Well, this is harder than I thought.

Present

So, it's the Monday after we last spoke. I'm sitting in our old club meeting.

And I'm thinking, he asked to come. Chi could have been here. 

I've missed him every single time I've come here. All that subtle humor that just sneaks up on you and kills you. That handsome, cute face. Those beautiful blue eyes.

And that voice. That crushed velvet voice that always slayed me.

He could have been here. I could be sitting here with him right now. And I said no.

                          ***

I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing.

I know I'm doing the right thing. (Somebody's got to.)

                           *** 

Nobody's going to hold his feet to the fire if I don't. Nobody's going to ask him to deliver his best work if I don't. 

The fact is, the same skills he needs to stand up for himself with children and family and get himself out of a bad marriage are the VERY same ones he's going to need to make a good one work.

If he can't develop them even to get himself out of a burning building, he's never going to when the sun is shining and the living is comparatively easy. And codependency and low self esteem will torpedo even the best of relationships founded in the best of intentions.

(That's because, as an ordinary human being, I can't read his mind.)

                             ***

If I let him weasel next to me again, I'm letting him weasel out of ever, ever, ever getting well.

And that outcome is pure disaster.

                             ***

I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing.

I know I'm doing the right thing.

                              ***

This is the part where I say I don't want it; I'm stronger than I've been before. 

I don't want an imploding relationship with a codependent who isn't getting well.

Chi: how about getting over this chronic poor doer-ship, and then we don't have to go through this any more?



 

Involved in an affair? Give the gift of desperation this Christmas season!

Since it's almost Christmas, I'm reposting an oldie but goodie. Happy Holidays.

Present


“You have to know true despair before you’re willing to risk everything to make a change.”
--Joe, 700 lb bariatric patient.

I remember what it was like to have low self esteem. I remember being the kid everyone in school pointed at, laughed at, talked about, said ugly things to, hit, kicked. I remember being screamed at by a whole busload of kids and the bus driver didn’t say a word. I remember not having a single friend from the age of seven to the age of twelve. Then I’d go home and have a mother screaming and yelling at me as well.

When this is your life at such a young age, you believe it’s all you. 

No one else is being treated like this. There must be something really wrong with you, for everyone in your life to treat you this way. On TV, parents apologize for being wrong, for acting cross. You know it isn’t real life. They explain, too, that kids who bully other kids are the ones who have the problem. You know that isn’t real life, either.

Fast-forward twenty, thirty, or forty years, and someone who’s had this kind of childhood is now maybe your lover. You’ve been together for a while, you know the person’s marriage is a nightmare, and yet…they’re not leaving. They told you they would, and you believed them. You know you love this man or woman. You know you’re going to treat them better than the person they’re with. They tell you all about the marriage, and you know they’re not lying. 

And yet, you’re hearing things like, “But…my daughter,” (who’s all of thirty years old.) “But…I can’t hurt this person I’ve been married to for X number of years,” (never mind all the things they did that caused hurt. And still do.) “But…everyone will be angry. Everyone will look at me funny.” (How does that stack up next to how miserable the person is?) All this fear. Fear of upsetting other people…fear of moving forward in life, even when a marriage is so difficult they know they should.

I remember, as a teenager, being basically scared to live life. My mother had low-functioning borderline personality disorder and was scared to drive. Driving down the road with her was an adventure, with her yelling and screaming the entire trip about how dangerous the other drivers were, making hand signals at the person in the next lane. For any trip into the big city, she would need someone else to drive her. Any weird noise the car made, she was sure something terrible was about to happen. And she was scared for me to drive, scared to be in the car with me driving, and wouldn’t help me practice. 

I caught it. I remember being fifteen and taking driver’s ed in school, and feeling about it exactly the way she did. I saw the same dangerous world. 

Not only that, but learning to drive at my house was dangerous for another reason. My stepfather was willing to help me practice for my driver’s test, and my mother was jealous. 

My stepfather would only teach me in his truck, and it was not a small pickup. It was intimidating to drive that huge thing. It was even more intimidating when my mother cut her eyes across at my stepfather and snapped, “You never offered to teach ME to drive the truck!” Then even when he did offer, she said no. 

There was wayyy too much tension in that house over getting a simple driver’s license.

When you think something’s deeply wrong with you anyway, it feels even worse.

Some people who have this deep sense of being fundamentally flawed and wrong as a person, like my mother, just never find the courage to move forward in life, to tackle difficult problems with other people, or emotional difficulties in themselves, and learn new and different ways to see and live life, and make progress.

It goes something like this: “I am so deeply flawed that no one could ever really love me, and I feel deeply ashamed. But, even though I think this is the reason my parents and other children always treated me so badly, I don’t know that for sure. People have said a lot of ugly things to me, but it’s not as if some doctor or therapist has ever handed down some fatal judgement that made it an actual fact. But I’m afraid that it really is, even so. And I feel so bad about myself, and I’m so scared that my deepest fear is really true, that I can’t stand to hear even one bad thing about myself from another person at all. I can’t stand to hurt anyone, to disappoint anyone, for anyone to be angry at me, so no matter how bad a situation I’m in or how much I’m hurting, I can’t risk hearing anything from anyone else that’s less than positive about me. I need approval at all times, from everyone, because I’m so afraid my worst fear about myself is true."

So, no matter how bad the marriage is, how much the person is avoiding conflict with their spouse by getting their needs met with you, or how much the person wants to be with you…it isn’t going to happen.

Not every affair happens because of this underlying dynamic, but if it sounds like the reason you’re still waiting for your lover to leave, then you need to leave them, and here’s why:

Want to know what got me into that truck anyway? What got me off to college, what got me through a demanding professional program, and what got me into reading self-help and therapy to deal with my problems? DESPERATION.

I KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO ME IF I DIDN’T.

I realized that if I didn’t get into that truck and fucking learn to drive, if I didn’t go to school and learn to support myself, if I didn’t get myself into help and look honestly at what was wrong with me and how to deal with it, I would end my life just like my mother: Dependent on other people to pay her way and drive her around, no real power in her relationship, no sense of accomplishment in her life, complaining and complaining and with nothing ever changing. Miserable unhappiness with no end in sight. 

If I didn’t do my work, that was lying in wait for me, and things were so bad I just couldn’t accept that. The fear of horrible alternatives drove me to do what I needed to do, no matter how bad I felt or how scared I was. That meant that if I found out there really was something bad I was or had done, I was just going to have to listen and change it. I was just going to have to stand facing it and knowing it for sure, after all.

And you know what I found out?? There really wasn't anything bad about me at all. I had made some mistakes, but I came by them honestly, and I didn't need to hate myself. It didn't mean I was a bad person. It just meant I had mislearned a few things, and now that I knew better, I could do better. And that I could learn better, and I could do better, made me feel a lot better about myself. And I could appreciate all the good things about me there really are.

If your married lover needs to make major changes in his or her life, they never will as long as you are there to listen, to give hugs, kisses, and moral support, and oh, not to mention: sex.

You are the person making their unbearable situation bearable. 

Without you, they might actually feel enough pain and desperation in their marriage to face the things that are wrong, in their heart and in their life, no matter how hard it is or how bad it feels. No matter how scared they are. YOU are the person keeping him or her from looking at the reality: Unless and until I make changes, the eventual outcome of this marriage will mean what kind of pain for my life? How will things turn out if I don’t make the changes I need to make?

That person needs, and you do, too, to honestly face the truth of their life.

Get out of that person’s life, and they might just become desperate enough to do it.

Sometimes, even if it might be the last gift you will give them, the word "No" is the most loving gift you will ever give them.

It doesn't mean you can never see the person again. It just means that you demand the healthiest behavior from them, and you don't settle for less. You may be the only person in their life who will insist on this. And health makes changes that need to be made, and if it's having trouble, it works on the reasons why. It doesn't cop out in an affair for seven years, tearing everyone involved apart and delaying any real progress for as long as they're two-timing people. Health solves problems, it doesn't avoid them. When that person can make some fundamentally healthy change, you can welcome that person back again.

Merry Christmas.

Comfortable Inertia and the Chronic Poor Doer

Recent Past...

For the week or so after Richard's outburst and sudden storm-out, I had this very odd sensation I felt unaccustomed to.

That heaviness, that sadness, that despair, that constantconstant knowledge that I am all alone and that this is veryvery bad...

WAS GONE.

Wow. I just felt so much lighter. I just felt so much freer. I just felt so much happier.

Of course, Chi's first two messages to me really helped. First he Facebooked me, "I hope you're doing well." I sent that back to him. For all I knew, he'd seen all these music videos I posted when I was in a sad mood, and he was messaging from a happy marriage, out of concern that I was just imploding. For all I knew, I was going to hear, "I'm so sorry. But Rory and I found each other again, and we're perfect now, and this was just what we needed to impact that to happen and I'm so sorry it had the side effect of inadvertently destroying you."

But the next words, "I miss talking to you," set me free.

Nobody writes that to an ex-affair partner if they have a family they're motivated to save and a spouse they can actually talk to.

I was right. Everything I thought about it the night he broke it off with me was right, everything I had ferreted out since was right, and I had read the charts and predicted correctly (with major help from Alice.)

I WASN'T CRAZY.

"You're better off by yourself," and "You're not nuts." Those messages from the Universe do wonders for one's state of mind.

I got to spend a week or so in that state while waiting to see if anything else would shake out.

And I discovered that I'd be okay if nothing else did.

Far better to know this and just go on alone than get caught in a stable triangle that wrecks all three parties involved. Far better to know this and just go on, than to wrench someone out of a marriage when he isn't ready, enter a relationship with someone emotionally crippled from that experience, and have it end in the disastrous way that's foretold in all our worst transits. When we're seventy-one and eighty-one.

No, clearly, just being reassured that I can make it alone and that I'm not nuts, and moving on with my life would be infinitely preferable.

Not that I wanted to leave Chi in the dust, if he were capable of getting out of that nightmare of a marriage and healing enough to become functional in his relationships. THAT Chi is my ideal guy. I love Chi no matter what, but if a person can't function in an intimate relationship, only he can alter that fact, and hurtling forward to your doom because you still love the guy won't change a bad ending.

If he won't do better, he won't do better. Period. Living with my mother for thirty-eight years has shown me quite vividly that there's nothing worse than trying to live with a chronic poor doer...except, quite possibly, for being a chronic poor doer.

In veterinary medicine, a "chronic poor doer" is that animal out of the herd who just stands around, shabby-coated, thin, miserable, underweight, and sickly, while all the other horses or calves or goats or what have you around it are fat and sleek and glossy.

I see some good signs. He knows he's still miserable. He knows he isn't being treated well. He's still in therapy. He's reacting to his misery by trying to find a way out. And it was HIS idea to break contact for a while in order to think about what we talked about and discuss it in his therapy group. And he's sticking to that. I haven't heard from him since.  Also: He knows he mislead me last time, and he apologized for that. (And I apologized to him--I did have plenty to apologize to him for.) He's being careful not to mislead me again about what he is and isn't capable of. 

I've got to give credit where credit is due. Those are good. Those are good prognostic indicators. However--

--There are still some troubling signs that he may just continue to be, a chronic poor doer.

I understand that he's had a health issue which would keep anyone from cracking a book in the past year or so. But this person hasn't cracked a book in his entire life except the one assigned by the marriage counselor. Nothing on relationships. Nothing on codependency. Nothing on healthy boundaries, nothing on low self esteem. Nothing on being an ACoA. This person doesn't keep a journal. And this therapy group is not encouraging any of the above.

This therapy group isn't actively encouraging learning and work. This therapy group is not actively encouraging progress. It sounds, from what I heard, like a place that allows a person to just come in and complain about a situation, if that's all they want to do.

While I don't go so far as to encourage everyone to become an astrologer in order to solve personal and relationship problems--that may very well be overkill on my part--I am no chronic poor doer, and I DO keep a journal and seek out information to read. 

I understand that healing from childhood wounding by sick, alcoholic, codependent, and/or mentally ill parents is not a spectator sport.


I also noticed other signs in our few conversations.

It's subtle, but this guy really misses me.

He really, really, really, really, really, really misses me.

What he's suffering from is that lack of deep companionship, that deep partner intimate relationship in his life. These are the things he's never had. These are the things he's never had.

Rory isn't able to change to fit that, and she doesn't seem interested in trying any harder. She just wants him being there doing whatever he's being there doing, and I've written about that here in the past.

And he came back to me to find what he's missing, describing this huge void I left in his life. He's very subtle, but I'm starting to know him well enough to hear the signs in his voice that he's REALLY unhappy.

Only...

He's trying to find it by weaseling himself back into club activities he left to work on the marriage. Subtly, but he is. So he can see me every two weeks and talk to me once in a while.

And that's ALL he was planning to do to try to find what he's missing.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

1.) If we have to see each other every two weeks, and we still love and long for one another, how long are we going to be able to stand THAT? First we're going to end up talking in each other's cars after the meetings...then we're going to end up going to lunch (which he already asked me to do)...and then...and then...

Well, you KNOW what comes "and then."

2.) If his stated intention is not to leave the marriage, seeing each other in ANY capacity is NOT going to go anywhere. So...we're going to stare across the table at each other every two weeks for how long? And how is that going to affect our ability to forget this and move on in our lives? Is the deprivation of a normal life for each of us when we inevitably find that we can't, a good thing?

(Can I hear a big, resounding NO?)

3.) And speaking of a normal life. Basically, so that others in the family do not get angry with him and he doesn't have to endure criticism from anyone else, or upset anyone else's idea that life is perfect for everyone the way things are, he's going to restrict his intimate relationship life to a few crumbs of companionship from me for a couple of hours every two weeks.

A few crumbs under the table, when everyone else gets to find a healthy partner relationship of their very own and enjoy a full meal every day that they live? (If they CHOOSE to do their own growth and recovery work rather than stagnate in that relationship, that is.)

When Chi and I first got together, he told me a very personal dream that he had. I'm not going to share it here. But I had to ask myself if this proposed state of affairs would get him any closer to that dream.

Look how unsatisfactory all that is.

Would I be winning a gold medal here to aid and abet this in any way?

*cue Lt. Commander Data* "No, Geordi, I would not."

Which is why I had to say no.

It's my job, and I will continue to do that job.

It may very well be that he can just choose to stay where he is, be content with being that center of his family, and find serenity and peace. And if so, the way I find serenity and peace is not by hanging on, but by letting the dreams we had die and moving on to the next place in my life.

And if it's true that he cannot choose to stay where he is and find serenity and peace, I do not assist him in getting to a place where he CAN find serenity and peace, by enabling him to use tiny crumbs of companionship from me to make that situation j-u-u-u-st bearable enough that he can j-u-u-ust stand it, and is therefore unmotivated to change or grow any more.

And because I've DONE all that hard work lo, these past two years that Anne Ortelee came on here and lambasted me for, NOW I can see all this and NOW I have the strength to carry that out.

What we are seeing here, ladies and gentlemen, is the inevitable inertia of the human spirit when faced with a daunting (and bloody painful) amount of hard work and personal change.

Change is HARD.

I, however, do not ask any more of Chi--or of YOU, dear reader--than that of which I am capable, and which I have actually accomplished, myself.

Don't stagnate in your life and become a chronic poor doer.

GO DO IT. Go do your goddamned work. Go RECOVER from your goddamned childhood wounding issues so you can actually have a loving, functional partnership in your life before you motherfucking DIE.

Nobody's getting any younger.

OMG!!!! I made the front page of Relationshiptalk.net with the first blog I ever posted there!!!

Present...

I don't know if it's against the rules there to repost content written there anyplace else. I do know I couldn't use that site to direct traffic here.

So I'll just post the link to that article here.  It's called, "I Can't Stop Thinking About My Ex. What Should I Do?"

This is SO FREAKING COOL!!!
Not only did they put it first on the front page, but they also added an image for me!

Thank you, Relationshiptalk.net! 

I spent some time surfing around that site last night prior to writing. While it's kind of hard to find stuff on it and figure out how it's organized, it's got a lot of very good content anyone dealing with a relationship problem may get something useful out of.

Y'all stop by! 

Serendipity and the last stages of learning

PAST

I find it absolutely fascinating that Chi's and my Davison specifically states that we each came into the other's life with a lesson for that person.

And, seriously. THE WEEK after I had finally completed that learning...here he is. He told me he had wanted to contact me again for a long time, but he was afraid to. He was afraid he would open old wounds.

Really, I don't know how I ever would have closed those wounds without him. I was reeling over being rejected, and felt horrible that I may have tarnished something that would otherwise become beautiful.

Oh, and there was the obvious evidence that I was nuts. Yeah, that.

The learning I was meant to complete was quite the riddle. My transits for this and next year told me that completing it was a major make-or-break issue, but neglected to mention WHAT this specific task actually was. I had to go on a hunt for that, through our Davison and through all of our transits over the next twenty years.

And it was a damn good thing I did, because I had never, ever suspected that the way I was around this issue contained anything unhealthy at all! I thought it was simply the way I was. I thought it was the way all people were!

Imagine, if you will, a five year old getting separated from his parents in a huge department store, or maybe one of those colossal theme parks. Suddenly the child looks up, having been absorbed in some toy. Mom and Dad, brother and sister, are gone! How will that child get home? Who will feed him, who will take care of him? Where will he sleep? Will he ever see his family again?

Just study the reaction of a tiny baby when Mom and Dad head out the door for a date night. The panic. The despair.

I was a kid rejected at home and rejected at school from birth until the age of twelve. I always believed there was something deeply wrong with me, else everyone around me would not have rejected me. I was in touch with the sense of terrible inferiority I always felt. When I finally started to make real friends, in college and as a young adult, I was ecstatic. I could fit in with people after all! And when I married Simon. Finally, I had a happy family! I was good enough, after all! (And, I had WORKED HARD ENOUGH to know how to make a marriage relationship work.)

What I was NOT in touch with was that feeling that overtook me after Simon was gone, went away when Chi arrived, and plunged me below sea level when he left. This horrible, abiding, aching sense of sadness that felt unhealable. That felt like it would never go away. And the fear that went with it. I'd be out jogging and it would get dark outside, and I'd think: I could be raped or mugged out here and not a soul would know. Or the horrible time I had norovirus and the flu alone in a hotel room miles out of town. I threw up and had so much diarrhea, and felt so horrible, I truly was scared. What if I got seriously dehydrated? No one knew or cared where I was.

Now I understand that feeling that way all the time is NOT the way life is or the way normal people are. And if I feel that way all the time, I would grab onto Chi long before he was ready, wrenching him out of a family he just wasn't ready to leave. I suppose I would have learned eventually anyway...but who knows what horrible things would have had to happen to me and my relationships over the rest of my life as I discovered it the hard way? Since finding this in my chart and reallllly thinking it over, I could apply myself to addressing it now.

If I didn't do this, the consequences could be disastrous.

As you know, I worked. I worked hard on this.

And I thought I had it. I really did.

Until...The Incident With Richard.

In my frantic search for friendship after Chi left my life, I ended up taking over a writer's group that had been left orphaned after the organizer quit. Somebody had to take over, so I did.

Writers, I am discovering, have a lot of emotional problems as a group. My group is now down to two members, thanks to the childish behavior of two other members.

I had thought things were smoothing out with Richard. Although he brought in writing that was atrociously spelled and had a lot of newbie plotting and structural problems that would bore the reader to tears left as they were, his story was so weird and so inspired (and, well, so gross), that I could see it finding an audience. The problem was that his reader deserved his best work, and since it was a critique group, I told him so.

He would sit there turning red in the face and then explode in anger at me. Others in the group stopped sharing their honest reactions, fearing to start a temper geyser that would have people at neighboring tables staring at all of us.

Not me. He brought the book in for our opinions. I knew what it needed, and I told him. We thought he would never make it all the way through to "The End."

But finally, he did make it. He had grown calmer, and even told me once that he'd made some of the changes I suggested. We marveled together at some of the outlandish behavior of a couple of other people who acted even worse. Finally, it was down to just us three: Me, Richard, and Judy.

I was so proud of him for finishing. He came to his last meeting fuming about his illustrator, who was clearly a few cards short of a full deck, and we commiserated about that. Then I started on his last ten pages. I actually did like them, except that he had included as an epilogue something that there was no way for the reader to recognize as connected in any way to the story he had just finished telling, and he'd left dangling loose ends that really needed to be the actual epilogue.

I was so happy that morning, as Richard sat there telling us stories about this illustrator that would curl your hair. And I thought, " See? You're going to find real friends again. Look at this. It's going to be me, Rich, and Judy together at this table for a long time to come." And I felt that coziness...the safety and security of having other people in your life you can call real friends.

I hadn't even finished discussing the pages he brought before Richard erupted. And I mean ERUPTED. Although any reasonable person could see that I had valid points, I didn't even get to the part about the loose threads needing to be the epilogue instead. Richard got red in the face, screamed at me for "eviscerating" his book, called me a C You Next Tuesday right there in the restaurant, threw papers at me, and stormed out. Judy, who is in her seventies, sat there trembling and told me he had scared her to death.

It was as if I had slipped back into that needy mindset one more time, and the Universe used Richard to bitch-slap me right back out of it. Immediately.

And I felt this little click inside my head. All my life I had felt like other people were great and I wasn't, and everybody needed people, and the world was just this warm and fuzzy place I was locked out of.

I realized suddenly that I hadn't met but one or two sane people since Chi left me. And I understood finally, It's not such a good world out there. People are crazy. People are goddamned crazy.

And that I had better get the FUCK out of the mindset of just marking time until I had people again, because there aren't very many good ones out there, and with crazies like the ones I'd been meeting, what I needed to do was toughen up so I wouldn't need any of these bozos.

When you are too needy for companionship, and all you can find is this, you are going to find yourself in one bad place. When you are too needy for companionship, and all you can find is this, you could accept behavior you should never, never accept.

There was simply no need to miss people. People are crazy sons of bitches, and I am wayyy better off by myself.

I went walking downtown after that alone, to an Ethiopian restaurant I love, and for the first time I went about by myself without this funny feeling that it wasn't right that I was alone, that I needed company and I would never, could never, feel happy or safe without it.

I had turned the very last corner. And I knew it. I had finally gotten the last lesson Chi came to teach me about feelings from childhood I really needed to change.

For the first time in my entire life, I could be alone, quite possibly forever, and feel perfectly okay by myself.

                          ***

And the very next week, Chi came back.

reserve posts--revisit if he shows up.

PAST

(This post is titled as it is because it's actually a compilation of two . I was writing them in September, right after that transit ended during which I expected him to get in touch with me, and he didn't.

I took it down, because it was so obsessive and so focused on divinatory oracles that I sounded like an idiot.

I ask you: is this prescient, or not?? Everything I say here that I saw in cards or in a horoscope, turned out to be the truth.)

But, I expected it last week, so I was upset, considering the possibility that everything really did go great over in Chi-land and the picture really was worth a thousand words. Very sad that it was Rory and not me. And that I’d never see him again. Et cetera. When I should have been happy for them.

The astrology and the cards still tell a different story. Again, either the picture or the cards are right. No way it can be both. 

And, if oracles are random, why do they tell me the same damn thing every time? That’s not random.

According to the cards, things are very bad over there for old Chi, because Rory hasn’t changed a bit.

Of course, I have to do the either-or thing here. Either the picture is correct, or the cards are. If the picture is the truth, I say again they’ve done great work and deserve their success and their happiness. Too fucking bad for me. I need to just go on with my life, forget them, and get over it.

But I noticed something. Clearly depicted in the cards is Chi struggling with a marriage, and a wife, that’s gone right back to the way things were when we first started speaking. He knows he isn’t happy. He knows he’s right back at Square One again. (And I have to say that, looking at the behavior Rory was showing him at the end of May 2015, which he did tell me about, this is SO not surprising. I could have told him it would end up like this. The only reason I didn’t was that self-effacement and self-reproach clearly had jammed their sharp bit between his teeth and were galloping off with him like runaway horses. He acted angry with me; he acted like he wished I’d just disappear, so he wouldn’t have to deal with me. There was no way he’d listen to me, so I didn’t say it. All I could do was caution him to restart individual therapy again while trying to deal with her. Did he do that? Let…me…guess.)

According to the cards, Chi knows he’s in trouble. He knows he needs to do something, but he’s scared and he’s delaying.

If it’s true, and I say again, If it’s true, here’s the interesting thing about that:

The last time this happened, and things broke down so badly in his life that no amount of misuse of Zen Buddhism, television, cleaning, or any other kind of escape could close down the pain, at least he reached out for help. He reached out for help, and he reached out to me.

Now, however, he isn’t. Not that I know about.

Of course, he could be discussing it in therapy…but if therapy were that much help, the picture would be the truth, now, wouldn’t it? After two and a half years??

If the true state of affairs is what the astrology, the cards, and the visits on Linked In suggest, I sure hope he’s reaching out to someone, even if it isn’t me. Because for twenty years prior to that, he endured the same thing, and told no one. Until me.

Now, what kind of person does that?

One who isn’t likely at all to get well, that’s what kind.

One who squelches every thought, every need, every feeling that comes up, before it can even fully form, if he notices that it will conflict with what others around him want from him. One who isn’t honest. One who doesn’t talk about feelings and find out about other’s feelings. One who makes up reasons other people do what they do. One who lives in his own little world and pretends the world it looks like the two of you are sharing is okay, until he can’t pretend anymore, and BLAM!! One who hardly knows his own mind, because he’s trying so hard to make it conform to everyone else’s. And then wonders why he’s unhappy, when the truth is: No one can ever be happy, who’s so determined to become someone other than he is.

One who’s really just a rudimentary, stunted, partial self.  A scared one. A hiding one. A running one. One who doesn’t like himself at all. And it’s sad, because the man is lovely, he truly is. The only thing wrong with him is he doesn’t know there isn’t anything wrong with him. A lovely, lovely person, trapped forever in a house of pain of his own making. (Well. And his parents’.)

If you can’t even fight for yourself when you know you’re in terrible trouble, if you’re just going to sit there and pretend you’re fine and not even reach out for help anymore, you truly are very, very ill.

It’s not the kind of illness one can ever have a relationship with. Because it’s going to hide deep inside the broken, shattered self, tell you nothing, and act and pretend its way to Armageddon.

If things are this bad, chances are he’s going to just stay there with Rory and die in slow, unspoken misery. Or let things get a little bit worse, and then pick someone equally as sick to have an affair with because he still can’t stomach leaving—something he has a transit warning him about this summer.

If things are this bad, oh, well. There’s nothing I can do with a person who won’t speak to me. And if he had enough fight in him to turn the corner here, he’d speak to somebody again if he were this unhappy. If he’s this unhappy and speaking about it to no one…that’s bad, bad news. Bad news.

This is where Rory’s transits are telling her she’s either got it or she doesn’t. She’s either made it, and the picture is true, or she hasn’t and she’s going to reap some consequences. I don’t see any more transits about therapy for her.

This is where the rubber meets the road.

If it’s really this bad, and Chi can do better, this is where he finds the guts to once again speak up, address the situation, figure out what went wrong and how to do better. If he doesn’t speak up to somebody, even if it’s not me…well, that’s a very poor prognosis for him, indeed. This is a really sick person, sicker than he was in 2015. And that’s bad, bad, bad.

And I won’t see him again.

And I’m glad, because a person this sick isn’t workable. I missed him based on a perception of someone, a perception he was showing me for a while, who had the guts and tenacity to grab those self-esteem and self-worth problems and WORK on them. And if he can’t even speak up for himself enough to question what’s wrong and tell someone, ANYone, that he’s in trouble, well…

He's just like my mother. Never going to engage his problems. Never going to get well.

The man is going to be fifty-nine, for Chrissakes. 

The astrology is betting on him. The astrology is betting that he’s going to reach out to someone, and it was going to be me. And it was warning me I’d better have my ducks in a row, or I’d screw up royally and do something very harmful. The astrology is betting on Chi, and it’s never been wrong before.

I’m betting it will be this time. I’m betting he’s either going to just sit there until the misery is so great he ends up in an affair with someone way worse off than I am. Or maybe he’ll tell a therapist, and Chi and Rory will have one more go at it. That whole astrological set piece, Chi and I Love Triangle Phase Two, won’t happen. I’ll be by myself, working on my North Node, and good luck to them.

For their sakes, I hope the picture IS true. All the alternatives aren’t great, frankly. Not without a lot of honesty and very hard work.

At any rate, very soon we’ll know. He’ll speak to me, or he won’t.

And if he doesn’t, I haven’t lost anything.

Really.


**************************


HERE’S where my transits are advising me: INFORMATION ONLY. YOU MAY ADVISE, BUT DO NOT GRAB AT THE RELATIONSHIP. Here’s where Alice Portman told me, “They have to do it themselves, or they don’t learn anything.” Here’s where my natal chart is saying: Self-sufficiency. Neediness Kills.

And here’s where, thanks to all the hard work I’ve done since growing up with a mentally ill mother and getting tossed out into young adulthood a crazy emotional MESS (Ever read Susan Forward’s Obsessive Love? That was me at eighteen), I know exactly what they are talking about, I know exactly why, and I know E-X-A-C-T-L-Y What The Fuck To Do. (Not to mention, exactly what the fuck NOT to do!)
Now I K-N-O-W there’s something more than our rational existence, and I K-N-O-W there’s a reason for the shitty things that happen. I K-N-O-W we aren’t just put here to suffer.


The gift here is validation of everything I’ve learned, and everything I’ve thought might be true about my life. I don’t have to worry anymore that I’m full of shit, that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, and that I had better not aim too high, because what I think, what I know, what I offer, and what I write, has no value. Clearly, I know quite a lot, and clearly, it does have value. I’ve just saved myself from a lifetime of MISERY. 


And I saw it all…a year and a half ago.


I can’t save Chi from a lifetime of misery. I can tell him how to do it, but he’s the person who has to do it. No one else can do it for him.