Lesson #1

Have Faith in Other…Women! I never thought that I would have a BFF. I don’t really like women.  Did you have to read that twice?  It’s true! Overall, I really don’t like women. Or rather, I am not a fan of how they behave most of the time towards other women. I think many of us carry misogynistic “divide and conquer” baggage around with us. We are taught that other women are our enemies, our competition. Other women threaten or lives, our jobs, our intimate relationships. Society has done a great job pinning us against each other. Only recently have I begun to form strong bonds with other women. It’s definitely new territory for me. I think it requires a certain kind of trust that I wasn’t sure I was capable of. I have been more than pleasantly surprised. We have a bond that I wish my sister and I had. We show up when the other needs support, we get into trouble in the least opportune times, and road trips could not be more fun! So the moral is….a little faith goes a long way!

Lesson #2

Love endures….a lot! I won’t go into my “Love is patient and kind…” rendition, but it is true. Love endures more than it should sometimes, but more often than not it is worth it. Enough said…..for now!

Lesson #3

Parents Can and Will Surprise You! Parents, especially well intentioned yet overbearing bothers can surprise you in the most unexpected ways. Recently, when it counted most, when I was unable to cope, my mom backed off. She gave me space. I think it was the first time she ever did that (note cop at door incident several years ago). Then again, when I thought she would say one thing, she said another. Yeah, I know cryptic. Nevertheless, my mom has been most excellent over the least 6 weeks, especially now. She is keeping her “need to know” at bay without too much pushing and prodding.

Lesson #4

Things are more black and white than you thought! While I blog about “color in a world of black and white”, I really do see many things as black or white. Very few issues for me, or rather very few issues as they apply to my life are shades of gray.  I always said that I was a runner. A long time friend recently pointed out that I was grossly wrong in that diagnosis. I was non-committal. “Honey, you can’t run from something you aren’t committed to in the first place.”  Point well taken! A bit of reflecting later, I began to see how my life has always been one cycle of non-committal after another.  I have three degrees that don’t fit with each other. I haven’t stayed in a position for more than two years. I have been in Philadelphia for almost a decade, but I am not even dedicated to staying here. I just need a good reason to move, because relocating is a pain in the ass. Let’s not even talk about dating. Or, maybe just a little – I used to go on a lot of first dates. I went on a few second and third dates, but never committed to anything more. I never felt that pull or that energy. The Medic changed everything in that regard. She changed the way I looked at the world, the way I looked at myself. She made me a better person. And, here I stand today and I am more committed than ever without reservation, hesitation, or doubt. here I am…in it for the long haul! Who would have ever thought?

I have always placed relationship posts behind the cut.

I wrote much of this shortly after the breakup. I hit a wall and couldn’t write any more. I didn’t know if I would ever finish this. Attending last week’s Queer Memoir event in Brooklyn was cathartic for me and I have been deep in thought ever since. When I first came back to this piece, I considered editing it. In fact, I started making some in-line changes. However, after some reflecting, decided against it. I am not going to edit myself away. It’s how I felt at the time. While much of the pain has subsided, it doesn’t change how the breakup and what I have learned since made me feel. I have dated the pieces to separate my initial thoughts from what is currently swimming around in my head.

3/19/2010

I have hit critical mass. Full stop because I can’t seem to breath or think clearly or stop crying. I have had the wind knocked out of me. Ok, that sounds too passive. The Medic knocked me right in the gut and I didn’t even see it coming. The last two weeks month has been profoundly emotionally trying.  Despite the  continued contact from her, I have finally started to tap into a productive ways of dealing with all of this. Crying no longer seems order of the day.  I am no longer shedding tears. Not one more damned tear over this. It isn’t worth it, especially after all that I have learned. I am firmly in the angry phase and know that I deserve better. I certainly don’t deserve to be treated like trash. So, the rundown in a nutshell:

Monday: I need to slow down.
Tuesday: I need to find an apartment because I have to be out of my place by end of May.
Thursday: Let’s take moving off the table and let’s not get together this weekend. I need space.
Sunday: I am not ready for any of this.
Monday: You need to find someone who meets your needs.
Wednesday: Although I said I wanted a lot of things with you, I really don’t. “I am done with you.”

Since then, it has just been one big disaster, not that the week or so before hasn’t been. None of it made any real sense in context of our relationship. Things were great. How can someone wake up one day and….it came out of left field. Well, so I thought until I found out there was someone else.  Then, everything made complete sense. Instead of choosing to have any respect for me or a desire to conduct herself with any sense of honor or dignity, she decided to be completely shady and dishonorable about the breakup. The 3 minute phone call was bad enough, but then proceeding to treat me as if I had done something to cause this was shameful and disgusting.

The bottom line is that people need to think before they speak. They need to be sure that what comes out of their mouths is what they truly feel and think. Don’t make promises you can’t or have no intention of keeping.  If you don’t do these things and you hurt someone, don’t act all shocked. Don’t act bothered that the other person is hurt and expressing that pain. If you break someone’s heart, you have no right to hold the “I am devastated” trump card.

At one point she informed me that she was doing her thing while I was on this journey. Re-writing history is such an easy thing to do. I must have imagined everything – her deciding that moving to Philadelphia was the best option, her stating she wanted to marry me, her active participation in this relationship…..we both made plans, yet I am the one stuck with cleaning up the mess. She is going on as if we never happened. I guess in her eyes, we didn’t. It was all my imagination, something I conjured up.

I wish I were still angry. I am just sad again. I know its over.  There is no way this can be repaired. A friendship isn’t even possible with the way she has treated me. It’s just wrong and she should be ashamed of herself! She didn’t even have the decency to end it in a way that allowed me retain a sense of dignity and worth. She made me feel like nothing with that 3 minute phone call. She said she was taking responsibility, but it was purely lip-service. I was left with picking up the pieces (and all of the things she had at my place….four boxes worth).  To add insult to injury, she acted as if I had caused the breakup.

4/11/2010

Since then she has popped up here and there. The tone is always passive aggressive and semi-confrontational (with a manipulative twist), followed by surprise to my lack of thrill in hearing from her.  Does she really expect me to be overjoyed? It wouldn’t surprise me given her selective memory. Why put more salt in the wound? Why make things ugly?  She wants her things, well….two to be exact. She said I could throw everything else away. Friends removed four boxes of her things a few days after she broke up with me. I just couldn’t have them around. It made things too hard.  I will get them and ship them in  a few days, and I am shipping her every last thing. It isn’t my responsibility to sift through her things. I am only responsible for picking up my pieces. Yeah, I am still a bit angry about this, but I found a solution that that actually makes me feel better!

With several weeks distance, I have a bit of clarity. I know that she did me a favor. I know that people we love are able to hurt us the most and often do. I know that I deserve better and that a life with her is something that I don’t want. There is also much that I don’t know. The hardest part is discerning what was real and what was imagined, truth from fiction. I try not to torture myself too much, but I do go over events and wonder what was real. I remember everything – every first, every conversation, every word, everything. I wonder what was a performance and what was genuine?  Did she mean what she said at the time but upon further thought re-evaluate, or did she  never actually mean anything she said? How can someone fake any or all of what transpired? How could I have not seen it?

I am getting back to my old self more and more. Salsa has been my saving grace, as have my friends. I am not nearly as angry as I was a few weeks ago. Baffled is more fitting. While the really good days are becoming more frequent, I often feel like I am still just treading water. I need that to end. I doubt that I will ever truly understand and closure seems like a relative term. I am getting there…..

Nevertheless, I think I lost a part of my identity independent of where I worked. Everything sort of blended together and I lost sight of where one ended and the other began. Perhaps I became too invested. Is that even possible? This is not to say that being as invested and committed to our mission is a bad thing, but rather that a lot of other things I was/am passionate about went to the wayside. I really miss them and want to get connected again.

I have been feeling very lost lately and I think it has to do with a lot of lack of balance in my life. I am not engaging in enough activities that bring me joy personally. I know we often talk about professional and personal realms blending in the non profit world, that it seems to be a natural occurance, but I am not sure if that is at all healthy. I think there needs to be boundary. Otherwise, burnout is a surity!

I miss dancing. I keep wanting to get back into a dancing groove. I took a class on Saturday. The Medic and I went out Saturday night to Brasil’s. While I am not going to make class tonight, I am going to make it a point to go Saturday mornings. The dance schedule has completely shifted at Estilo, so I am going to have to go back to check which classes are being offered when.

I miss blogging with a mission. I am blogging with an outdated mission.  Or perhaps I have drifted from the mission and just need to re-focus. The lifeblogging component has always been there, but it has definitely moved to the forefront over the last few months. Perhaps I am overthinking this, but I feel like the TDP brand is no longer clearly visible. Perhaps it really is time for a complete shift. I don’t know. I need to sit with this for a bit.

I miss my Swirl family. I need to recharge our local chapter. I have been so busy with everything else that SwirlPhilly sort of driftet off of that proverbial plate of mine. I am going to reach out to all of the local members this weekend and set up socials for March, April and May, as well as a planning meeting. I hope to recruit one or two more individuals who are interested in serving as part of the leadership team.

While work remains demanding and I am committed as ever to being a part of the agency’s long-term success, I also need to take more time to ensure my personal and professional success beyond the agency. I realize there are only 24 hours in the day – much to my shagrin – and if I ease up on work hours only to fill my plate with other things, I am going to end up with the same result…burnout.

So, balance! There are many things I want to return to doing,but for now, dancing, blogging and SwirlPhilly are on my agenda.

Do you find that your work and personal blend in together? How have you set boundaries in your life to attain and/or maintain balance?

I had a realization this weekend. I’ve always been in relationships where I have settled – settled for less than I deserve, for people who were wrong for me for many reasons, and most profoundly, settled for people who settled for me and never failed to remind me of it.  While I have moved beyond much of that baggage, sometimes insecurities still comes up. I’ve learned to keep said baggage in check, but nevertheless…..yeah!

Despite some violent stomach issues this weekend I got quite a bit of work done on cleaning up the back end of TDP, including cleaning out my draft folder and lots of thinking about future blog posts. I also found some quiet time for reflection. Actually, a light bulb went off. I realized that for the first time in my life I am in a relationship where neither of us are settling, where I don’t feel like second best, like I am the “right now” girl. It took my breath away. Things are so different with the Medic. Although I sometimes let my insecurities get the best of me, feeling and knowing that I am right where I am supposed to be puts those feelings in check. I feel extremely loved and valued and cherished. I really can’t even begin to find words to describe how I feel.

Anyway…that is all! I am off to bed. Until next time!

Of course there was the happy ending, but not until after the conflict. What is the conflict, you ask? Well, that’s complicated. You have a dash of unrequited love and testosterone inspired head games, but in the end the biggest hurdle is the distance, at least for the Playboy and the Producer. The Playboy lives outside of London with his two girls (his wife died a few years ago) and the Producer lives in LA. Neither of them travel to each other’s city. They are at an empass. Although the movie has an extremely happy, mushy ending, you never learn how they deal with their distance.

When I first saw that movie I said to myself “I will never ever date someone long distance.” It had always been my line in the sand relationship wise. The only reason I even considered dating Dawn was because had applied to Rice before we got together. I would have been in Houston anyway. However, when I decided on Villanova, I ended things with her. I wasn’t negotiating. Little did I know that I would meet someone who captured my heart and turn my world upside down to such an extent that I would rethink my position on long distance. I actually never gave the distance a thought. I knew from the first conversation that the distance was temporary. I didn’t know who would move or when or how, but I  knew that we would work through it.

Nevertheless, I have had to learn to process a whole host of emotions unique to long distance relationships, or maybe they are just unique to me. I have never missed anyone before, at least not someone I have dated. I am learning how to balance missing the Medic while not coming off to needy. I am not sure how much I succeed at this, but it is a work in progress. I have learned to listen more and talk less. Yes, this is a challenge for me in general, but long distance requires a while different set of communication skills that I didn’t really posses in the past.

Patience. I am not a patient person. I gave up working on that years ago. Instant gratification is highly under rated (kinda like nap time).  The last 20 days have been challenging. I know people have been doing long distance for years, see each other once every month or two. I am pretty aware of what I can and can’t do and, that would be right at the top of my list. Ok, so back to my point – 20 days is way too long to not see the Medic. So, we are working on an every other weekend kind of deal. The Medic’s schedule is far more flexible than mine, but I am working things out. I may be able to work remotely on more occasions. I am still trying to figure that one out.  I know that I am not a patient person but I am extremely intentional about what this transition means for the Medic. Cryptic, right?!

Vulnerability. I sometimes find myself completely incapable of communicating how I feel. What’s at the heart of this? Feeling vulnerable – I’m not good at it.  Well, that isn’t completely true. I am better at certain aspects than others. While I can allow myself to be physically vulnerable with the Medic, being emotionally vulnerable is a whole other issue. I was mortified when I burst into tears in front of her during a visit to the Tundra. Perhaps that is the German part of me. All the messy stuff is to be kept behind closed doors – the crying, the self-doubt, the chaos. I am not saying that I am stone cold or that I don’t allow for the bringing down of walls. I share many of my layers with the Medic, but it has been a process.  I’ve let down a lot of walls. I am not sure if it would have been so natural to do so if we had been living in the same city from the beginning. I think that I would have probably asked for more space. Not that I am totally sold on won over to the idea of long distance, but there are some benefits. Like the  extent to which you get to know someone, beyond the surface. You have to cut through all of that, all the niceties and reach to the core of a person. Otherwise I think you would lose interest fast if things remain shallow.

I feel like I am completely off from where I set out to take this post.  I am not sure if I have an actual point. I started it when I was having a moment. I hit my threshold of how long I could be separated from the Medic. I didn’t want to seem too needy, so I began to write. I hate being or seeming needy. Or is it admitting that I need her? I’ve never really felt like I needed someone in my life. Is there really a difference? All I can say is that I am working on it.

I always felt – subconsciously – that I was compensating for something that was lacking in the relationship. There wasn’t enough or right form of communication, or honesty, or depth of understanding, or laughter…the list goes on and on. So, if there wasn’t enough of all those things, then we were going to spend every waking, non working moment together. Perhaps my past partners also sensed something was missing as their choice was often quantity over quality time as well. The controlling and abusive relationship not withstanding – most of my relationships were of this sort. While I was always non-committal at first, each one built into entities with little substance despite the amount of ‘together time’. Nevertheless, I often made the choice to invest time in a relationship that was never going to work. I knew it was never going to work, yet giving up just didn’t seem like a viable option. It’s like forcing a square peg into a round hole…..just not going to happen! Someone’s going to break something!

I’ve come to realize that it isn’t a matter of giving up or not. Rather, it has everything to do with being in a relationship that is mutually fulfilling, balanced and thereby healthy. Relationships, while requiring investment from both parties, really shouldn’t always be hard or require painstaking effort to make it feel right. In hind sight, I’d argue that if it doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t. Yeah, 20/20 is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?  Thankfully I learned this long before the Medic came into the picture.

Speaking of the Medic – one of the things I cherish about our time together is our sense of balance. We almost spend as much time with friends and doing every-day things as we steal private time to just enjoy each other. Nothing is forced or…ok, sometimes getting out of bed requires an extensive amount of motivation, but nothing about us is forced. It just works – we fit. The logistical dysfunction – distance – has helped (or forced us, depending on how you see it) us focus on quality over quantity.

I must admit though that no matter how much I embrace the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing, I know that I am not wired for long distance relationships.  Yet, trusting her (and myself), the dimensions of communication we have developed and the temporariness of it all keep me from wigging.  Oh, and have I mentioned that I am ridiculously in love with her? Yeah…

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Anyway…back to regular scheduled programming!

I also have several friends who struggle with their addictions on a daily basis – sometimes more than others.

Ever so often one of them pops into my life in an extremely dysfunctional manner. It ends up being more a cry for attention than actually asking for help. A really thin line there, I know. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Her: “I am sinking”
Me: “Have you been to a meeting?”
Her: “No”
Me: “Have you talked to your sponsor?”
Her: “No, she wouldn’t understand.”
Me: “Do you want to go to a meeting together?”
Her: “No, I just want to talk to you.”

…at which point I take a step back.

When my sister was going through her issues I had already been living on my own for close to 5 years. I don’t think I have ever been so worried or panicked before. My first thought…how do I fix this? I not only wanted to fix my sister but wanted to fix things for my parents. It was through their filter that I was learning about the situation. Hearing the pain in their voice triggered my need to fix fix fix. At the suggestion of a friend I decided to see what Al-Anon was all about. It was probably the best think that I have ever done for myself. I even attended a few AA meetings for perspective.  I haven’t been in a while, but it’s always my first recourse when I am in need of a bit of therapy. I doubt that I would have made it through that phase of mine in tact without some of the friendships I established through AA and Al-Anon. Actually, I am sure that I wouldn’t have.

I’ve stopped trying to fix everything and came to realize that I don’t need fixing either.  That was probably the hardest lesson to learn.  It used to almost be a knee jerk reaction – something is wrong, I fix it.  It explains several of my past relationships. Yet, instead of fixing someone I just became a bit more broken, battered and bruised each time. I learned to discern the difference between my baggage and the baggage of others, as well as how to communicate that difference. I learned that I can only take responsibility for my own baggage and how that impacts my actions and the words I speak. I didn’t learn how to communicate boundaries until much later. I have Shay to thank for that one. It would have saved me a lot of heartache if I had.

Anyway…so fast forward to the present:

….the plan is to meet tomorrow for breakfast/coffee to talk with the condition that we *sigh* are going to a meeting tomorrow…perhaps The Mustard Seed during lunch or William Way after work. I haven’t been down that road in a long long time, so should be interesting.

I expect a lot of “where have you been?” questions. I only touch base regularly with a select few.  This probably sounds silly given how much I share on TDP and Facebook, but I want some sense of privacy, that what I share with others is intentional and I have some sense of control of who I share things with. Yes, I know….stop laughing!  Doesn’t matter though, because I committed to going and go I shall!

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