HAUNTED

It's been a long time since I first began this blog. Almost 2 years. The anger and venom that fueled the writings has been replaced by acceptance. However, there is still a mourning in my heart for that which I still don't understand. Both in him.....and in myself.

Lately I have been having a series of dreams about him. In one dream, we were getting along great, and he was loving and sweet, just as I wished him to always be. He apologized-and meant it.

I remember waking that morning, feeling very sad...because it was only a dream.

Now I have been having dreams, where he is hurting me again. Last night, we were in a courtroom for some reason-and him screaming at me "I am dead to you now!"

My thoughts have been pre-occupied again by this "relationship". I still feel such a sadness that it all went down as it did. I still struggle with the crazy that both he and I exhibited. Mostly, I wonder: Was I wrong? I am still plagued with doubt as I wonder if I didn't villify him and he really is just troubled, rather than abusive. Though I know intellectually in my heart the truth-he was very emotionally abusive to me-still, I wonder.

In the dream last night, he was madly in love with another. He treated her, well. I still pause and wonder just what is was about this man I was so drawn to-and indeed, was it just having feelings for a projection of who I wished he'd turn out to be?

I wonder what he thinks. I wonder, if he still "hates" me, blames me, and says to himself "I was shitty BUT..." and finding some justification for his behavior. I wonder if he's changed. I wonder if he feels bad. I wonder if he is healthy and got help for his addiction problem. I wonder wonder wonder-and I don't want to. It shouldn't matter. It doesn't matter. Some things are just so broken they can never be fixed. Yet I still ask myself. Does he wonder about me. Does he really "hate" me? Has time tempered his resentment, does he understand why I did what I did? Or am I still just "crazy."

I try not to think of the cruelity, the manipulation and the things he said to lower my self-esteem. I try to NOT think so much about how the hell anyone could violently reject someone's overtures of care, in favor of abuse. I wonder if he really just doesn't like women. Not that he is gay, but just seriously resents women. Given his history with them-not just with me-it would appear so. Some men seem to seriously resent the "power" of women, the power and dependency they feel for them-and just turn to objectify them.

I know that he isn't emotionally okay-that's why it was the way it was. I know, there was nothing I could or couldn't do to change that, and I try and accept, that I will mostly likely never understand it. Still, I wonder how he looks back at it all. I wonder, if the exposure of him to others and the pulling back of the curtain to reveal the little man behind it-as hard as he tried to "isolate" me-I wonder if it had an affect. But that would mean he would've had to have really cared about me in the first place, to be able to say "My God, I'd better get my shit together, I really fucked a good person up and that sucks." See-he had told me that once before. And went on to be WORSE than he ever was to me.

I don't understand how some of these people can have such a hold and a remarkable effect. And I can't forget how it was that I felt about him. It doesn't happen to me often. I hate the fact that I still find him physically attractive, though I would never act on it. I hate that I felt love for someone who simply didn't give a shit....yet led me on to believe that on some level, he cared TOO MUCH and THAT's why he treated me as he did. I'd like to believe that.

But only in my dreams.

I still fantasize sometimes, about closure I will never get. I know that I needed this somehow-because NO MAN will be able to do this to me again. I healed my wounds, I raised my self-esteem, and I heed the red flags. I've changed the things in me, that lets a guy like that in to be shitty. And not in a guarded, "never gunna trust anyone ever again fuck love" kind of a way, but in a way that honors myself. I get to know my crazy now. I take things slow. I don't jump into bed. Should I have a "booty call" encounter-as infrequent as that is-I walk away from it when it's over. I don't fool myself into thinking that a relationship can now spring forth from getting it in with someone I don't know.

I know what I want. I am continuing to work on myself and better myself, so I can attract a higher quality of man. For the relationship I deserve. I don't want to be fucked-I want someone to make love to me. I don't want an "escape"-I've had those relationships, too, where its all fun, games, great sex and good times-and nothing real about it. I want something honest, fufiling and meaningful-and for someone to love me FOR ME. Not my body, not my sex, not the favors I can do, or the people I know, or what they can get from me, or any other reason other than, its just ME.

Its scary in the world of dating-there's a lot of "psychos" out there. There's many, MANY emotionally unavailable people, whether they are conscious of it or not. There's a lot to risk but I am willing to risk it-FOR THE RIGHT PERSON. My standards are higher, I'm picky as hell-and I have boundaries. There's certain things I won't put up with, stand with, or accept as being "acceptable" anymore.

I guess I owe a lot of this to this man. Not that he set out to teach me, but that somehow, the universe used him to teach me all this. I needed this, to grow and get out of the negative relationship pattern I've been in for years now. I needed this to learn how to love myself.

But I still wish it wasn't him, that I had to go thru it all with. I sometimes briefly think that I wish I had met him, in a different place, a different time, different situation-and maybe then, it would've been different. That's how much I felt a "click" with this man. And I still marvel at the intensity between us, the psycology between us-and there was no 'traditional' relationship to be had. Crazymaking, indeed.

I regret that I was in the place in my life I was-lost, hurting, depressed and hating myself when I met him. It set me up for the abuses that I took. I regret that he too, was that person. I don't know about all the esoteric talk that we meet up with souls in this life for lessons, and that he was meant to be in my life for this lesson, we made a pact before we came here, or in some past live, the roles were reversed. I think we humans struggle to find meaning and logic in the very illogical, seemingly meaningless encounters we have. But some relationships are meant to be catalyst to changing our lives.....and for me, this was it. On some level-it may have saved my life. It has certainly forced me to re-evaluate everything and everyone in my life, because now my tolerance for anything remotely disrespectful and hurtful to me is 0.

I am single by choice now. The men I have met for potential relationships don't have what I want. And by that I mean, shared values and beliefs. You can have all the commonality in the world, all the attraction and chemistry, but if you can't trust the person, you have nothing.

I wonder if I will feel the way I did for him, for another anytime soon. He really got me thinking about being in a relationship again-after years of being emotionally unavailable and shut off, myself. I realize now, that is what I really want. I want that someone in my life to love, love me back, to be real with , to be honest with, to share in the ups and downs of life. I want to believe it can happen-and that it can happen to me.

This new "me"-it's lonely. I have ALWAYS had a sex partner-a "fuck buddy"-someone to get "high" with, someone to touch. Always had someone trying to merge into my lane. I have really not fed into it. I had one drunken brief fling for a night, and a few times of messing around, but, nothing to take serious and nothing to fret over. I just won't settle for just 'that' anymore. I wonder where to even meet quality men anymore-it sure isn't in the bars, though I know just as many good dudes go party with friends on the weekends as bad. I just don't think that's the smart way for me to meet anyone.

So I will continue to focus on my health-both physical and emotional, my career, establishing my life and essentially getting my shit together. I will continue to meet up with friends, enjoying them and who they are, and continue to do new activities that maybe someday, will enable me to meet another. I believe in fate and I believe in chance encounters, so, I dont fret about meeting anyone. I don't dwell on my age, or that the pot is thinning because of it-I'm just doing me and creating the right emotional environment for the right person to walk into...which I have to admit, is one of the HARDEST things I've ever had to do. It's straight up boring, as I said, lonely, and hard not to feel like I'm missing out on something. Yet I know I'm not missing out on anything. Been there, done that-and have the scars to prove it.

The brief actual relationship after I had, after the one that I've been blogging about now-was just as crazy and unhealthy-on HIS end. Me-I saw it right away. I did NOT get emotionally attached. When I ended it-it was over. HE didn't take it well. HE is not a nice guy....and I don't LIKE that. In fact, I really can't stand jerks anymore. I laugh at them. I don't take them seriously-and I don't invite them into my bed.

Some guys are jerks til they meet the right one, and some guys are just jerks-ESPECIALLY when they meet a great one. Either way, I'm pretty much over the 'jerks' so yes this can make a Saturday night somewhat boring.

I miss the good relationships in my life that I had, before this man entered it. Its been so long since I've had a loving, caring boyfriend that I hope I don't distrust it when it's there in my life. I am working on that.

I forgive this man I've blogged about. Mostly because if it weren't for him-I wouldn't be where I am at today. I forgive myself too, for having stayed, tolerated, fed into and been infected by it. But sometimes-I still wish it didn't have to be. It doesn't seem to have been all in vain, and it really could've been alot worse between us-we could've been married. It was easier to get out of the entanglement with nothing tangible between us. But I still mourn it. And I don't know why.

How it ended, pt 2-and How it feels when it does

I've lost dear ones who have passed away, I've been divorced from a non-disordered, and I've lost touch with people I've cared about. But nothing, NOTHING could prepare me for this kind of a "loss".

There’s nothing more frightening then emerging from some hypnotic coma to the fact that this man you’ve allowed in your life is disordered and will probably never get help. Getting him to love you is not the way out of it. Loving yourself is the way out of it. To break through the denial requires anger, and not caring anymore what he or anyone else thinks of that. It all hurts, and its so hard to come to terms with.

I was shell-shocked for a couple weeks, barely able to function, once it was all said and done. I couldn’t eat, sleep or think, really. I walked around in a daze. I looked around at other women-on the subway, in the grocery store and I wondered if they would’ve ever taken his crap. I really hated myself for not seeing it, or seeing it but not believing it. I smoked a lot, I drank a lot of wine. Didn’t talk to friends much. The ones I did-I think I scared a few.

I was incredibly tired. I broke out, I could hardly jump in the shower My hair began to fall out from the stress. I felt dissoacted from life, disconnected from people and like I was walking around in an alternate reality. I felt numb, and stressed. I couldn’t relax, rest or focus my attention on much of anything. I had muscle twitches and laid in bed not even being able to feel my body. My thinking was obsessed-all I could think about was what happened. My anger was intense. I wanted to keep coming at him, telling him off, telling him that I see it all now, and I wanted him to pay.

I then would sink into a depression of despair, hating myself for ever loving this man, wondering why I didn’t get out of it when I knew it was all true before. How was it that I would sink back into denial and continue to want to believe there was a normal human being there, albeit just very messed up? I was truly emotionally traumatized.

I know that I haven’t told my personal story here. Given some examples, but I don’t know if I have to. If this has happened to you, you know what story is. These men are shocking and horrific and its amazing that ANYONE can say and do the things that they do, just for effect, not concerned at all how it will make you feel. They learn something hurts you-and just rub your face in. You end up doing it back at him-and shame and hate for yourself creeps in. You’ve let yourself turn into him.

I’d look at people and wonder why they couldn’t see that someone had just chewed me up and spit me out. I’d see people laughing, I’d see friends on Facebook status inane and mundane shallow messages, and I’d feel even more alien, more hurt. I had no black eye, no missing tooth to express what he did to me.

If I mentioned the word “abuse” the first question was “OMG did he hit you?”-and when I said no, they seemed to dismiss it and not give it the merit that being hit would’ve. This hurt and angered me more. I’ve been defending myself against this asshole for some 5 years now, and now I have to defend and “prove” myself against the world.

There is much truth in the saying that unless you’ve been in a relationship with a personality disordered person-you will NEVER get it.

I hid, I withdrew. I couldn’t really carry on normal conversations with people, I couldn’t pretend I was just fine. No one knew, and no one seemed to care-mostly because, no one really knew that this guy was in my life, because he wasn’t presented to anyone as a boyfriend. I had almost wished I was married to him, only to be able to even prove a relationship really existed.

Physically, I had aches and pain, I cried a lot. I became just like him in that my paranoia about people-even friends I’ve had for years, became intense. I questioned everyone’s motives in my life and starting feeling that no one in my life really cared about me at all, and that I maybe ended up like this because I am the bad person. At times, I questioned my own sanity and wondered if I hadn't just taken it all wrong.

In many respects, it was like withdrawing from a drug, where you are literally sick, throwing up, nightmares, unable to function. It’s detox-and it’s not pretty.Many people will say that it's like coming out of a cult, and it's true.

Especially because you are doing it all alone-because you just can’t prove just how bad it’s all been. Alone and lonely in such an intense way it hurts. Which is a big reason I started this blog. I hope to spare even one person from thinking that no one out there could ever understand.

I do. After a period of mourning, I literally had to force myself to go on with my life. All the things I’ve neglected and other problems occurring in my life, had to be dealt with and I felt very much alone. I was, in a way-no one else could do this for me. I wanted to be saved, the same way I tried to save him-but I wasn’t that lucky. I had to stand on my own. Went pretty much cold turkey. I reached out to friends and forced myself to be social. I thought and contemplated about what to do with the rest of my life now-so much time spent wasted on him, ways to help him, I had neglected myself. What do I really want? What am I really doing?

I had to push thoughts of “Will I ever meet someone else again?” out of my mind, saying I’ll worry about it later, at the same time, being totally disgusted at the idea of a relationship. My mind couldn’t even fathom a “normal” relationship, as I’d look at couples out in public, listen to songs on the radio and wonder what it must be like to actually be loved, and wondering if I wasn’t so jaded now that I will never know that. Will I ever believe anyone ever again? Often I’d slip back into denial, where I’d start giving him the benefit of the doubt, wonder if I wasn’t being too harsh, wondering if I had taken it all the wrong way, wondering if I had acted different, would he had been different?

Of course he ignored any attempts at my communications and it only furthered his cause in making me look as though I had lost it, was crazy, stalking him and unable to accept and let go. EVEN THOUGH I ENDED IT.

I looked for support, therapy and to rebuild my shattered heart and scrambled mind. It helped a great deal. Domestic violence counselors will give you all kinds of handouts and “pie charts” that show the cycles of abuse and the minds of abusers, the tactics that they use. Even though you can come across that information yourself-there’s something incredibly healing In telling another person your story, and not only do they believe it, but they too tell you that there’s no doubt, you have been abused. You aren’t crazy.

That’s all you can do. Your life does go on….and should. I know that this can be so traumatic that it can lead you to thinking about ending your life. I don’t think abuse ends up killing women because the man literally kills her himself-I would bet that there are a lot more victims of domestic violence who have chosen to kill themselves as the way out, instead. Its not because you love him so much that you can’t live without him, its because the betrayal is so severe and the reality of dealing with someone truly insane and mentally ill is horrifying. The idea that someone never cared about you at all is heartbreaking and sickening. I know that those thoughts crept into my mind-and that’s when I knew that I was really, REALLY in trouble here. Especially if he’s isolated you in any way, you may not have much friends to go to, and the one’s you do have are also his. You can’t go there. But you can come here. And to other blogs and forums-there is help and support here.

What to expect when reality hits, part one

The best thing to do is to stop giving these attention whores your time. You yearn to be “that girl.” You wonder and question why it is that you just can’t seem to break away and let it go. You are obsessed. You’ve tried-maybe even he’s broken up with you a few times in the past, but this is different.

While you are doing everything you can just to function-he’s out laughing it up and rubbing in your face how he’s moved on and has someone else now. If he’s like my abuser-he will tell you all about how he is madly in love with another woman, he will tell you what song he hears on the radio that reminds him of her-and it’s a love song-and he will be doing this from ANOTHER woman’s house, and she will be laughing in the background. Yeah…that’s how he rolls.

When you realize that its over, you are then torn between a desire to exact a consequence, unable to let it go and know that for all your efforts, your investment, the love you truly did feel, there was no payoff, and now there’s no consequence for what he’s done here. You recognize in horror that you’ve been sitting in some emotional casino, pulling that lever, the coins you’ve dropped in being everything you’ve got, trying harder than you have in your life, and the cherries never hit. You got no return. Eventually, you will realize you win by losing and the return you’ll get, is that you get your freakin’ life back. Your mind, your sanity. Your soul.

But for now, you are left feeling powerless. He has 9/11’d you, and you don’t have the energy to search for his Bin Laden. But you feel justified-and rightfully so-that he had no right, no reason, no cause to vaporize you like that, and that you need to defend yourself back. For some women, they rely on the court system and lawyers in divorce courts to help prove what they know. Yet oftentimes, it just doesn’t happen. Sometimes women take matters into their own hands, and feebly attempt things such as slashing tires, telling his new girlfriends, getting onto internet websites to “report” an abuser-and all she ends up doing is making herself look like the “psycho” he has painted her out to be. Hell hath no fury like a woman scored kind of thing. That you are embittered, don’t take rejection well, unstable, emotionally out of your mind, immature and a hot mess. And you feel every one of those things as you admit defeat.

You go from telling yourself you’d rather be happy than right, let him win and just move on, forgetting you ever knew him and wanting to just forget it ever happened, to crying out for justice and how is it remotely fair that people like this get away with it?? Your friends encourage you to believe in “karma”, with the endless amount of comments such as “What goes around comes around”, “Don’t worry someday he will get his”, “He will have to answer to it all at judgment day” and then you wonder about THAT. You wonder and pity him as you think that he truly may have a psychological disorder and thus “cant’ help it”, and you wouldn’t wish evil and suffering on anyone say, for having a physical disease they can’t control."

You feel evil and guilty all at the same time, evil for thinking horrible thoughts towards another human being, a hypocrite because wasn’t that what he was doing to you? You feel sorry for him that he is so damaged and defective, then go back to feeling that he is very much in control of what he does, he’s calculating and aware, and JUST DOESN’T CARE. How that is even remotely possible is the shock and awe your mind experiences, because you realize that he is a sadist. An emotional Hitler. How anyone can see you writhing in pain, ignore your tears, and stand back and do nothing to try and alleviate it, but instead, selfishly suggest that you are tormenting him-you realize that in his mind, that’s how he sees it. You’ve been the perpetrator to him all along, and it is sheer insanity that has your mind, heart and soul reeling in despair.

You become obsessed where all you can do is re-play things in your mind as if you have a built in Tivo in your brain, trying to piece together all that’s been said, all the contradictions, all the crazy-making that he’s done, scanning the information, pausing at certain points, and incredulously begin to realize that you are not dealing with someone who is sane. Period. Yet you go through a period of doubting yourself more because he has twisted it so much, you truly question your own sanity and whether or not you did this to him.

You think of the times you’ve fought back, the mean things you might’ve said, and while you know that it was self-defense, you know that it was the pressure cooker inside of you begging for normalcy from him, because he is so effective in these subliminal implants of your wrong doing-you actually question it. You actually think it might’ve been YOU all along who is the crazy one. That’s where he wants you. Believing that you deserved all of this. You torment yourself with the confusion that swirls in your mind, a confusion the likes of which you’ve never known. How could you have been so wrong about someone? Is your intuition really that off base? How is it possible that a person cannot feel for anyone, they don’t understand empathy, or wearing someone else’s shoes? How did this radioactive man get in, and why are you suffering from the fallout? Why can’t you accept that some things ARE as they seem on the surface, and you should take him for face value and realize that what you see, is what you get? But we don’t.

We love TV with the narcissistic male characters, whom women woo and try and tame, and we watch when he supposedly has a bit of a heart. We love the stories of the player/jerk who in the end, wises up because he’s going to lose the woman he loves-we want to be that girl, the one who tamed the bad boy, the one that he totally changes for, we live for a glimpse that he‘s human, has remorse, has regret, feels badly, harbors some guilt and wants to make up for the pain. We just want a sincere realization and apology that he has in fact, been playing us.

Ladies if he were capable of that, he never would‘ve done this to us in the first place. We can’t bear the thought that after all the pain he’s put us through-that some unsuspecting female, some female that doesn’t know this side of him exist, doesn’t know what he’s capable of-should then get the good that YOU deserved. You put in all the work and effort, she reaps all the rewards.

If he does do this, go with another woman, and seems to live happily ever after with the next one, after he’s brutally wounded you and sucked you into this vortex of grief and suffering-you then believe that every horrible thing he said and made you feel about yourself must’ve been true. It really wasn’t him-it was you. Yet you realize that this can’t be-because until now, you bent over backwards, jumped through hoops, gave everything you had, your blood, sweat and tears, chewed on glass, tried harder than you ever have with anyone else in your life, gave more good than Mother Teresa and often had the patience of a Saint-you PROVED to him, to yourself and everyone else that YOU are the good person.

You know your heart. You know that you truly did feel love and care, whether you should or shouldn’t of. Where’s your reward?

Then you think that you were BOTH wrong, you reasoning holds, so, let’s just call it even. You weren’t always perfect either. But then every nasty thing done, every inconsideration, every word uttered with the intent to hurt you, and every ounce of affection and care withheld comes flaming back into your mind. You've learned,in your "research", that a psycho can never feel guilt, never feel empathy, and so, why should you show him mercy? People need to be held accountable for their actions. You just can’t go through life being this kind of an asshole to people, and not pay a price. Especially to you. Which then again, has you wondering if YOU are the real narcissist here.