At the height of my torment over being DUMPED by my married
man, I spent some time on a website and chat room for people struggling to get
over a breakup.
I found it singularly UNhelpful.
For one thing, those people don’t like it if you’re too
upset. You find the place because you
are upset, for fuck’s sake. Some people there were comfortable talking to
someone as upset as I was, and that helped. But then I couldn’t talk to them,
because people who were UNcomfortable , banned me.
Gee, that was helpful. One day on here I will put up a post
on how to help someone who is upset. Really, really upset.
The other thing they do there is impose rules. You were
supposed to just cut off all thoughts of the person and move on. There was an
actual support group for doing that.
There’s one thing wrong with that. YOU DON’T LEARN ANYTHING.
I have discovered that it really is the truth: when we
encounter pain in our lives, WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING LEARNING SOMETHING
FROM IT. When life is hard, when life is painful, when life is disappointing,
when life is miserable, when you feel that you have been singled out by the
heavens to be treated truly horribly and unmercifully—so there must be
something wrong with you to warrant the punishment—when life fees so
unbearably, so desperately, desperately painful that you just want to give the
fuck up and DIE…
You can bet real money there is something important you are
supposed to be learning, and you just haven’t figured it out yet.
I’m going to post (or repost) a few things I wrote last
year. Bear these in mind, and then I’m going to show you how they are true.
Compare these to the blogs that are coming, and see for yourself whether
they’re not. But first…I wish to stipulate two things.
1.)
Yup, what’s happened to me most of my life has
been horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible,
horrible. And most of my life it felt like it was because of me. Why would
people treat me this way unless I just wasn’t good enough? And if you’re
reading this and you feel this way, I want you to know that from the vantage
point I have now, I am grateful for every single thing, because I FIGURED IT
THE FUCK OUT. I now know WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO LEARN, and I know that I could
not have learned it without every single thing that’s happened. And now I’m
going to share these things with you.
2.)
Over the past month, I have of course been
forced to recognize that the time forecasted by the horoscopes (which have so
very accurately forecasted everything else I’ve been through) is just about
here. The Reappearance Of Chi. And I’ve had to honestly ask myself, What if
this time the horoscopes are wrong? September comes, September goes…October
comes, October goes…and he’s still gone.
Draw a bunch of angry black squiggles
on either side of a blank piece of paper and then draw a straight line down the
middle. That line represents, “Health.” The angry squiggles represent
everything that is not healthy. On one side of the line is my side of the
relationship, and on the other side of the line is Chi’s. I have come to
recognize that all I have control of is my side of the line. On my side of the
line, I can work like a GODDAMNED DOG to get MY toes ON. THAT. LINE.
And I cannot do one thing more. I can make myself and my side of that line as
healthy and as UNsquiggly as I possibly can, and that’s MY half of a healthy
relationship. The other person also has his half, to which I cannot cross over,
over which I possess no power, and which I cannot affect, no matter how crafty
or manipulative I might be or how hard I might try. (Or, for the record, how
hard I might think I NEED to for whatever reason.)
In any relationship, the person
on the other side of that line is the only one responsible, and the ONLY ONE
ABLE, to get his own toes onto the Line Of Health. If the other person cannot
or will not do this, there will be no relationship (or if there is, it will be
some permutation of your worst nightmare.) What we’re about to see is whether
Chi is capable of making another run at getting his toes on that line or not,
and which relationship he will do it in. (The horoscopes are laying heavy odds,
but that is all they are…odds.) If he can’t get his toes on the line, or Rory
accomplished this feat in their relationship and now he is, too, I won’t see
him again (or I will, but he’s going to be acting erratically and irresponsibly),
and there is NOT A DAMN THING I CAN DO ABOUT IT.
And that, friends, is called life.
Robin Williams once said that the worst thing in life wasn’t
being all alone; it was being with people who make you feel all alone. We would
all do well to remember that as we struggle in relationships with the married.
Now, here’s a flash from the past, and then we’ll continue.
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