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The Keeper of My Demons

Posted on by Standard 23

As I’ve been saying over the last few weeks, I’ve settled into a pleasant routine here in my ghetto apartment. For the most part, I wallsexist completely separate from Chef and I am growing to really appreciate that. However, I’m noticing a different routine that is forming, and I’m absolutely going to root this one out of my life. It is a new routine Chef and I have developed, and I had to really decide last night to be the one to stop it.

Chef and I can’t make it through one conversation without fighting anymore. All communication has finally broken down, and yet, I find myself trying to communicate with him about how all of his choices and decisions have hurt me anyways! And he, in turn, throws up every wall he can erect to make sure we don’t focus on his shortcomings, instead constantly diverting the subjects back to how I have reacted to the various insults I feel he and his girlfriend have launched at me.

He thinks I over-reacted to all of it. You have got to love the male mind. :-)

And, I, of course, think he’s awfully easy on himself given the different rings of hell he’s introduced to my life. I know. Typically Female.

There is no way for us to meet in the middle here, and the bickering and fighting is worthless. I want to stop it.

Now, in all fairness, I’m beating a dead dog here every time I launch into that tired line of reasoning with him ad nauseam.

Why every single stupid conversation has to come back to all the cheating, lying, sneaking around, and the mind-twisting move of installing his affair-partner into our home, in my bed, and letting her wear my clothes, is beyond me. I don’t even really want to talk about it anymore. And yet, without fail, he’ll make a snide comment about how I cost us millions of dollars by tanking a lawsuit we were in, (and yes, I did do that), and I’ll  just have to defend myself by throwing back in his face what he did that made me do that.

And then it’s on.

Another boring, merry-go-round argument, that we’ll just end up digressing to the point that we’re launching rather witty and clever, but also very mean, and somewhat childish names at one another….Again. Then, we’ll withdraw into our perspective corners of Tulsa,  and there will be no communication…for anywhere between one day to two weeks, depending on just how below the belt we attacked each other in our last round. It’s pathetic, and I’m sick of repeating this useless exercise.

The silence is peaceful, and just as I’m relaxing into not wondering what he is doing, or how he is faring, I’ll get a text message from him. Some of them have been super sweet; some nostalgic for the days we were happy; some lyrics to my favorite songs; some downright sad; and all of them have the power to soothe me enough that I immediately break my promise to myself to ignore him forever, and respond. I wish I could say I was able to withstand the lure for even an hour. Nope. I’m woefully sappy when it comes to those texts. It’s just disheartening how quickly I text him back, that tiny bit of hope sparking back to life in the back of my brain.

Then, it quickly falls to crap, and I’m sitting there remembering how I could have IGNORED that text, and this latest disrespectful event wouldn’t have happened. Hind-sight is 20/20…dammit, Bird!!

I’ve noticed lately that we don’t communicate with one another well at all. And I’m pondering the question — What do we really have to talk about anymore? Our lives aren’t continuing down the same paths. We aren’t working on a relationship. We don’t have little children that keep us connected. The children that we did raise are adults, and can be contacted directly without me. We have no reason to stay in touch. I miss the way we used to be able to finish each other’s sentences, but that connection is severed, and it is just a form of torture to have to go through these emotional sparing with each other just to come out on the other side with the knowledge that it is simply over. How many times do we need to repeat this stupid exercise? Oh, please.

What would happen if he actually was sorry? Would I welcome him back in my broken heart? Can a dozen love letters untangle this mess he left me in? Would I go back to being the girl I was before if he publicly denounced the twit he lives with now and proclaimed his love for me from the rooftops? No. You can’t un-ring the bell.  The rose-colored glasses are off, and I can see both of us much clearer. I’d never be able to pretend I didn’t know the depths of his ability to hurt those he swore to love, protect, and care for. I know what I’m capable of, too, when hurt beyond what I ever thought I’d be able to endure. I’m learning to trust myself all over again…But he’s been introduced to a part of me that he never knew was there either. The relationship has changed from the knowledge of who we are capable of being, and there’s no going back.

There was a time I could have forgiven all of this and set about patching our relationship back up, but that time has come and gone long ago. There’s too much damage done, and daily we stab at each other some more, for no constructive reasons at all. Do I really care if he ever misses me? Maybe. I’m human. But I can live without him being sorry. I can live without him taking responsibility. I can live without him…period. I prove that daily.

Should I continue to let him come and go as he pleases, I’m worried that even the good memories of him will be tainted by this new, sad, angry, sneering version I purposely walked away from…repeatedly.  I say Chef left me behind, but I’m the one who left the marriage because of his infidelity, lying, and general coldness. Sometimes, it is good to remember that I was the one who had the courage to walk away into the unknown future.

It’s sad to leave an old friend behind, but you just have to when they cease to be your friend, and are, instead, the keeper of all your demons.

So, today, I’m deciding YET AGAIN to let Chef fade out of my life for good. Hopefully, I’ll be able to withstand the draw of Hope! :-)

– Have a Lovely Friday!!!

Bird

One Map With The Directions Through Hell

Posted on by Standard 14

Ok.

So, now that my life has a routine, and I’ve pretty much said about all I can possibly say about the last crappy year, crappy drugs,

lol...It was through the destruction of one that I really SHINED!!

lol…It was through the destruction of one that I really SHINED!!

crappy marriage, and exposed my heartbreak for months on this blog, to the point of even losing some followers, I’m finding it harder to come up with things to write about. I’m happy and sad about this. Sad,  because I love to write on this blog, but I don’t know what to say now that I’m healing up nicely. The up side though, is that I’m happy, and while I’ll get a pang here or there, I’ve gotten more control over what I will actually allow myself to dwell on. I don’t kid myself into thinking it’ll be smooth sailing here on out, but the storms don’t take my breath away anymore. I re-blogged my letter to Chef so I could add it to my blog. I actually told the guy that I wanted to remain anonymous, but he might have misunderstood…lol. Still, when I re-read the letter, I knew I wanted it on my blog as part of the record of this whole painful process. So, no. I’m not feeling sad and nostalgic. I’m feeling like I want my writings all in this one place.

One of my friends on here, Paula,  encouraged me to re-read an old post I wrote when I was in the thick of the pain, and I have to admit, that was a hard read. It’s even hard to re-read my words prior to my soul-baring posts. I knew what was going on in my home even if I wasn’t writing about it. I have to admit there are a lot of things I’ve written on this blog that I may never read again. Maybe eventually I’ll go to the beginning and read them, but for now, I’m liking the peaceful feeling I have. The healing is going fine, but I’m not ready to walk through those corridors of my mind right now. I literally was an emotional mess.

One thing that I am thankful for though, is that I kept this kind of on-line journal through the worst part of it. I am so glad that time tends to soften the memories that tear us apart; often, it even allows us to forget some of them all together. How would anyone ever heal from anything if the memories stayed fresh and powerful? We need that forgetfulness to heal.

However, there is also a down-side to being able to forget, and I’m absolutely gifted at blocking out (eventually) what I don’t want to remember. I now know a lot more about who I am as an individual, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve actually achieved some kind of change for the better. I’m obviously a codependent person. I’m a control freak. I’m attracted to people who aren’t good for me. Well, I say that, but I’ve been married twice, and I don’t really know for sure I actually have a “type” of guy. I’ve spent my whole adult life married, so there isn’t a large amount of data for me to collect from, if you get my drift. But, I have learned to pay more attention, and spend less time excusing, what the people I love do. I wasn’t helping…I was hurting. I’ve learned that even when I didn’t even want to live anymore, I never gave up on God. I may be an appalling Christian, but I remained one. :-)

I will eventually re-read a lot of the painful posts because I don’t want these lessons to sink comfortably to the back of my mind. I don’t want to repeat history. I would like to learn these lessons once and for all so that there is no need for it to be addressed in my life again.

Most of all, someday I will be completely healed and over all of this mess, and I want to see the differences in how I thought before all of this, and my perspective after it was finally over and done with.

Hopefully, I’ve made at least one person out there not feel like the only person on earth going through hell. I received a lot of encouragement, peace, chastising, and prayers from people I’ve never even met. I think God was just saving my life when He planted the idea in my head that a blog would be fun. It really was a rather random thing for me to just decide to do.

Yet, it turned out to be crucial to this whole journey. So, thank you all, even the ones that dropped me when I couldn’t laugh for a while. I learned way more from you guys than you will ever know. And now I have this kind of map that I can look back on that shows how I navigated a hellish part of my life. Hopefully, I’ll never have to take this route again…ever. :-)

Love you,

Bird

 

 

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The Big Day – My Court Hearing

Posted on by Standard 27

 

Yesterday was just one exhausting day, and it all started with DJ oversleeping, and being late for work. Or so we thought. After the mad scramble, phone calls, and the hustle out the door, I called Chef to tell him I was also running late. The clock said 8am, and I had to be in court by 9am. When he answered the phone, it was obvious that I woke him up, too. After some garbled conversation that I didn’t understand, he pressed upon me the point that it was actually 5am in the morning…lol. Dj, when he was hitting the snooze button, had accidentally changed the time on the clock….LOL!!!!

I sent DJ a text and let him know that he was actually extremely early, and he came back. Poor baby. He was just positive he was going to be fired on his 5th day of work at his new job.

I prayed, read a little from my bible, and then got ready for court. I hate public speaking, and I really hate knowing that I have this power in my hands to make someone else’s life miserable. I hate it. I wrote a few days ago that I’m always suspicious of my motives, so I had the kids and friends pray for God‘s will for Chef. And while I won’t go into the details, suffice it to say, He answered them.

The judge was concerned that I didn’t take what Chef had done as serious as perhaps I should have. I still have problems believing Chef is a danger to me. And that was his only skirt near criticizing me, which didn’t offend  me at all because he is probably right. But I don’t fear death, ever. I look forward to seeing my God, my home, my lost loved ones. I also believe that satan has to have permission from God before my life can be snuffed out, and all the PO’s and self-preservation in the world isn’t going to change the date of my death.

The judge was extremely harsh with Chef, not allowing him to really explain much about his side of the story. Chef is a fantastic public speaker…hands down, the very best I’ve ever seen, and yet the judge wasn’t moved at all by his words. The only thing that really saved Chef from being charged with assault and possibly other more serious charges is that he brought in his paperwork where he had signed up for rehab through the VA. Yay!! Now let’s all pray that he actually goes through with it.

We spent a little time together afterwards — the conditions of his PO do not keep us from contacting each other anymore — and I listened to every single thing that came out of his mouth. Mostly, he was trying to explain how bad his life had become, but I couldn’t really say much about that. I didn’t choose any of this, so I just let him rant, rave, and blame. But at the end of most of these, he would apologize and explain he doesn’t understand why he constantly feels so angry. But whenever I would even mention God, he would go off on a tangent about how all Christians were minions of satan and we all should be shot in the head. Oh, puhhhleeeze! It is hard to stay silent when a person who is cursing God, his wife, his girlfriend, and his children with every other breath, and yet you know full well that there is a minion of satan involved in the conversation, but it wasn’t me.

It is hard to see Chef struggle so hard against God, trying desperately to manipulate anyone and everyone around him to help him clean up his life. And believe you me, if I had the money, I’d be inclined to help him. I have loved him for a long time. But I also know that while I can share some of the meager foods we have with him, or give him $6 for gas money, I am in no position to fix his life. Nor is T, or the kids, and sadly, he has lost all of his good friends and even his mother, who loves him, won’t help him out financially. That is hard to accept when you’ve spent literally decades protecting him from his consequences. I did him no favors. As it has been for our whole marriage, he depends on me to help him instead of God. That is one lesson I’ve learned from all of this very, very well. Stay out of people’s relationships with their God. Period.

The happy thing for me was that I was able to stay calm through those ridiculous diatribes, always reminding myself to a) do not return evil for evil or insult for insult, but give a blessing instead, and b) don’t argue with a fool. Sadly, Chef seems unable to see how his pity party makes him look. I reminded him of all the strong, confident things he’s done over the years, and there was no reason he couldn’t pull himself together again now, but he just wanted a quick fix. There are literally no quick fixes for this kind of damage. Money won’t fix his burned brain, friendships won’t last because he is completely focused on his wants and needs, giving nothing of himself to anyone else. It all makes me feel sympathy for him, but as I drove away from him, I felt that peace again knowing that God had saved me from an even worse nightmare. No way would living with this man be any kind of life with the way he is now.

But I will continue to pray for him, and I will continue to forgive him and T. I will hope that God manifests Himself in Chef’s life in a very powerful and real way. That is all I can do for him anymore.

Thanks to all of you who were praying for us in court. God bless!!!

 

– Bird

 

 

How To Argue With A Fool

Posted on by Standard 41

This is my recipe for arguing with a fool…don’t. It has no reward at all.

Awhile back, before I really got into this blogging thing, I joined one of the many, many writing communities, and wrote a piece similar to Be True to Yourself or You’ll Become Constipated and posted it as my one and only contribution to that site. (Yes. I do this periodically and then quickly become bored with it). Now, the way that site is set up, other writers are invited to critique your work and offer constructive criticism in order to help you develop as a writer.

If you’ve read Be True then you know it is about my inability to physically altercate in a bar scene, and the

Zolpidem

Zolpidem (Photo credit: Wikipedia) - I have done some extremely weird stuff while on Ambien. Just ask my daughter about my alter-ego's blog site!

actual need to at least portray a sense of being a tough, biker chick, to keep random women from beating me up in order to win the affection and back seat of my husband and his motorcycle. The article was just a cutesy thing I wrote; I wasn’t trying to lay down some hard, deep wisdom on anybody. I soon forgot about my membership to the writing community, and I certainly never really expected anyone to actually read and critique the piece. Boy, was I wrong.

Yesterday. mainly because I was really bored, I went through my computer on-line history. I do this occasionally because I take Ambien CR at night, and I’m one total freak sometimes when I’m on it, and periodically I have to make sure I’m not sending mean emails to family members or web-noodling random hate sites. Evidently, my Ambien-ed out alter ego loves to debate, mainly politics, and I’ve done this a couple of times and have had no memory of it the next day. I’m happy to report that I’ve recently only been sleeping when on it…no stirring of the pots recently! And so, I came across that writing community website again, and thought I’d go see if anyone had actually read my piece.

There was quite a response to my piece. A couple of the writers liked it, and only corrected some of my grammar, which is actually helpful to me, as I’m always finding grammatical mistakes in my writing. (My grandmother would be sooooo appalled!) But the real interesting stuff was about the content. One person took big exceptions to me being married to a biker and being a Christian. According to her, you can’t be both. No surprise there…a shockingly common reaction. Another writer took exception to me going out to bars at all, and instead advised me to stay home and let my husband get this biker thing out of his system. Since it’s been in his system for over a decade, that would have been one really, really long wait, and it still wouldn’t be over yet. My guess is that this little phase is here to stay. Another woman basically called me a slut. Now, here is where I get confused. There is absolutely nothing sexual in my piece. How does this make me a slut?

The truly funny part about this though, is that this is a message board kind of thing and other writers could read what each person was saying, and there was a very long, very highly charged debate on whether I could be a Christian, a biker, a writer, and a slut all at the same time. I laughed and laughed through the whole thing. People take their own opinions too seriously sometimes. And all these barbs that were aimed at hurting my feelings, or making me angry, or even to draw out a reaction from me had all happened months ago without me even knowing about it. Toward the end of the montage, there were even comments on the fact that I wasn’t defending myself and my lifestyle, and therefore I must know that I was wrong, not a Christian, couldn’t be a writer, and was, in fact, a slut.

I didn’t answer. I thought about it, but then I thought, when you are trying to draw someone into a verbal fight, the only thing worse than being made a fool of is when the other side decides you’re such a big fool, you aren’t worth fighting with at all. Trust me, I’ve been on the embarrassing end of that stick, mainly when I’ve been drunk. So, I just left the site untouched, and chuckled at how infuriated the pot-stirrers would always feel every time they thought of the Somewhat Pure-living Christian Biker Chick Writer refused to defend herself against some pretty base, rude, foolish insults. The bible is pretty clear on this one –

“The mind of the intelligent seeks knowledge; But the mouth of fools feeds on folly.” Proverbs 15:14

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Proverbs 15:1

“A scoffer does not love one who reproves him, He will not go to the wise.” Proverbs 15:12

“He who conceals hatred has lying lips; and he who spreads slander is a fool.” Proverbs 10:18

All of our own opinions are just that…opinions. There is no reward for verbally beating someone else into submission to our own ways of thinking. And if you are secure in who you are, then there is no need to sell yourself on the truth either. Some people just like the verbal jockeying that insulting someone else leads to, but I have no interest in trying to defend myself to a fool. What’s to be gained by that?

Respect from a fool = Nothing much worth having at all!

– Bird