Since You Stayed

End.

Unless some extraordinary circumstance I might feel the need to report here suddenly happens, my learning arc with respect to the married-man affair of the past three years appears to have come to an end. I doubt I'm going to have much new to say, so I'm closing out this blog. Because Chi knows where this is, I'm going to leave my last post as a message for him, in case he ever wonders. I've made it my policy that I can't speak to him unless he speaks to me, so this is the only way I can speak to him.

Dear, sweet Chi,

I don't know how likely it is that you will ever come here to read what I've written about our relationship. Quite possibly the answer to that is, never. But if you are here, you're thinking about me, it's probably safe to assume you miss me and you're looking for clues about my feelings, and I want to leave you something so you'll know.

No, I am not angry at you. Yes, yes, yes, I still love you. No, I do not think you are worthless, I do not hate you, and yes, I will still talk to you. 

A year ago you chose, once again, to stay in your marriage, even though you were still deeply unhappy. I assume you are unhappy still or you wouldn't be here to read this. Since you stayed and I never heard from you again, I hoped that would be because your wife woke up finally and you reached a new understanding and a happy new beginning for you both. Not because I'm angry or unhappy with you or sick of you or because I don't want to see you ever again; but since you didn't choose me and you're still in that house, I want it to be for happy reasons and not unhappy ones, because that is what would be best for you.

But that doesn't appear to be the case, if you're here.

I want you to know, first and foremost, that I will always speak to you if you speak to me. If you're in trouble, if you're lost, if things are bad and nothing else is helping and you don't know what else to do, I'm here and you know where to find me. I will never steer you wrong, and I won't let you do anything dumb...as you already know from the last time we spoke.

I want you to know that I love you very, very much, and when you never spoke to me again, that has been one of the saddest things that has ever happened to me. Unless you and Rory turned over a new leaf and you're actually happy, of course. If that happened, I'm happy for me because I'm happy for you.

I want you to stop running yourself down and punishing yourself over what happened. Yes, the ending of our love was very sad for me. But, I learned so, so much! I learned about love, I learned about affairs, I learned about you, I found out I can read astrology and tarot, I learned about Rory, and most of all I learned about myself.

I learned I still had serious emotional problems that needed fixing. My marriage with Simon was so happy I never would have known this if he'd lived, and if you and I had tried to stay together, I still wouldn't have known it, and would have behaved in ways that would have doomed us as a couple. Since you left me, I had the opportunity to learn this and to work to heal and better myself.

That is what all relationship is about, but oh, especially when there's an affair. I did my work, I'm still doing my work, and I'm going to keep doing my work. 

It's my job.

If you're here, I'm assuming it's because you don't feel a bit special at all. I want to tell you once again that you are. Yours always was a beautiful kindred intellect and a sweet, funny, beautiful spirit, and it was a privilege to know you and to be with you, even in the limited way and for the limited time that we had. Only in your difficulty addressing your own emotional issues instead of everyone else's have you disappointed me. In every other respect, you and Simon have always been everything that I wanted. I suspect I will never meet anyone like of either one of you ever again.

But, that's not my job. Getting well is, and that's what I'm doing. I've learned that I need to be a lot less relationship-dependent, and that the best thing for me would be to fall in love with my work, not other people. So, I'm off to do that.

I'm easy to find. You know where. If you're stuck, if you need help, if you miss me, if you need advice, you're always welcome. Should I actually see or hear from you again, it will be a wonderful surprise and I will be very, very happy. Please know that.

I said no to seeing you on a regular basis before because I knew it would lead to a real, full-blown affair if we did that. I didn't want that because I knew it would be bad for you. You would never get healthier if we did that...you would use me to hide from your problems some more and only get worse. And I would never, ever, ever, ever do anything that would cause you ultimate harm, or that I knew would not be in your highest good. 

Popular wisdom says that we other women should stay away from you married men because we're hurting the wife by taking someone else's man. As if you are Rory's property, and your main job in life is making her happy, along with all the other Looky-Lous who observe your relationship from the outside, and believe they know the truth about it when they do not.

Sweetheart, living as nothing but an emotional and financial service station to other people is not your job. She has an much of an obligation in your marriage as you do. You're a human being, and you deserve some standards of decent treatment. You had forgotten that, or, to put it more accurately, you never learned that at home in the first place, and that was why I made the decision to step in to begin with. That, and unhealthy reasons, detailed in this blog, which I have since remedied.

If "the wife" doesn't wish to be hurt by the arrival of a third party, she needs to work on herself as hard as I've worked on myself, which is one of the reasons I wrote this blog. Affairs don't happen because people are being willfully ugly or mean. Affairs happen because three people didn't get well from three sick childhoods.

I want more than anything that you heal from the way you grew up. I want more than anything that you come to know yourself as a deeply good and worthy being. That's your job. Quit distracting yourself by running yourself down, cleaning, watching TV, doing volunteer work, and embroiling yourself in the problems of those close to you, and embroil yourself in your own childhood problems instead, so you can achieve this work before you die. That's what I'm doing. If you show up here, whatever else happens, I am going to require that of you. That's what I'm doing myself.

It's come to my attention that one of my real problems is that I don't believe in myself, so I try to escape into relationships and other people's problems instead of finding the courage to actually finish something, and then go out into the world and risk and try with my writing, instead of wishing and dreaming while I tell myself it'll never work.

Correcting that issue in my behavior is where I'm going to be.

If you're here because things aren't working and you're in absolute despair, come find me. You know I'll always listen and have some thoughts.

And if you don't come find me, always remember me as fondly as I will remember you.

I love you forever and ever.

Solitary Confinement.

Present

So, if you come here every week, you know that I've been waiting with baited breath to see if an important astrological prediction comes true right about now the way one did last fall. (If you haven't been reading: A very sad parting with someone I fell in love with three years ago happened when, as the title implies, this person went back to a troubled marriage after declaring himself through with it and moving out. In reading our astrological charts, it was predicted that I'd hear from this person again last October...and I did.

The details are scattered throughout the blog, but, in short, I beat myself up for two and a half years thinking I had stepped in on a marriage that could have been made whole again. Although the astrology indicated difficult personalities who didn't want to work on their own emotional difficulties that had wrecked the marriage, they were in marriage counseling the last time I had seen him, and I assumed they would make progress and be fine.

Last October my old love contacted me again and I got to hear the story of what actually had happened. It sounded a LOT more like the astrology and not at all like what we generally hope happens when we enter therapy to try to save a relationship. Well--I'll amend that. There was a leg of transits that sounded like two people working on their own emotional problems and making progress, and a leg of transits that were exactly the opposite. We got the bad leg.

The aspects that indicated I'd hear from him again were pretty subtle, and one well-known professional even read this and got it wrong. But the indicators that I would see this person again this summer and we would rekindle our relationship (and what would happen if we did that) were NOT subtle at all. They were HUGE.

That left me to figure out: When. 

After so many amazing things were reflected in the charts that turned out to be true, I actually started studying astrology myself. As a student astrologer, I have my strong points and my weak points, and one of my weak ones is pinpointing the timing of events. I had settled on the end of May by a process of extrapolation (by which I often get myself into trouble.) 

I had figured, the transits that favor getting back together all start over the summer, and how can those happen if you aren't speaking at least just prior? Plus, I knew he was going to be spending a weekend alone, and that would have been prime real estate. (That was when we'd always talked before.)

Again I say, extrapolative reasoning is no substitute for actually learning to read the transits and progressions. 

Well, it's Saturday night of the weekend in question, and I haven't heard from this person. Time to pack it in.

Our charts were full of dates with destiny, and up to now he hadn't missed one, from late 2014 to the present. Now he has. If a person stands you up for a date, you aren't going to see him again. I think this applies quadruple when it's a major date in three charts, one that transforms the lives of three people. It's kind of hard to see how the other transits are going to happen when: It is summer, and the person's not even here. 

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. Yeah, sadness and devastation are among them.

You know how, when you meet that special someone, you just know? Johnny Cash, upon meeting June Carter, told her he was going to marry her, even though they were both already married at the time. I felt that way when I met my husband, and when I met Chi. (I met my husband and Chi at the same time; we were at a group meeting together. Weird sensation, that.)

Those have been the only two people I ever felt that way about. And I met my husband and Chi in the waning days of 1998, so that is a VERY long time. I work serving the public and I belong to two hobby groups; it's not like I don't meet other men. I just haven't felt that way about anyone else. And the older I get, the more eccentric I get (and the fatter). Meeting people who might be compatible gets harder and harder the older we get. 

I think I may have just finished the last relationship I'm ever going to have.

I'm not saying that as in, "Oh, Chi's gone, I'm never going to have anybody else, boo-hoo!" with the emphasis on having someone, anyone. I don't want some nameless, faceless
Generiguy, just to be with somebody.

I'm saying that because there really has to be something special about a person for me to feel that way. There's a quality of mind my husband and Chi had that other people just don't have. I'm not going to have that response to just anyone, and, having had the connections I've had with these two special, special men, I highly doubt I'm going to have that with anyone ever again. They were the ultimate relationships. No one else is ever going to come up to them.

I don't even feel comfortable dating anyone anymore. Any person you date wants to feel like you're there because you like and want them, not because they're a poor substitute for the one who died and the one who never came back. In order to date someone else I'd have to feel like I won't constantly be thinking of Simon and Chi when I'm with them. If I ever should find someone who meets that criterion, okay, but that's a tall order. A VERY tall order.

Chi was very special to me. Everywhere I go, I see his face, and many times a day, I think of him. Maybe one day that will change, but it's been three years so far, and right now he is irreplaceable. No, I don't know anybody to date, no, I don't want to date, and the only thing I'm going to find online is trouble.

So, my first thought about this ending is, I am now retired. My relationship life is over.

And that's okay. At some point in your life, if you don't die first, your relationship life WILL be over. That's just the way life is.

Time to take everything I've learned, sling it in a pack over my shoulder, and walk off down the road alone.

There's some grief involved in this. I love Chi very much. All it would have taken is a reappearance, together with a willingness to work as hard at healing old childhood wounds as I have these past three years, and I would have been there. Forever.

I probably will love him forever. But you can't be with a person who isn't here. All you can do is put it behind you, focus your life on other things, and forget about it.

I had hoped to be right. I had hoped to see him again. I had hoped for the triumph of true love, I had hoped for a better outcome. If he'd just shown up and been willing to work, it could have happened. We had that leg of transits. It was in our Davison, big time.

This, however, is life on Planet Earth. Better outcomes, by and large, aren't to be had here.

Perhaps the best outcome is that I finally learn how to be happy alone. I don't have much choice now. In almost five years since my husband died, I have only found two friends, one of whom I don't see much due to work schedules, and they're not the kind of friendships where you call each other all the time and go over and visit. I have no close familylike relationships at all, and I don't see any showing up. I am ALL alone in my life, and I don't expect this to change.

I would have been so happy if it could have been Chi. But it won't be, and it won't be anyone at all. I think this all happened to me so I could learn how to rely on no one but myself. Because, from now on, that's the only person I'm going to have.

My second thought is terrible sadness that something that could have been wonderful, isn't going to happen. The same kind of thing happened when Simon died. Oh, well. This is Chi's choice. Chi is in charge of what happens, nobody else (even though he keeps trying to blame other people), and I have no control of this whatsoever.

But then, third thought: relief. If he'd shown up and I'd been too desperate and had the affair instead of guiding him back to therapy (with better therapists, please!), there's no question I'd have been DUMPED. There it is, right there in 2021--he goes back to her one more time (it doesn't work any better then), and I am absolutely DEVASTATED.

At least I don't have to go through that. Now I can just get it all over with once and for all.

Of course, I was to get him back again after that. Guess that's not going to happen, either.

In the next two years I have a couple of transits that talk about being all alone and having to cope with a profound and archetypal sense of aloneness. Guess I know now what's going to happen for the next two years. It does help to know that, at least.

Fourth thought: My goal now is to do a better job with the next five years than I did with these five years. My first five years of being widowed, I have been the most horrible basket case. My misery prompted me to do a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of learning, and a lot of growing, as misery should. If you are miserable and you aren't doing these things, you are guaranteed to stay miserable, GUARANTEED. Misery is a sign that you're doing something wrong and need to change some very rigid thinking about something you are taking for granted as the truth of the way things are. I learned, yes, but I was lonely all the time and I was miserable, I spent too much, I ate too much, I let the housework go, and I slothed my way through life obsessing about what was gone instead of living in what is.

Now I have no choice. What is, is, and it is final. I can't go to the grocery store and order Chi or Simon back again; I have to cook with what's in the kitchen. If I don't learn to be happy with only what there is, I'm going to be suffering, and I won't be doing a good job with my life. The first five years, I did as well as I could do. Now I know I'm alone from now on, and I have to do better.

My fifth thought: I was so devastated and so sad today as I kept checking Facebook and I didn't see him. I thought of all the writing I've been trying to do, and I kept feeling like, If only this had happened, I would have been happy, and then I could have breezed through chores, housework, and calorie restriction, and I would have been happy to get my writing done. It wouldn't have felt like such a struggle, always dragged down because someone important was missing.

Isn't that the way life always is? When we have a relationship, even if there's sickness and problems and life isn't perfect, if the relationship is happy enough and most of our needs are met, life is basically good and it powers us through the rest of our life. Simon and I were like that. We gave each other courage to write and to try new things. Even if I wasn't good enough and it never went anywhere, we loved each other and we had a good time writing together, and that was what was important.

And when we don't have a relationship, or it's an absolutely horrible one and we're not happy, it drags us down til we can't do anything. (Um, I'm looking here at Chi and Rory.)

I remember as a kid, seeing scenes on TV where a parent or a close friend was behind a child, saying things like, "We have faith in you. We know you're wonderful and we know you can do it, and we love you!" And feeling like I couldn't do things because no one ever said that to me in my life. I needed the feeling of loving parents who were encouraging. My parents were ready with the belt and the flyswatter if I didn't perform, but there was none of that good stuff on the front end, just threats. "You'd better make all A's or else! You're LAZY!!!" And there were times I really didn't understand the math or whatever, and I cried and just got yelled at. Nobody helped me at all.

I'd see shows on TV where kids got helped and encouraged, even when they made a bad grade, and I'd feel really sad. Like TV was stupid, because everybody knew that wasn't how parents were in real life. And I'd sit over schoolwork and feel like, "I wish someone would encourage me like the moms and the dads on TV." Because if I was too good, someone (like BPD Mom) would act jealous that it was me and not her, or yell at me because I had a swollen head. (Because she did.) And then there's that feeling like maybe I was just singled out by the universe for some reason, not to be good enough for anyone to treat me like they treat kids on TV shows.

I hated living at home.

But today I thought, Why do I feel like that? Why do I feel like I can't be happy without Chi in my life, or that I can't motivate myself to do anything without him or Simon or other friends there to love me and support me and do things with me and care about me and make me feel happy all the time?

Why do I feel like I need someone else's help in order to feel happy and competent  enough to put myself into anything?

Because relationships are now OVER. I'm never going to have anyone close, I'm never going to have anyone who loves me, I'm never going to have anyone to encourage me, I'm never going to have anyone to support me, I'm never going to have anyone to be with or to do things with or to laugh with or to talk to, I'm never going to have any help from anyone to do anything, I'm never going to have anyone to come home to, in my life, ever, EVER AGAIN.

There's no one here but ME. Period. If I can't do it by myself, it just isn't going to get done. Just like everything else I've ever had to do my whole life. 

(Why do I have to have this life where I never get to have these good things other people get to have?? Not longer than fifteen short years, anyway. Lots of lucky people get these things, the loving support of good, healthy, trustworthy, steadfast, fun people, their whole entire lives. I get one healthy relationship, finally, and the guy dies before our seventh anniversary.) 

I guess with my background, I should be glad Simon happened to me at all. And I was! I was so proud that with my background, I finally had a healthy relationship and a real family (of one.) 

And that's why I've done so poorly these last five years. I thought that was all life was about, and now I can't function at all.

I guess I just designed a life of rugged individualism, and now I'm here, and it's no fun, and I don't want to do it. I want somebody to be my mommy and daddy and do things to emotionally take care of me...sort of like Chi does.

Tough.

My job is to be just as happy, and still do all those things, whether there's anyone here or not. I'm fifty years old.

Why do I still think I can't be happy and functional without someone else to be with?

So, I have to give up on Chi for good, and those have to be my goals now. I'm going to be alone, and I'm going to do everything all by myself. Forever.

Life's not going to give me any more people, so fuck you, life. I'm giving up on people and I'm done, and I'm doing it all for myself from now on. 

I have to stop thinking I need other people in order to feel happy and in order to motivate myself to do what I want to do. So, I have no one and it's not easy! I'm supposed to forget people and just do everything anyway.

All I have now is what I want to do. I'll never have anything else but me and my goals ever again.

*******
I suspect that even if Chi were here, he'd be no help anyway. I love him dearly, and no matter what. I know he has problems; we all do, and I don't love him less because of that. I understand what those problems are.

I did wonder, maybe he's not back because somebody turned a new leaf over there. Maybe he decided to be honest and tell her things were so bad he was interested in someone else, and she woke up. Maybe he's not back because they're okay now.

But I went back and reread what we wrote each other the last time we spoke. What I saw there was two people recycling codependency symptoms, and a person resentfully saying, "I made my bed and now I have to lie in it."

A person staying in a situation that was still terrible in order not to upset family. A person trying to wheedle his way back into club meetings just to see me once every two weeks, in order to get a few tiny crumbles of his needs met while he struggled to act like the person his family demands he be. (If I had've said yes then, maybe that's how the affair would have started now.) A person unable to pursue things he once found pleasurable because he was too depressed, and who thought he HAD to stay there anyway. And a wife who sort of slept her way through marriage counseling and hadn't changed much at all from the atrocious behavior that drove him to me in the first place.

What we are looking at, dear friends, is serious, entrenched mutual codependency. 59 and 63 years entrenched.

What are the chances that that situation turned around in the seven months since we last spoke??

And I'm looking at that chart and those transits. That chart demonstrates ability to do much better; and those transits do not describe a family and marriage situation that's getting any better. He can sit there if he wants, but he's going against his whole chart.

He has the right to do that. It's his choice, and no one else can choose anything for him...even if he blames them for his choice to stay unhappy, not get well, not do the work, and not grow. But it sure doesn't look like a happy way to live. 

Absent any evidence to the contrary, I have to assume he's still sticking with that choice.
 
Today I asked the tarot how he was. I got one card: Nine of swords. Google it.
For the past seven months, I have had a "Star light, star bright" wish: Don't send him back if he isn't capable of getting well.

My sixth line of thought about the sadness and the devastating ending of today: Perhaps I got my wish.

****
A Closing Note:

I'm not sure I'll have any more new developments to mull over here. If there's more to report, I will; summer's not over, after all. And it would seem Uranus is going retrograde and going to pass back over Saturn and hit my yod, within three degrees, one more time before finally moving off for good next March. (Interesting: When Chi spoke to me last fall, it was DIRECTLY over Saturn.)

But if there isn't anything else to report, all that will come up here now is any final thoughts I have to work out. (And I DO have some.)

Other than that, I plan to turn my attention now to finishing my novel, posting more on YourTango, and going over all this to make it shorter, more readable, and more accessible to people, and putting the revised version on my website. It's The ThinkingOtherWoman.webs.com.

Come visit me there. 

And thanks for reading.

It's been a tough three years. I needed the company.

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.

It's All Happening...

PRESENT...

(Composed on 11/5/17)

If anyone's been wondering what happened with me and Chi, sorry for the delay. Things took a while, and I had already scheduled some blogs, so I let those post while I waited to see what would shake out.

In short, I will never doubt astrology or tarot again.

Chi messaged me on Facebook, we talked on Facebook a couple of times, then we spoke once on the phone. I had two basic motivations in this: 1.) Find out WHAT had actually happened over there, and 2.) Ascertain whether I was crazy or not.

1.) What actually happened over there: Marriage counseling did not go well. Nothing much has changed. Chi still loves me, I still love him, and we've Facebook stalked one another and missed each other every day for two and a half years. Chi was dealing with a pretty serious health issue, and a couple of family members have been as well. Chi feels that family members have been very dependent on him and feels somewhat squashed by that. When he tried to leave Rory, family members basically got very vindictive, took her side, threatened to cut him out of the family, and he's stayed because of that. I'm hearing things like, "I was causing other people too much pain. I've made my bed and now I have to lie in it."

He is not, however, finding that particular mattress very comfortable.

2.) I am NOT crazy. I used to wonder, when the tarot cards indicated marital stress and difficulty, and the horoscopes were saying, Get these lessons under your belt now. Get ready, he's coming back, yet I was seeing Rory post these happy-looking things on occasion, WTF was WRONG with me. Who would believe tarot cards--ONLINE tarot cards, by the way!--and HOROSCOPES over what she could see with her own eyes? A man who left two and a half years ago, showed NO sign of even remembering her name, and postings that implied things were fine now and he had moved on?

Well, Alice Portman, the online tarot, and my own nascent talent at reading horoscopes all proved correct--as well as my instincts, developed over a lifetime of reading about psychology and relationships.

(And may I please point out, Anne OrtElee did NOT.)

(I'm SO snarky.)

The online tarot is now telling me I am going to have to use every last sand grain of what I've spent the last two and a half years so very painfully learning. And I plan to.

And I have to say that I am so, so very grateful for this entire experience. All the tears I cried, all the obsessing I did, all the pain I went through, all the reading, all the study, everything I learned...I wouldn't trade it for any amount of money.

Now I NEED what I learned, and if I hadn't learned what I would need to know, these past two weeks could have led to unmitigated, life-destroying disaster. (They still could...it just depends on how closely I can cleave to what I've learned.)

That obsessive process was how I, myself, learned it. Yours may be different. But this is how I learn best, and make fundamental changes in myself that I need.

If you find yourself obsessing along these lines and others are fed up with you, as long as you are uncovering unhealthy childhood patterns WITHIN YOURSELF that need to be changed AND YOU ARE CHANGING THEM, you are doing what YOU NEED to do.

(Tell the Anne OrtElees of this world to go fuck themselves.)

After the events of the past two weeks, I am making another prediction, based once again on horoscope transits. These transits were always there, but if the past two weeks hadn't happened, I would consider it not very likely. Now it's in the "highly probable" category.

I had to come clean...Chi now has access to this blog. I can't post the prediction now, because I don't want to affect the future in so doing. But if it happens, it becomes imperative that Chi know what's in his chart for the next several years and beyond, and it's doubly imperative that my behavior is perfect. NO dating him. NO sleeping with him. Limited and infrequent contact.

I'm on my honor. You guys keep me honest.

To Believe or Not to Believe, That is the Question

Present...


SO...

Sad, of course ("I'll never see him again!"), I consult the online tarot, which basically says the same as last time. It agrees with the astrology that nothing fundamental has changed over there.


You couldn't prove it by that anniversary photo. Personally, I'd rather trust my eyes, rather than oracles describing things I can't and may never see.


If the photo is true, they've done phenomenal work, work that deserves every success and happiness. Work that deserves my respect. 

And my phenomenal work is to learn how to live alone, work I have to do anyway. (With somebody this codependent, if I can't live without him, I certainly will never be able to live with him.) 

(It's even in, you guessed it, my fucking horoscope. North Node of the Moon in Aries. Eighth house.)


And if the photo is false and the oracles are true, but he doesn't come back to me and speak up, I will never know. If the marriage is bad, and he doesn't speak up, there's nothing I can do about that. 

It will never be my problem again. (And the tarot is telling him that!)


HE told me to stay away.


Therefore, the fact that he stays in the marriage, doesn't come back to me, and we never see each other again, isn't my fault.


If that's even the way it really is.


All I can do is just walk on, and be by myself. 

It's never fun to have to live the rest of your life without someone you loved (Gee, now I get to do that on two counts. Hooray.), but them's the breaks.