass off to create her own success and if we define happiness by the Great American Dream of wealth at the hands of 50+ hour work weeks - She had made it. Girl was driving the car she wanted, living in the house she wanted, with all the designer clothes, bags, jewels she desired. She took fancy holidays for extended periods of time, picked up bar tabs and was living a good life. 

Then, she got a brutal wake up call. This half Mexican, half Native American dark skinned beauty was diagnosed with melanoma. I tell you her heritage to be sure you know that its not just freckled white girls that should avoid tanning beds and wear sunscreen but also freckled dark girls that you haven't seen sunburn ever that are susceptible to the dreaded C. Bearclaw fought the battle and won then while recovering under a large floppy hat, strong SPF, and a beach umbrella in Bermuda she read a book that changed her. 

She did some sole searching and stumbled across an opportunity to go hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Having never done anything like walk 2,663 miles from Mexico to Canada she was chosen to be sponsored, given a bit of training and asked document this great adventure. She quit working for the man, sold her worldly possessions and fell in love with nature. She completed the trail in 4 months. She has gone on to hike other amazing long distance trails and she is down right as cool as she sounds. If you want to follow her story you can do that here at her site http://staywildandtrue.com/. I am truly #blessed to call her a friend. 

She shoots out a random text on Thursday mid morning as I am settled in bed (still) because I lack the motivation to be a functioning member of society at times. The week leading up to this weekend was rough. I was in a state of sadness, one I thought I was past but I was missing the companionship and normalcy that was my life just a few months ago. The tears were not quite back but I could feel the state of grief returning to my body. I was just missing him and mourning the loss of this beautiful life we built together. The one that I was slowly dismantling. I was sad because I wouldn't be at the lake with my love and my friends but he would be there without me, in a new life that I was not the center of any more.

The random text at the start of this holiday weekend was a welcome event. 

(continued) 

Welcome Back!

I WISH I WOULD HAVE CHRONICLED the last two years of my life. I am so disappointed that I gave up writing through what we would be one of my most significant life lessons in the last decade. I got busy, I fell in love, I refocused and I lost this piece of myself. 

Here I am 22 months later, almost 12 weeks since the beginning of the end of Mr. Greaseman. I have worked through the stages of grief, the betrayal, the heartbreak. I have lived through the sleepless nights, the overwhelming despair, and the need for answers. I have found my own closure without any help from the man who packed two suitcases and left my beautiful life forever. I have survived... another one. 

I am not going to give you the details of this false fairytale I lived over the last 20 months. I don't feel the need to immortalize in print any of the reasons I fell so deeply in love with this man. I am going to tell you the lesson I learned when it ended. 

I have to give credit where credit is due. The first person to see the life lesson at the end of this was non other than My Fabulous Ex-Husband. Over the almost 10 years we have been divorced and co-parenting we have learned how to love and respect each other in a way I think most married couples would envy. Our ability to communicate and support each other is impressive. I am so #blessed by him being in my life. 

When the bottom really fell out with Mr. Greaseman and My Fabulous Ex-Husband had a chance to sit down with me about how this would affect Our Daughter, he said something that I didn't give a lot of thought to in the moment but it rings so true now. "Sunshine you have to do your due diligence, I don't think you really vetted him enough. It took me 5 years to pop the question."

He was right, I didn't give this enough time to really know the person I planned on spending the rest of my life with. He gave me enough of the pieces to the puzzle that I didn't realize how little I understood about his past. I was too busy falling in love to step back and really see the nature of this person. To understand who it was I was tying myself to for the foreseeable future. I trust my gut and I thought I was right about the character of this man but there was a pattern in his behavior I could have no way of knowing - He genuinely fell in love and I think he firmly believed it would last but he has no concept of true love. Love to Mr. Greaseman is the happy feel good chemical reaction in your brain that lasts the first 12-18 months. By month 20, his bags were packed and I was a puddle of brokenness on the floor. 

It took getting through the heartbreak and self pity of trusting this man to really see this lesson come to light. It also took some late night Facebook stalking and few life hacks to gain further information to see what I was never told and could never have known: He has done this before. 

Everyone has a past and as you have read mine is sorted and littered with the ghosts of boyfriends past. BUT pasts are important, without a knowledge and understanding about what has happened in life we cannot learn from it. This is why we study history, so it does not repeat itself. 

I took his hesitation to talk about what made failures of his first marriage and the "few" significant romances between that and me, as slightly comforting. I didn't feel the need to divulge every man in my last 10 years of being single. I was in a really healthy good place and I was ready for love. 

The personality differences between us were easy enough for me to adapt. I made necessary adjustments to counteract the insecurities I could see. I am sort of a chameleon with my personality, I can be happy in all types of relationships. I mistakenly identified his dependency as co-dependency. I looked at that as a form of security for me, as opposed to what it truly is, a man that needs someone and if those needs are not being met to his liking, he will seek out someone else to meet them. It was not the egomaniacal sociopath that I had so much experience with, this was a man with genuine intent to fall in love and a need to have a companion but without the knowledge, loyalty, strength, or raw ability to make a real relationship work. 

He had a whole lot of give up in him and a whole lot of needs that no matter how hard I tried to adjust, I could never meet them all. After all, I am only one person and lord knows my needs were not being met either. But I am a mother and the one thing we are good at is surviving. We know how to take care of everyone else first and put ourselves last. We can push through some horrible circumstances if the ends seem to justify the means. 

So this morning, early because I like to keep my Facebook deactivated most of the day I decided to see if Mr. Greaseman had been up to anything new. He and I are still "friends" probably because mine is deactivated most of the time so its kind of hard to unfriend someone you cannot see. I recently came across this hack that is you search "photos of whoever" you can see everything that is public they are tagged in, even if they have it hidden from there timeline or in another album. So I use this to see if there is anything new going on and it was interesting to see some of the old. 

Today, something changed. The live in girlfriend that predated me by a year or so has made all of her photos with Mr. Greaseman public. This led me to her public wall, where all of these photos and posts were available for me to see. It was like looking into a crystal ball 2 years too late. I have looked her up before and none of this was there. I am not sure what changed to make it available today but I have to thank The Universe for putting this new information in front of me. 

It was like a mirror image of our courtship. The trips, the gifts, the holidays, the house, the flowers, the concerts... It was all the same. It was like I just slipped into her place and he continued on as normal. Their relationship was so similar in appearance it was eerie. The only difference I can see, is that since I make probably 3 times what she did, we lived like the 1%. The significant duel incomes allowed us to have more and do more on a grander scale. The other difference is I am better at closing deals, so I have a 3 carat 17k engagement ring to remind me that I was worth just a little bit more than the last love of his life. 

Seeing it all there, in pictures frozen in time it was heartbreaking; yet cathartic. It was like the final piece was chiseled away from my heart and now I could begin to rebuild. The healing could officially take place because for all the blame I have thrown on myself the past several weeks today I finally saw the pattern that was never available to me before. It was the story never told and without all the facts, I made the best decision I could. 

For the first time, I see the lesson: Love truly is patient and with time you can trust it. If you choose to rush into the feelings and embrace the passion of the beginning one or both of you will, most likely, fall out of love as quickly as you fell into it. Lesson learned, or so I hope.

One more thing: Don't stop writing. Your clearest thinking comes from reflecting upon your own words and thoughts. I'm back y'all!